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Seyfarth Shaw (UK) LLP CityPoint One Ropemaker Street London EC2Y 9AW T +44 (0) 20 F +44 (0) 20 ptalibart@seyfarth.com T +44 20 www.seyfarth.com March The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights Chambers Building, room edifice Chambers pièce Ottawa Ontario K1A 0A4 Dear Senators, I write in reply to the final question that the I was asked in session on March before there was obstruction of the electronic communications. I was asked to explain my comment about the role that artificial intelligence could play in assisting both the Parliament of Canada and Canadian companies in the fight against modern slavery.

Given the technical issues during my presentation, the Chair asked me to reply in writing. As per my verbal evidence, these views are my own and not those of any other person, or Seyfarth Shaw, or STOP THE TRAFFIK. On that basis, please find below, my response. Senator, thank you for this question. This is, in my view, the most important point that I wanted to make. It relates to some of the discussion around appropriate models for a Canadian law and the application of artificial intelligence to this rising problem of modern slavery facing Canada and the world.

Neither of the competing international models of modern slavery law actually tell companies what to do to avoid modern slavery in their supply chains. Simply put, the California/UK/ Australia model (approach 1) requires transparency of steps taken to avoid involvement with labour abuses in supply chains, with little legal consequence other than the court of public opinion.

The emerging European trend of human rights due diligence laws (approach 2) , based on the French precedent, puts a hard duty on directors to prevent involvement in such abuses and gives them a defence to any corporate or personal liability - that being that the directors asked every reasonable question to avoid doing so beforehand. The penalties for breach of this model of law are severe.

Per my verbal evidence, the numbers I have seen (and please check this independently), comparing the UK/French approach, suggest that approach carries a much wider legal coverage but much lower liability risk, whereas approach carries very limited coverage but high impact where such coverage applies.

One would expect the newer laws in Europe to mimic the French approach because they are all European civil law countries like France - and most will have to conform to a European directive drafted very much like the French law anyway - so unlike the more academic view, I do not draw any negative conclusions about March Page approach from legal developments in Germany or Netherlands because approach would not make any sense for those jurisdictions. Both approaches have equal merit, and able legislators in countries with legal systems that more closely resemble that of Canada have opted for approach 1.

That is simply a fact, but it does not suggest one approach is better than the other. Put another way, it is easier for a legal system to copy a law from a similar system.

In any event, there is little point arguing the merits of these approaches because the Bill borrows quite cleverly from both models, with penalties making it much more high impact, but delivered in a package that puts the due diligence obligation within a transparency framework rather than a strict liability duty - so this law will have both the desired wide impact and reputational risk leverage of approach combined with the requirement to undertake due diligence and serious (but more reasonably limited) criminal, corporate and individual liabilities of approach 2 - giving Canada the advantages of the legal architecture of both systemic approaches.

That is, in a word, optimal. Noting that approach also permits the use of supplementary regulations, so should that be the will of Parliament, Human Rights due diligence can be defined in those regulations as per the step UN definition, I believe that would answer most potential critics of the Bill. You do not need to change the Bill to do this - just note that the regulations will provide further clarity on the due diligence expectation. On either legal approach, the ultimate objective of the law in this area cannot be only statements of action or approved due diligence plans.

If that is all we do, the second great slave trade will never end. Legislators around the world need to be able to gather evidence of what the great companies of the world find actually works in preventing the inadvertent support of modern slavery. This is where the AI interface comes in.

We will all have to look at the corporate statements that will be produced by transparency modern slavery laws like the Bill as credible intelligence that over time will tell us all what we have to legislate companies to do/not to do (in second generation modern slavery legislation) in order to eradicate that part of modern slavery that relates to the legitimate economy. So this is the beginning of a legislative journey. We need transparency laws to collect the information and foster disruptive analysis in the corporate sector. Then we will get to laws that we know will be effective. We are not there yet.

Humans cannot harvest all of the information coming from every Canadian company that would be caught by a widely applied Canadian modern slavery transparency law - or international companies caught by other laws, but the machines can. They can turn the information and intelligence into pictures that we can see and they will be able to transcend country and language to determine what companies say is working in this fight, so better to inform our actions and our laws. I am happy to arrange for a demonstration of this technology in practice.

To two other questions I was asked, I have checked and The TAHub platform can provide a reasonably accessible analysis of demographic / gender impact in a given geography and offer year on year comparison. So for those interested in cultural/racial/gender analytics, this might be a capability that can be further explored. This will almost certainly have implications for the way that these laws will develop over time, and even before that, will interact with obligations to mitigate impacts. In passing this Bill, Parliament would be doing something that has not been done before.

Aligning Canadian business against the fastest growing organized crime in the world but also creating a platform for the application of collective human and machine learning that will better enable Canada to fight modern slavery. Parliament would also be taking advantage of the approaches currently being tried in both major schools of legal thought in the world, in March Page combination. This would exert great influence on Canadian provincial jurisdictions and on other jurisdictions to follow suit. It is very important that you understand this context.

There is not any proven best legal approach to legislating in this area yet because all of these laws are new. The important thing is action. Acting now will inform the second generation of laws in this area. Aligning Canadian business against this crime tomorrow can never be a bad thing. Nor can the generation of the vital information that these transparency laws - be they approach 1, 2 or the rather ingenious combination approach reflected in Bill S211; be anything but good. Delay only helps the slave masters. You actually have a pretty good and rather clear draft law in front of you.

Canada is far too late to this fight. Please take us into it now. Yours faithfully, Peter Talibart