"If the pandemic taught us anything, if the pandemic taught us anything, it's resilience, redundancy and reliability in our supply chains," Trudeau said. The United States has alleged use of forced labor by China in sectors including mining and construction. Last year, a U.S. law took effect banning imports from China's Xinjiang region over concerns about forced labor. In December, the United Auto Workers union called on automakers to shift their entire supply chain out of Xinjiang after a report by Britain's Sheffield Hallam University suggested that nearly every major automaker has significant exposure to products made with forced labor. China denies abuses in Xinjiang, a major cotton producer that also supplies much of the world's materials for solar panels. Chinese firms also own, operate or finance most of the Democratic Republic of Congo's cobalt mines, the U.S. Labor Department said in a recent report. "Our research shows that lithium-ion batteries are produced with an input - cobalt - made by child labor," it said. Diplomatic tensions between Canada and China have been running high since the detention of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou in 2018 and Beijing's subsequent arrest of two Canadians on spying charges.
In November, Canada ordered three Chinese companies to divest from Canadian critical minerals, citing national security. China in response accused Ottawa of using national security as a pretext and said the divestment order broke international commerce and market rules. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu, additional reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Sharon Singleton and Jonathan Oatis)
