Get This: Trudeau Said Canada Doesn't Use Slave Labour
A Closer Look at the Country's Exploitative Labor Practices and the Hypocrisy in Accusing China of Using Slave Labour
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In a recent statement, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed that Canada does not use slave labour, while accusing China of doing so. This assertion, however, does not paint the full picture of Canada's history of exploitative labour practices, both domestically and abroad. In this article, we will examine the instances of slave labour and neo-colonialism involving Canada, shedding light on the hypocrisy of Trudeau's statement.
I get what Trudeau is doing. Amidst all of the (unfounded) speculation of him and his Liberal party being tied to China or influenced by China, he is lashing out with false, laughable claims. Listen, I wish China was interfering in Canadian politics. But the only proof of that is from anonymous CSIS sources. CSIS is the Canadian CIA, and they’re exactly as reliable as the CIA when it comes to Canada’s geopolitical rivals. That is to say: not at all.
Canada was quite literally built on slave labour (and genocide). After the colonization of the Americas, indigenous people were forced to work for colonizers as domestic servants and labourers. Canada even used black slaves like the US did, albeit to a lesser extent. Slavery was practiced in Canada until its abolition in 1834. Africans were enslaved and forced to work in various capacities, including agriculture, domestic labor, and manual labor.
Sure, that type of chattel slavery may be (mostly) in the past, but Canada is currently not afraid of brutally exploiting poor people at the behest of mega corporations. We’ll get into that in a bit. Here’s the Toronto Star article about what Trudeau said:
Justin Trudeau says Canadian critical minerals are more expensive than China’s because ‘we don’t use slave labour’
Quite a bold claim there. It’s not clickbait, it’s almost verbatim what he said:
“And if we’re being honest,” said Trudeau, “lithium produced in Canada is going to be more expensive because we don't use slave labour.”
Of course he uses the qualifier, ‘produced in Canada’, though. Canada is one of several capitalist, ‘developed’ nations that outsources their slave labour to the Global South. Canada’s neo-colonialism in Africa knows no bounds; there are entire African countries that are essentially ruled over by Canadian mining corporations.
Like in Eritrea, where a Vancouver-based mining firm called Nevsun Resources was sued for human rights violations, including forced labour, slavery and torture. According to documents filed in court, Nevsun’s Vice President Trevor Moss knew that forced labour was being used in the Eritrean mines. A ‘social development expert’ from the US was brought in to review the operation, and they said that “[Nevsun] were not avoiding it. They were very much aware of it.”
The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. This is the punishment applied to Canadian corporations that use slave labour. A most likely small portion of the wealth they amassed through brutal exploitation is taken away. They get to keep the rest.
She said workers described being bound and beaten, tied up in the hot sun and left for hours, while earning about $30 US per month. There was no sick leave and they faced retribution that affected their families if they took any leave.
Sickening. This is Canada’s contribution to the world. That’s just one singular instance. Here’s another; ‘Canadian mining firm apologizes to protesters shot outside Guatemalan mine’. Canadian neo-colonialism isn’t restricted to Africa, it happens in Central America too. Tahoe Resources Inc, also from British Columbia, shot several Guatemalans who were protesting against Canadian mining operations in their area.
From K.Diallo on twitter:
Just look at how much of Africa is controlled by Canadian mining corporations. This map is outdated, the money Canada has ‘invested’ into mines in Africa has only increased since. ‘Yellow Parenti’ said it best: “Poor countries are not 'under-developed', they are over-exploited.”
But Trudeau is hoping that Canadians will continue to avoid this topic like they always have, by poisoning their minds with ‘China bad’ narratives. This also applies to climate change; Canadians are quick to point out how China is the single biggest polluter in the world. But they conveniently avoid the fact that Canada is the biggest per capita polluter in the world. By a large margin. Almost thrice worse than China.
They also avoid the topic of slave labour within Canada itself. Human trafficking is quite prevalent in Canada, there are countless examples of people trafficked for slave labour or for the sex trade.
This includes ‘forced labour’, ‘forced sexual exploitation of adults and children’, and ‘forced marriage’. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) in Canada are stable sources of slave labour:
Migrant workers, particularly those in low-skilled and caregiving positions, reportedly experience a wide range of abuse including verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Specific examples include working without pay, performing tasks outside the scope of the employment contract, not receiving vacation or overtime pay, working extremely long hours, deduction of “fees” for food or accommodation from pay cheques, and particularly for women, sexual violence.
So yes, Trudeau, Canada does use slave labour domestically. You know that. You just don’t care. At its purest and simplest form, you could even say that every wage worker in Canada, and in every capitalist country, is a slave. Housing is not a human right in Canada. You must sell your labour for pennies on the dollar to some rich asshole to get ‘the right’ to have a roof over your head. This is what modern slavery entails. The commonly used term ‘earn a living’ implies that by default, you do not deserve to live.
But what about China? Does Trudeau have a point there? Not really. Back to the Toronto Star article:
Canada and the U.S. have condemned the Chinese government’s use of forced labour camps in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang, where the mainly Muslim Uyghur population has faced “repressive surveillance, mass arbitrary detention, torture and mistreatment, forced labour, and mass transfers of forced labourers from Xinjiang to provinces across China.”
Another bold claim. The Star links to a report hosted on a Canadian government website about ‘forced labour’ in China. The first source they use for these allegations is the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Yes, that’s another CSIS, but different from the previously mentioned ‘Canadian CIA’. This CSIS is US government funded, though.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS lists major funding from defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon Company and General Atomics.
Significant funding has come from the governments of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.
To ‘prove’ that China is using forced labour, the Canadian government is linking to a Washington DC based think tank that is funded by several of China’s geopolitical enemies and a smattering of US defense contractors, who earn billions of dollars from America having an enemy to fearmonger over. Fantastic source.
That CSIS report sources Adrian Zenz TWELVE TIMES. No, I’m not kidding. If you didn’t know, Zenz is a far-right christo-fascist that believes that God sent him to earth to ‘westernize’ China. He also believes that Jews will perish in a coming rapture. He is a ‘Senior China Fellow’ at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which is funded by the US government and uses the debunked ‘Black Book of Communism’ as the basis for their anti-communism. Read more about Zenz here:
The Canadian report on forced labour in Xinjiang also sources the US State Department and Adrian Zenz directly, as well as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Like CSIS, the ASPI is funded by several defence contractors and the Australian and US government. They exist to fear monger about China to bolster defence funding in Australia.
Earlier on in the Toronto Star article, they mentioned Volkswagen picking Canada for its new battery plant:
Still, [Trudeau] pointed to the decision by German automaking giant Volkswagen to chose(sic) Canada over other North American jurisdictions he said were prepared to spend a lot more money for its giant new electric vehicle battery plant.
It’s really, REALLY interesting that Trudeau would bring up Volkswagen while condemning China for supposedly using slave labour. Volkswagen has a car plant in Xinjiang. They sent an exec to investigate their Xinjiang plant to see if there was any signs of forced labour. They found absolutely nothing.
Canada and the US want to take jobs away from Uyghurs. They use Adrian Zenz to fearmonger about cotton harvesting in Xinjiang. In doing so, they want to evoke the image of a slave picking cotton by hand, like both Canada and the US formerly (and even currently, thanks to the 13th amendment) forced black slaves to do. Cotton in Xinjiang is harvested by skilled Uyghur labourers using harvesters, though. They learned those skills in the vocational schools that the west calls ‘internment camps’.
US and Canada pretend to care about the welfare of Muslims, while actively harming them. Typical, considering the US still operates a Muslim torture camp in the part of Cuba that they stole and forcibly occupy to this day.
We have extensive proof of slave labour within Canada and perpetrated by Canadian companies abroad. We have exactly zero tangible evidence of slave labour in China. We have nothing but reports funded by the US government or Raytheon or Lockheed Martin. We have nothing but statements from exiled Uyghurs that bring about ‘Nayirah testimony’ vibes.
Stop deflecting, Trudeau.
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