if anti-sweatshop or anti-child labour laws just put the exploited individuals in a worse situation, wouldn't that also be true of Western consumers who cared enough to change their purchasing decisions?

additional material:

forced labour in the sense implied by the bill is does not mean forced by circumstance (doing the job or starving). If that's what it meant, it would a apply to way more than 40 million people. Forced labour here means forced by the employer as in: "No, I'm not going to pay you what I said I would, and if you leave I'm going to hunt down your family and kill them." Or, less violently, confiscating passports from migrant workers so they can't get home. While the earlier anti-sweatshop bill might put people in a worse position, to be fair to McKay, the anti-slavery aspect of Bill C-423 would not (after all, if someone is forced by circumstance to take the job, there is no need to threaten them with violence or lock them up).

Perhaps confusingly, the bill also applies to child labour, much of which is forced by circumstance (hence Lau's criticism).

, in many cases being convicted under the proposed law would cost a company much more than the fine, since it would also be very bad publicity. That would be a problem if it was a company selling a branded consumer product.