The Accord, a platform of mostly UK buyers, has expressed its dissatisfaction over Canada's reluctance in signing its initiative to improve working conditions and safety standards in Bangladesh's apparel industry, a leading Canadian daily reported Thursday.
The initiative is a five-year legally binding agreement between International Labour Organisation (ILO), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and retailers engaged in the textile industry to maintain minimum safety standards in the Bangladesh textile industry.
Toronto Star, one of the most-circulated dailies in Canada, published the news on the day on its World Section under the headline "Canadian firms lag in joining Bangladesh safety accord" saying that most Canadian retailers are rejecting the initiative while companies throughout the US and Europe continue to join an accord.
Quoting the Accord's international operations executive director Alan Roberts, the report said just one Canadian company, Loblaw, has signed on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, compared to 18 major UK companies and 11 Australian retailers.
"Canada is far behind on the idea of corporate social responsibility. Most Canadian companies today are where UK companies were in the mid-1990s," Roberts was interviewed and quoted as saying in the report.
"Same for the Canadian government," he said. "The UK, Belgium and the Dutch government have all said they are going to demand full transparency from any company that bids for public-sector apparel contracts. Canada should do the same," the report said quoting him.
It said the Canadian government doesn't know whether sweatshops are being used to produce some of the uniforms for its civil servants because companies that win apparel contracts with most federal agencies aren't required to disclose the names and locations of the factories they use.
After 1,129 factory workers were killed in the Rana Plaza collapse on April 24, a group of mostly European-based retailers announced the Accord, membership in which requires companies to be legally bound to make factories safer.
Days after the Accord was announced in July, a rival group known as the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety was also announced. It is mostly US retailers, including Walmart and The Gap.
Alan Roberts, a former executive with retailers Speedo and Burberry, was hired by the Accord in December and charged with expanding its membership. There are now 152 Accord members, with four new members this week alone. Another 10 companies have written to Roberts in recent days to ask about joining, the report said.
"I really don't know why there hasn't been more interest in Canada," he said.
"There will be more tragedies in Bangladesh. Just (Tuesday last) there was a factory fire there and fortunately no one was hurt, but this is not going away. I'd think Canadian companies want to make sure they are doing everything they cannot to be tied to exploited workers in unsafe conditions when this happens next," Roberts was quoted as saying in the report.
The Canadian daily claimed that they did not get response from the spokesman of Retail Council of Canada relating to the issue while a spokesperson for Public Works said it would not be possible to immediately provide a comment.
On Tuesday last Roberts met in Toronto with 16 Canadian companies in a meeting and teleconference hosted by the Retail Council of Canada. He said he's still struggling to understand why Canadian retailers have not signed up to the Accord.
"The attitude they seem to have is, 'I'm not signing up because I'm not signing a blank cheque," Roberts said. "But that's not the case."
If a company exports less than $1.0 million worth of clothing from Bangladesh, they are obliged to pay $1,000 a year for five years for an Accord membership, he said. The company would also be required to cover some of the cost of factory safety improvements.
Roberts also met Wednesday morning with some Bay Street firms to offer an update on the Accord's efforts in recent months.
He said that since three pilot projects were competed in December, four engineering firms have been hired to begin factory inspections. Their contracts are scheduled to be signed this week, Roberts said, and inspections are to begin in March.
Of the 1,700 Bangladeshi factories that make clothing for Accord members, 200 will be inspected in March, he said. After an inspection, companies have four weeks to negotiate with the factory owners before the inspection results and repair plan are publicly released.
Roberts said the Accord has also established three outreach teams in Dhaka that will begin training garment-factory workers about their legal rights.
Canada is one of the important destinations for Bangladeshi apparel products as the country's export share in Canada is around 4.5 per cent with its total shipments amounting to US$ 980.26 million annually.