Mark Carney’s Government is Rushing Through Major Changes to Canada’s Labour Laws. Unions Say Workers Should Be Alarmed.

On April 16, representatives from the federal government contacted the major unions that represent federally-regulated workers to tell them that the very next day, a consultation process on the laws that regulate their work would open — for just 30 days.

The web page for the consultation stated that the government would be “assessing if updates to Canada’s federal labour policy are needed to support a modern and fair labour relations framework.”

Stakeholders — unions, employers, First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments — initially had just four weeks to submit feedback on the entire Canada Labour Code, the law that governs work for over one million federally-regulated workers across the country.

While most employment in Canada is governed by provincial laws, federally-regulated industries are those whose operations tend to cross provincial or international boundaries, like air transport, telecommunications and banking.

The consultation was opened just days after the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney secured a majority in the House of Commons.

Tom Doran, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada, told PressProgress he was surprised not only at the “very, very short window” for submitting feedback, but that roundtable discussions with unions and employers were scheduled at the same time as the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) constitutional convention, the largest gathering of union leaders and members in Canada.

“We made them aware that the timing couldn’t be worse,” said Doran. “These are significant changes to law in Canada, and giving those who are most affected by those changes only 30 days to respond, it feels very disrespectful.”

Doran said complaints from the CLC and several unions led to the government extending the submission window by one week, to May 25.

Even with the extension, labour leaders interviewed by PressProgress echoed a sentiment that showed up in the consultation submissions from multiple unions: that the short timeline and broad scope of the consultation are cause for alarm.

“They’re asking some pretty big questions that in our view can’t reasonably be answered in such a short period of time, which is again an indication for us that maybe the government already knows where they want to land, and they just want to go through the motions at this stage,” said Christopher Monette, director of public affairs for Teamsters Canada. “We hope we’re wrong.”

Doran and Monette both pointed to the last major review of the Canada Labour Code — the Sims Task Force in the mid-1990s, which spent nine months reviewing the code and produced a 260-page report — as the kind of consultation process they would expect from the federal government.

Monette said employers at the roundtable discussions juxtaposed Carney’s global-trade diversification strategy with the occasional strikes at Canada’s railways and ports, claiming that these job actions make Canada less attractive to foreign investment.

“There’s only one issue: nobody around the world is saying that we’re no longer a reliable trading partner,” said Monette.

Less than two weeks after the consultation period closed, Canada’s Senate released a report titled Keep Canada Moving, which recommended some of the policies that Monette had referred to in an interview before the report’s release as “Corporate Canada’s wish list items.”

PressProgress examined the written submissions of 5 major unions — Unifor, ILWU, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Teamsters Canada and Teamsters Canada Rail Conference — some of which were posted online and others we obtained separately. Here’s what they want Carney’s government to know as it embarks on its review of the Canada Labour Code.

Photo source: Prime Minister’s Office

Section 107 and the right to strike

By far the most common sentiment in the submissions reviewed by PressProgress was that the government’s use of Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to end strikes is an attack on the rights of workers to collectively bargain freely.

Over an 18-month period starting in 2024, the federal government used Section 107 to end labour disputes eight times, sending railway workers, port workers, as well as workers at Canada Post and Air Canada back to their jobs after the starts of legal strikes or lockouts — in the case of Air Canada flight attendants, just 12 hours after their strike began.

The broadly-written section grants the labour minister the power to “do such things” as they believe would be helpful to end or resolve labour disputes, including directing the labour board to take action. With the flight attendants’ strike last August, for example, the minister directed the labour board to order them back to work and their union to submit to binding arbitration.

Each of the reviewed submissions argued that the government’s repeated intervention in strikes has led to employers counting on intervention rather than bargaining in good faith.

During the strike, Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau told media that the company didn’t create contingency plans to ensure passengers wouldn’t be stranded because the company had expected that the government’s use of Section 107 would bring a swift end to job action. (The union defied the back-to-work order.)

Some unions, like ILWU, called for Section 107 to be repealed entirely: “Governments cannot be trusted to keep this tool on the books when recent experience demonstrates it will be treated as a quick and expedient mechanism to end or pre-empt lawful job action.”

Others asserted that Section 107 is being misinterpreted by the government, and does not in fact give the minister the power to end lawful strikes and lockouts. “In our view, the recent use of section 107 of the Code is abusive, unconstitutional, and relies on a dubious interpretation of the statutory provision,” reads Unifor’s submission.

The Senate report recommended clarifying the minister’s powers under Section 107 and clearly defining criteria for its use, such as an “economic harm threshold.”

In response to the consultation prompt, “Do you see a role for section 107 to help resolve disputes when parties are at an impasse?” CUPW simply answered, “No.”

Jan Simpson, president of CUPW, told PressProgress that Section 107 “has not served anybody properly.”

“To have one person be able to send an email and stop a legal strike that is happening is a real problem,” said Simpson. “Withdrawing your labour is the only real leverage that workers have in times of bargaining.”

Labour academics have found that Canadian unions have filed more complaints to the International Labour Organization alleging rights violations than those of any other G7 country. Last year, the International Trade Union Confederation identified Canada as a country with “regular violations” of workers’ rights, singling out the use of Section 107. “The federal government’s interventions served to prolong labour disputes and erode trust in the bargaining process.”

In May, the International Court of Justice found that “the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected under the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948.”

Expanding the definition of “essential services”

Another aspect of the code that the government solicited feedback on is essential-services designations, which ensure that workers whose jobs are essential to the health and safety of the public are maintained to some degree during a strike or lockout.

Such designations are most typically reserved for paramedics, nurses, firefighters and police officers.

In the consultation document, the government identified Quebec as one example of a jurisdiction with essential-services designations that could be applied to federally regulated workers.

Last year, Quebec’s government passed Law 14 (formerly Bill 89), which widened the province’s definition of “essential services” to include sectors deemed important to the “well-being of the population.”

It gives the government the power to suspend the right to strike or lock out so that the population’s “social, economic or environmental security” are not disproportionately affected.

Unifor’s submission argues that as it currently stands, the code sets a “justifiably high threshold” for establishing which services are essential and must be continued throughout a job action, because any restriction on the right to strike hurts workers’ ability to bargain effectively.

Teamsters Canada also opposed the expansion of essential-services designations in its submission, which Monette referred to as “strike bans.” He said the suggestion that port, railway or airline workers could be prevented from exercising their right to strike because their work would be deemed as essential as paramedics’ is alarming.

“These workers are essential to corporate profits, not human life, and it’s important that we don’t put the two on the same level,” said Monette.

The Senate report recommended removing the word “immediate” from essential-service designations “in order to allow the Canada Industrial Relations Board to consider a work stoppage that poses a serious, but not imminent, danger to the safety or health of the public.”

The ILWU also opposed broadening the definition, stating that work stoppages that aren’t allowed to include work of economic significance would not be meaningful job actions.

Doran told PressProgress that financial pressure is a “foundational part of free collective bargaining,” and the vague wording of legislation like Quebec’s Law 14 means there’s no telling how far the definition of “well-being” or “economic security” could be stretched.

“Ultimately, it would have the effect of removing the right to strike for thousands, if not millions, of Canadian workers that previously or currently do have the right to strike,” said Doran.

“It would undermine the Charter rights of federally regulated workers.”

The foundations of shared prosperity and a fairer economy were built and fought for by unions.

On Labour Day, we honour the strength and resilience of Canadian workers, and we celebrate the women and men building Canada’s future. pic.twitter.com/kfrquaT7Ru

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) September 1, 2025

Changing bargaining timelines

The government also sought feedback on timelines for bargaining, conciliation, cooling-off periods and strike or lockout notices, which could be revised to require that bargaining begins before the expiry of a collective agreement, or to “allow for better outcomes of good faith bargaining before a statutory strike or lockout is acquired.”

Conciliation involves bringing in a federally-appointed third party to facilitate negotiations, often after the parties have reached an impasse. After conciliation, unions and employers enter a “cooling-off” period in which negotiations continue, often with the help of a mediator. During both of these periods, strikes and lockouts are prohibited.

All of the submissions reviewed by PressProgress opposed lengthening any of the current timelines or mandating that bargaining begin within a specific window before an earlier collective agreement expires.

Many submissions pointed out that the code’s current timelines — 60 days for conciliation, 21 days for cooling-off periods, and 72 hours for a strike or lockout notice — are among the longest in the country.

Teamsters Canada’s submission argued that there is currently nothing stopping employers and unions from beginning bargaining earlier, but “it is often a struggle to get the employer to agree to timely and regular meetings for negotiations after the commencement of bargaining, which pushes bargaining many months after the expiry of a contract.”

Since the code already has the longest cooling-off period in Canada, CUPE’s submission suggested shortening it to 14 days to bring it in line with provinces like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Likewise, the 72-hour strike and lockout notice — which requires unions and employers file notice at least 72 hours before initiating a strike or lockout — is the longest in the country. Some provinces, like Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and PEI, don’t require any notice at all.

The ILWU suggested the 72-hour strike notice be reduced or eliminated entirely, writing that “there is no value that can be added to the bargaining process by simply prolonging its stages.”

Along with potential code changes that would impact workers across sectors, a number of unions also put forward sector-specific proposals.

ILWU argued for an amendment to the code that would require “proportionate” response to strikes and lockouts, which the union hopes would avoid situations like the 2023 and 2019 lockouts of ports workers. In both cases, employers responded to targeted strikes against specific employers by locking out all dock workers on the West Coast, an escalation which Doran believed was intended to create controversy.

“It creates a crisis that, in our opinion, is designed to elicit a response from government,” said Doran.

Teamsters Canada and CUPE both warned the government about looking to the United States’ Railway Labor Act (RLA) for inspiration when considering changes to mediation. CUPE described the RLA as a “retrograde, hundred-year-old piece of legislation created explicitly to end the right to strike through a system of byzantine referrals, boards, repeated ‘cooling-off’ periods, etc.”

Teamsters Canada pointed to years-long delays in bargaining, including an eight-year-long mediation process involving Amtrak workers, during which they were prohibited from striking, as a reason why emulating the RLA would not help unions and employers reach collective agreements.

The senate report recommended the federal government create a Supply Chain Reliability Act or an amendment to the Canada Labour Code that would “establish an alternative dispute resolution process for the marine and rail sectors in Canada when a work stoppage could adversely affect the national interest.”

This dispute resolution process would be guided by a mediator-arbitrator who would be involved in bargaining from the start. If the mediator-arbitrator were to find that the process wouldn’t result in an agreement, binding arbitration and a strike or lockout ban could be ordered.

Taken altogether, labour leaders are concerned about the direction the Carney government could take with its review of the Canada Labour Code.

“I think there are a lot of people holding their breath right now, and hoping that the government isn’t going to go in the direction that we feel that they’re being led by very powerful voices in the business lobby,” said Doran.