“Canada is a great country and I believe that we stand for more than slave labour and child labour. It’s awful.” Clara Hughes Canadian Olympic medallist

A former Canadian Olympian and amateur sporting legend wants to make the shadowy world of Olympic garment production more transparent.

A decade ago, Bruce Kidd led an effort that saw the University of Toronto join a watchdog group that demands its apparel partners disclose the names and locations of factories where their clothing is made. The school’s apparel licensees, which include Adidas, New Era Hats and Roots Canada, must agree to release safety and workers rights inspection reports, as well as measures taken to correct violations.

Kidd, the former dean of the faculty of physical education and health at the University of Toronto, said that while he has been told by Canadian Olympic Committee staff that the organization has an ethical sourcing policy, he is concerned that the policy is not publicly available.

“Factory disclosure (the names and addresses of the factories) is a commitment to transparency,” Kidd said. “It shows that there is nothing to hide in the production line and enables independent monitoring. Olympic athletes represent the best values of youth and competition and athletes should not be competing or marching in uniforms that exploit people, especially children.”

The Canadian Olympic Committee’s current policy, which does not appear on its website, requires that its partners, including the Hudson’s Bay Company, monitor the garment factories it hires for rights violations. Any changes to the policy would not come in time to cover products licensed for the 2014 Winter Games.

“We are proud to have once again partnered with HBC as the design team of Canada’s Olympic apparel for the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games,” said COC spokesman Dimitri Soudas. “The COC requires each of its official licensees to have a robust social and ethical work compliance policy with assurances it is regularly reviewed for best practices.”

Soudas referred the Star to the companies to answer questions such as who monitors overseas factories, how often inspections take place, and if labour and safety standards have been breached.

HBC said all of the 2014 Olympics-themed clothes produced for consumers were made in China. Eighty-five per cent of the clothes made for athletes were made in Canada and the remainder in China.

The company won’t release the names and locations of all the factories it works with but said it would confirm if it buys clothes from a specific factory. The company also does not make public specific factory inspection reports, details about corrective actions or penalties to individual suppliers.

Adidas, which also makes clothing for Canada’s bobsled and skeleton teams, has its Canadian Olympic clothing made in four factories in Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Cambodia, a company spokesperson wrote in an email providing the factory names.

Nike spokeswoman Claire Rankine said all of the Team Canada Olympic hockey jerseys worn by players in Sochi would be made in Canada. Replicas sold to consumers, as well as shirts, hoodies and other items, would be made at factories in Indonesia. Nike releases online the names of all of its 774 supplier factories, Rankine said.

In the six months since the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh killed 1,129 workers, factory owners and retailers have been under growing pressure for increased transparency, which, according to Bob Jeffcott, a policy analyst with Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network, makes it easier for other stakeholders — such as consumers — to pressure for change.

The University of Toronto is among several hundred universities that belong to the Workers Rights Consortium, a Washington-based watchdog.

In 2009, student groups learned that Russell Athletics had closed a factory in Honduras because its 1,200 employees had voted to form a union. Under pressure from students, 96 schools, including the University of Toronto, either ended or threatened to end their contracts with Russell.

The retailer subsequently agreed to rehire all of the fired employees.

In 2010, pressure from student groups prompted Nike to agree to contribute $1.54 million to a worker relief fund for 1,800 workers in Honduras who were not paid severance when two factories making Nike apparel closed. Initially, Nike said the factories weren’t making university-branded apparel, but the company later agreed to help the workers as student groups ratcheted up pressure.

“There’s a great comparison there between the university-branded clothing and the Olympic apparel” Jeffcott said. “The Olympics have these ideals of fair play and sportsmanship and I’m sure that the athletes competing for Canada would want to know that the workers making their uniforms are being paid fairly, the same as university students care.”

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Clara Hughes, among Canada’s highest-profile Olympic athletes, said she expects the COC to have an aggressive ethical sourcing code, although she said she has not asked the COC about its current policy.

“From a purely humanistic standpoint, I think (ethical sourcing) policies like that are crucial.” Hughes told the Star.

“I don’t know enough about this to comment on what the COC’s policies are,” she said. “But (in) my opinion, yeah, absolutely there should be something very transparent in place that’s followed so you would never see a Canadian Olympic athlete competing or wearing anything that’s made in that manner. Canada is a great country and I believe that we stand for more than slave labour and child labour. It’s awful.”

Other prominent Olympic medal winners, some with individual endorsement contracts with Canadian retailers, refused to comment.

HBC’s refusal to provide details about the working conditions within the specific garment factories it hires is especially troubling, Jeffcott said, because the company acknowledges in corporate filings that 68 per cent of its audited suppliers in 2012 had workers-rights-related “issues to work on” at their factories.

Hudson’s Bay Co. spokesperson Tiffany Bourre wrote in an email that information about factory locations or audits is proprietary and confidential.

“Some factory workers do not want to talk about where they work because they don’t want to jeopardize future employment opportunities,” Bourre said. “Some factory owners do not want their names disclosed in the public because it could jeopardize future business with other customers.”

By contrast, Jeffcott said, the giant Swedish retailer H&M earlier this year released the names of the 800 factories where it buys clothing. (Hudson’s Bay buys from 750 factories.)

“It’s bizarre for HBC to say it’s proprietary,” Jeffcott said. “Other large retailers like H&M and Nike, Levi’s and Adidas have all released their factory lists and none have said it has hurt their competitive advantage.”

Adidas spokeswoman Silvia Raccagni wrote in an email: “The disclosure of our global supply chain list has not led to any competitive disadvantage.”

Following the Rana Plaza disaster, Hudson’s Bay joined the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, an agreement that was formed by 20 retailers, as well as union leaders and government officials. Hudson’s Bay and other retailers such as Walmart and The Gap have promised to inspect all of their factories within a year and then correct major safety problems. But the alliance has said it will not release inspection reports.

Another retailer group, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, with 110 members, including Joe Fresh, will publicize the inspection reports it commissions.

HBC has, in a corporate filing, acknowledged the majority of its factories fall below the company’s workplace standards.

In its 2012 Corporate Social Responsibility report, Hudson’s Bay writes that 68 per cent of factories it audited received the grade: “Subject to improvement.” That grade, the company said, is “given to factories that have issues to work on, such as first-aid training, issuing local benefits and improving record-keeping.”