Collect Once, Evidence Many Times

Why Canada needs a coherent digital evidence architecture for supply chain compliance

Canada is considering how different parts of its supply chain compliance framework should evolve.

One consultation, led by Employment and Social Development Canada, examined potential supply chain due diligence and civil liability measures intended to address labour exploitation.

A second, led by Global Affairs Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency, examined the regulatory approach under Bill C-35, which would strengthen Canada’s existing prohibition on the importation of goods produced by forced labour.

These are different policy instruments serving different legal purposes.

But from an implementation perspective, they raise a common question:

Should Canadian businesses have to reconstruct substantially the same underlying supply chain evidence every time a different regulatory obligation requires it?

On August 12, I submitted practitioner input to both consultations, drawing on my experience in trade execution and digital governance.

The submissions are deliberately scoped. They do not take positions on the substantive legal test for forced labour, civil liability, which goods or regions should be subject to particular measures, or the appropriate scope of a future due diligence regime.

Instead, they focus on implementation: how Canada structures, attributes, exchanges, protects and reuses the evidence required to make these regimes work in practice.

In both submissions, I also referenced TransPacific Trade Nexus as an illustrative Canadian design context for some of the implementation questions being examined. TPTN was not presented as a proposed government solution or procurement recommendation.

The policy issue comes first.

Different obligations should not require different evidence silos

A due diligence regime and an import prohibition are not interchangeable.

A due diligence obligation may require a business to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for adverse impacts across its operations and supply chains.

An import prohibition applies a separate legal test to particular goods entering Canada.

Those distinctions should remain.

But many of the underlying facts required to support the two processes can overlap substantially.

Supplier identity. Production facilities. Material inputs. Chain of custody. Certifications. Audits. Risk assessments. Due diligence activity. Mitigation measures. Provenance.

If each regulatory regime requires those facts to be gathered, formatted and maintained independently, Canada risks creating multiple compliance systems around substantially the same evidence.

That raises cost without necessarily improving protection.

The alternative proposed in both submissions is straightforward:

Collect once, evidence many times.

The principle is about evidence, not legal conclusions.

Underlying evidence should be structured so it can be reused where legally authorized and relevant rather than reconstructed every time another authority or compliance process requires it.

That distinction is essential.

Evidence reuse is not legal equivalence.

Completing a due diligence process should not automatically establish that particular goods are admissible under an import prohibition.

Providing evidence in response to an import related information request should not automatically satisfy a separate due diligence obligation.

The evidence may overlap.

The legal test does not.

The responsible authority must retain its own decision making role.

That distinction is explicit in both submissions.  

More documents do not necessarily mean better evidence

One of the central implementation issues raised in the Bill C-35 submission is that asking an importer for more documents does not automatically produce better evidence.

The more important questions are about the record behind those documents.

Where did the information come from?

Who asserted it?

Was that person authorized to do so?

Was the information independently verified or self declared?

When was it valid?

Has it changed?

Can an authorized reviewer reconstruct what the record showed at the relevant point in time?

A large collection of static documents may still leave those questions unanswered.

A credible digital evidence architecture therefore needs to preserve more than a final document. It needs to preserve the context surrounding the evidence, including its source, authority, verification status, validity and history.

Several characteristics follow from that requirement.

Evidence should be attributable to an identifiable source and role.

Structured information should be reusable across compatible systems where legally authorized.

Amendments and corrections should preserve prior states rather than silently replacing them.

Regulators should be able to obtain what they require without automatically exposing unrelated commercially sensitive information.

AI assisted systems may help identify missing information, inconsistencies and unusual patterns, but consequential legal decisions must remain with accountable human or institutional authorities.

These may sound like technology questions.

They are really governance questions.

The issue is what Canada expects businesses to be able to prove, what an authorized institution must be able to verify, and whether the integrity of that evidence can survive as information moves between organizations and systems.

The SME burden can extend beyond the companies formally regulated

This matters particularly for smaller businesses.

A compliance regime aimed initially at larger companies does not necessarily remain confined to those companies.

A regulated business may require its suppliers to provide new declarations, audits, certifications, sourcing information or supporting evidence.

Those requirements can move through the supply chain.

A smaller Canadian business, or a small foreign supplier serving a Canadian customer, can therefore become a practical participant in a regulatory regime even when it sits outside the formal statutory threshold.

The ESDC submission identifies this indirect burden directly.

If every major customer develops a different questionnaire, format and evidentiary requirement, smaller suppliers may end up providing substantially the same information repeatedly in slightly different forms.

A common minimum evidence model can reduce that burden.

The objective is not to lower substantive expectations. It is to avoid unnecessary duplication in how legitimate evidence is collected and maintained.

That is why interoperability and proportionality matter even when smaller businesses are not the primary regulated entities.

Regulatory coherence is also a trade diversification and competitiveness issue

The challenge does not stop at Canada’s border.

Canadian companies increasingly operate in markets where customers, investors and regulators require more detailed information about sourcing, production, labour practices, sustainability and supply chain risk.

If Canada develops evidence requirements that exist only inside Canadian systems and cannot be understood or mapped elsewhere, Canadian businesses may have to reconstruct the same underlying facts when another jurisdiction asks for them.

Compliance fragmentation then becomes a competitiveness problem.

As Canada accelerates trade diversification, this becomes more important. Entering more markets means interacting with more regulatory systems, not fewer. If Canadian trade evidence is structured for lawful reuse and international interoperability, diversification does not have to multiply compliance burden at the same rate.

Canada should therefore think about interoperability at the evidence and data layer.

Both submissions reference established international models, including the UN/CEFACT Buy Ship Pay Reference Data Model and the World Customs Organization Data Model, as part of the broader standards environment within which reusable trade evidence can be structured.

The objective is not to reproduce another jurisdiction’s regulatory framework.

It is to avoid creating a Canada specific evidence silo that Canadian businesses later have to rebuild for every market they enter.  

Define what digital infrastructure must prove before relying on it

There is another implementation issue that matters.

Government should define the required outcomes before selecting the technology intended to produce them.

The Bill C-35 submission recommends technology neutral assessment criteria that could be applied to any candidate digital traceability infrastructure.

Among the questions government should be able to test are:

Can required evidence be retrieved promptly?

Can important assertions be connected to identifiable actors and authority?

Can amendments and prior states be reconstructed?

Can evidence move between systems without losing meaning?

Can sensitive information be disclosed selectively?

Can automated outputs be reviewed and audited?

Can smaller businesses participate without building bespoke compliance infrastructure?

These are measurable questions.

They provide a stronger basis for assessment than beginning with a preferred technological approach and defining success afterward.

If Canada eventually chooses to test digital traceability infrastructure, criteria of this kind can provide the basis for controlled assessment before broader institutional reliance or scale is considered.

Where TPTN fits

In both submissions, TPTN is referenced only as an illustrative Canadian design approach.

It is not presented as a recommended government solution, procurement proposal or the subject of either consultation response.

That distinction matters.

TPTN is Canada first and remains at the design and demonstration stage. The current environment is a clickable prototype using synthetic data. There is no production deployment, executed institutional pilot or live integration with customs or a Single Window environment.

Its relevance to these consultations is narrower.

The architecture I have been developing through TPTN is designed around many of the same implementation requirements these policy questions expose: structured and attributable trade evidence, auditability, selective and role scoped access, evidence portability, interoperability, amendment history and human governed AI assisted workflows.

That makes it useful as a Canadian design context in which these questions are already being worked through.

But the boundaries remain important.

TPTN does not determine whether forced labour has occurred.

It does not determine whether goods are legally admissible.

It does not determine whether an organization has satisfied a statutory due diligence obligation.

Those determinations belong to the responsible authorities.

The infrastructure role is different.

It is to help relevant evidence remain structured, attributable, retrievable and auditable so the institution responsible for the decision can make that decision on a stronger evidentiary foundation.  

Build coherence before fragmentation becomes embedded

Canada has an opportunity to address this architecture question while the policy framework is still developing.

Different laws should preserve different purposes, legal tests and institutional responsibilities.

But that does not mean every new obligation needs its own disconnected evidence system.

If Canada establishes common definitions, interoperable formats, strong provenance, proportionate access and clear institutional authority early, different regulatory processes can draw from a more coherent evidentiary foundation while preserving their individual legal functions.

That can improve regulatory effectiveness.

It can reduce unnecessary administrative burden.

It can limit the cascade of bespoke compliance demands onto smaller businesses.

And it can make Canadian trade evidence more portable as international requirements continue to develop.

That portability also matters to Canada's trade diversification agenda because businesses entering new markets should not have to rebuild their compliance evidence every time they cross into a new regulatory environment.

The two submissions approach different regulatory questions, but they share one implementation principle:

Canada can preserve distinct legal obligations and institutional authority without requiring businesses to rebuild the same evidentiary foundation for every regulatory purpose.

Or put more simply:

Collect once, evidence many times.

Canada should preserve distinct legal decisions while building the digital evidence architecture that allows the facts behind those decisions to be trusted, reused and audited.

Read the submissions

Potential Supply Chain Due Diligence Measures: Evidence Reuse, Regulatory Coherence, and Proportionate Digital Implementation

Submitted to Employment and Social Development Canada, Labour Program

August 12, 2026

Regulatory Approach under Bill C-35: Interoperable, Audit Ready Evidence for Effective Forced Labour Enforcement

Submitted to Global Affairs Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency

August 12, 2026

The full submissions will be available in TPTN's Policy Submissions section.