Nike faces Canadian probe over alleged use of forced Uyghur labor

Nike Canada and Dynasty Gold are being investigated by a Canadian government agency for allegedly using forced Uyghur labor in their supply chains and operations.

The probes were announced Tuesday by Sheri Meyerhoffer, who heads an agency set up by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in 2019 to examine human rights complaints about Canadian garment, mining, and oil and gas companies working abroad.

Meyerhoffer said her office – called the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise – is acting after the companies declined to enter into mediation over the complaints. “In order to fully assess the allegations, I have decided to launch an investigation using independent fact finding,” she told a news conference.

In the case of Nike, the complaints relied largely on information compiled by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute that alleged the company has supply chain relationships with various firms in China that have links to Uyghur forced labor.

“Nike maintains that they no longer have ties with these companies and provided information on their due diligence practices,” Meyerhoffer’s office said in a news release.

Nike has previously rebutted allegations it benefits from forced labor, saying that it doesn’t source products from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and that it’s “confirmed with our contract suppliers that they are not using textiles or spun yarn from the region.”

The other investigation will look at whether Dynasty Gold benefited from the use of Uyghur forced labor at a mine in China in which the Vancouver-based company holds a majority interest.

“Dynasty Gold’s response to the complaint is that it does not have operational control over the mine and that these allegations arose after it left the region,” Meyerhoffer’s office said.

Neither Nike nor Dynasty Gold immediately responded to requests for comment on the Canadian investigations.