Canada's plan to import 49,000 Chinese-made electric vehicles annually risks violating the country's own forced labour import ban, according to experts who testified before parliamentary committees over recent days. The January 2026 deal slashed tariffs on Chinese EVs from 100 percent to 6.1 percent in exchange for lower duties on Canadian canola, lobster, crab and peas. But with Beijing now making its supply chains illegal to audit, the agreement is drawing fire from human rights specialists who say Canada can't verify whether the vehicles are made with forced labour.

The numbers paint a troubling picture. In 2024 alone, 3.4 million Uyghur and other minority workers were transferred into aluminum smelters and coal mines—both key inputs for electric vehicle manufacturing, according to Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, board director at the China Strategic Risks Institute. On April 7, Beijing passed a new national security regulation prohibiting anyone in China from disclosing information about their supply chains. Canada's forced labour import ban, in place since 2020, has resulted in just two blocked shipments. Meanwhile, on March 12, the U.S. Trade Representative launched Section 301 investigations into 60 countries, including Canada, over failure to enforce forced labour import prohibitions.

"Canadians don't want to be driving cars made by slaves," McCuaig-Johnston told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research on Thursday. Zumretay Arkin, vice-president of the World Uyghur Congress, emphasized the scale of the problem at a separate committee hearing on April 20: "It's really a system of forced labour that is systematic and that is also forced by the state. So it's not implemented by Chinese companies, but really implemented statically," she said. McCuaig-Johnston was blunt about the legal implications: "importing products made in whole or in part with forced labour into Canada is illegal. Given that, I don't see how we can import the cars at all."

The forced labour concerns extend beyond China's borders. BYD, the Chinese automaker widely expected to be among the brands entering the Canadian market under the new deal, is currently under investigation for labour conditions at its first European factory in Hungary. In Brazil, labour inspectors found Chinese workers at BYD's plant living in conditions of severe overcrowding and forced to surrender their passports to subcontractors, leading Brazil to place BYD on its national forced labour registry. McCuaig-Johnston told the committee that forced labour is traceable through the aluminum used in Chinese EVs, making verification theoretically possible—except Beijing's new regulation blocks exactly that kind of transparency. The timing creates a squeeze: Canada wants the economic benefits of cheaper EVs and better canola access, but Beijing has made it impossible to prove the cars are clean.

The stakes go beyond human rights. If the U.S. determines Canada is not meeting forced labour enforcement requirements, all Canadian goods entering the U.S. could face tariffs, with public hearings beginning Tuesday. In a statement, a spokesperson for International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu said Canada is "committed to ensuring that our global supply chains remain free from abuse" and that the government works in close coordination with border officials to address forced labour risks. But when MP Maxime Blanchet-Joncas asked McCuaig-Johnston whether Canada's commercial interests were overriding its stated values, her answer was clear: "If we buy electric vehicles that we know pretty confidently have forced labour in the aluminum in the cars, it implicates us personally in that. I think that would be really regrettable if we had those driving around our streets everywhere."