OHS and ESG leaders urged to close gaps as Bill S-211 reporting matures, enforcement approaches, and public scrutiny looms
Bill S‑211 is exposing forced labour risks that many Canadian employers never realized were buried deep in their supply chains, and safety leaders are now being pushed to close long‑standing blind spots before enforcement catches up.
The federal law, which took effect in January 2024, requires certain entities to report annually on how they identify and address forced and child labour risks in their operations and supply chains. For many employers, that has meant taking a harder look not only at direct suppliers but at the layers of contractors and subcontractors behind them.
A transparency law reshaping how employers see risk
“Bill S‑211 and Canada really started to lean into their commitment to forced and child labor and what they started to call modern slavery,” says Chris Hardcastle, manager at ISN for Canadian operations, focusing on the energy space. “It really added some oversight for these organizations to start to look at their own policies and procedures… and really take a look at their overall supply chain.”
Hardcastle says the first phase of compliance has been about visibility rather than punishment. “This opened up kind of the first step with this — it has all been transparency and having a good understanding of who you’re working with and where those products and services are coming from,” he says.
Blind spots beyond tier‑one suppliers
As employers dig into their reports, a major theme is how little they know about what happens beyond their first tier of suppliers. “Organizations are still trying to wrap their head around some of the blind spots that they have when it comes to their supply chains,” Hardcastle explains.
“When I’m talking about blind spots, we’re talking about maybe tier two and tier three… as well as subcontractors,” he adds. Those blind spots are especially acute in sectors like construction, manufacturing and energy, where complex contracting chains are common.
Hardcastle says many ISN clients are now building forced‑labour expectations directly into how they qualify and procure from suppliers. Organizations are “forced to kind of start to incorporate metrics and questions in their qualifications and their RFPs and all the different procurement practices that they have in place,” he says.
To close those gaps, employers are turning to tools that can capture policies, track subcontractor information and standardize due diligence across “subs of subs of subs” working on Canadian job sites.
When forced labour looks like everyday safety failures
When employers start probing deeper, they often find that forced labour risk looks less like overt exploitation and more like chronic safety and HR failures.
“With Bill S‑211… organizations found forced labor is frequent…and it really boils down to… safe work practices,” Hardcastle says. “It’s unsafe working conditions, it’s excessive hours, it’s poor recruitment practices, a lack of protections on job sites.”
He points to concepts that will be familiar to Canadian OHS professionals: “stop work authority” and the “right to refuse unsafe work” as examples of protections that may be absent in higher‑risk parts of global supply chains.
In other words, modern slavery risk and core safety culture issues often overlap, and the same controls that protect workers domestically can help frame expectations abroad.
No fines yet, but reputational and public‑registry risks loom
So far, there have been no fines or formal penalties issued under Bill S‑211. But Hardcastle warns the absence of enforcement action should not be mistaken for a green light.
“That’s not to say that that’s the only penalty or risk with all of this,” he notes. “Obviously, there’s reputational risk… companies are trying to get in front of this kind of thing and they want to make sure that they have policies in place that comply with Bill S‑211.”
One development employers are watching closely is the creation of a public registry of reports. “One component of Bill S‑211 that hasn’t quite materialized yet, but organizations are anticipating it, is a whole public registry component,” Hardcastle says. “Reports are going to be made public and enforcement tied to that is kind of what everyone’s anticipating.”
What OHS and ESG leaders should do next
For occupational health and safety leaders, particularly those whose roles now encompass ESG, the message is that forced labour risk is becoming part of everyday safety due diligence.
“As we start to see Canada lean more in[to] just [labour] practices, we’re going to continue to see organizations start to incorporate some metrics in how they do business day to day,” Hardcastle says. “Although we’re talking about forced and child labor in terms of Bill S‑211, a lot of this overlaps with the controls that our clients and organizations have in place.”
Looking ahead, he expects “increased due diligence,” with customers moving from simply asking whether policies exist to demanding evidence of how those policies are implemented and measured.
For Canadian employers, that likely means more rigorous questions, more documentation and far fewer blind spots in their supply chains.
This article is part of our Monthly Spotlight series, which in April focuses on environment, sustainability & ESG.
