Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Hello and good afternoon to members of the committee and my fellow panellists. I'm happy to join with all of you today.

I'm Lana Payne, the national president of Unifor. We represent 320,000 workers across the country, many of them working in the sectors we're discussing here today. Joining me is our director of research, Angelo DiCaro.

In May, as you know, we urged this committee to take the threat of unfair Chinese EV imports to Canada very seriously. In recent months, the government has taken steps to do just that.

For the past decade, China has deployed every possible resource it has to become the world's number one EV assembler, battery-maker and critical mineral processor. It doesn't stop there. China has built up its overcapacity across many industries. You've heard that here today. Their subsidies and the industrial capacity China has amassed are unparalleled. Their ability to avoid international trade and investment rules is blatant, just as you've heard. Their denial of fundamental labour rights is totally unacceptable. It is illegal, as you know, for workers in China to form an independent trade union. It is illegal to engage in free and fair collective bargaining. Chinese workers who attempt to strike or protest face severe sanctions by their government.

It's important for everyone in Parliament to understand our position on these matters—the rights of all workers, including Canadian workers, to bargain fairly, to strike and to have access to good jobs built through collective bargaining. Canada and its allies must realize China's economic prowess and its impact on good Canadian jobs. Past governments were so enamoured with globalization and free trade that they gave themselves permission, frankly, to ignore the damage being done to working families in our country and the economic hole they dug for Canadian industry.

Our job in a postpandemic world is to understand this new global economy and reality that we're facing. Nations are competing for investments and developing robust industrial strategies to get us to net zero. For example, no one can view the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act as anything other than a massive blueprint for industrial renewal. The U.S.'s decisions with respect to tariffs and China are about protecting that renewal and the millions of jobs tied to it.

Canada must also be bold. We must strengthen key existing industries and create new ones. We must invest in workers and our workplaces. We must build the things we need and employ the skills of every worker in this country to do it. That includes building up our auto, truck, bus, steel and aluminum industries but also such other critical transport sectors as rail, subway cars, aerospace and shipbuilding. I'm not sure if you know this right now, but we have a Chinese firm looking to build subway cars for Toronto while Unifor's Thunder Bay plant is facing an uncertain future. We have to get our procurement act together here in Canada as well.

Section 53 of the Customs Tariff is one of the many levers basically hardly used right now by governments. The fact that we are doing it is a bold move. It's the right move to guard against a surge in Chinese EV imports while our domestic industry retools. It also provides workers a buffer against carbon-intensive Chinese steel and aluminum that's been dumped in our market for decades. We're pleased to see the government taking action on this front.

We've also identified other concerns. For instance, China is currently overproducing lithium-ion batteries and dominating global production of battery parts and precursor materials. While China continues to pump out cells and cathodes and anodes, other battery plant investments, including some in Canada, are facing delays as EV demand slows. Canada must ensure that these lucrative job-creating battery factories get up and running. Unifor wants to see similar action, under section 53, targeting Chinese batteries, critical minerals and other components that are key to Canada's EV transition.

Canada has other legislative powers that it can use to stop illicit goods from entering the country, specifically goods made with forced labour. We know that China is implicated in some of the worst forced labour violations in the world. Canada must act. We are calling on this committee to add its voice to this critical matter.

Either we take responsibility to fight human rights abuses across supply chains or we accept it and live with our complicity in it. We can do better for Canadian workers and workers everywhere, so let's do that.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and look forward to answering any of your questions.

Thanks very much.