Event Date: February 6, 2026 - 11:30am to 1:00pm
Location: FSS 4006, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the International Political Economy Network (IPEN)

Twenty-five years after adopting the U.N. Trafficking Protocol, governments have made anti-trafficking and anti-forced labor a priority within public policy. This talk will identify and examine key aspects of the contemporary governance regime developed to address this endemic problem, including the integration of anti-forced labour provisions into bilateral tariff agreements, corporate social initiatives and transparency legislation, human rights due diligence laws, strategic litigation, and forced labor import bans, including the one recently passed by Canada.  It will examine the interplay between public and private governance within these policy realms, and the significant impact this has on whether workers ultimately benefit from these efforts.  More specifically, the rise of corporate power and influence within this regulatory space risks undermining the potential for these interventions to prompt meaningful change in the business practices that enable, and even encourage, severe exploitation in global supply chains.

Speaker:

Genevieve LeBaron is Distinguished Professor of Global Supply Chain Governance at the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). She researches forced labour in global supply chains and the effectiveness of public and private governance efforts to combat it. She is a member of the UK Parliament’s Modern Slavery and the Supply Chain Advisory Group and was elected into the Royal Society of Canada’s College in 2020.

Chair:

Jacqueline Best is a Full Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research is at the intersection of international relations, political economy and social theory. Her current research examines the role of exceptionalism, failure, and ignorance in economic policy, tracing their evolution from the early days of neoliberalism to today.