Quebec Is Taking Trudeau’s Lead And Attacking Unions

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government repeatedly intervened to suppress strikes in the federal jurisdiction last year using an obscure section of the Canada Labour Code, many worried these actions would set a dangerous precedent. How long before provincial governments looked to incorporate similar legislative flexibility into their labour laws to undermine workers’ right to strike?

We recently received an answer. On February 19, Quebec’s Minister of Labour, Jean Boulet, tabled a bill that would empower the provincial government to end strikes and extend essential services designations. Boulet claims that the legislation is necessary to protect services, maintain “social, economic and environmental security,” and thus reduce the number and duration of strikes in the province.

Bill 89, the so-called An Act to give greater consideration to the needs of the population in the event of a strike or a lock-out, ostensibly aims to prevent or curtail work disruptions that negatively impact the Quebec population, singling out “persons in vulnerable situations” in particular. Weaponizing ‘vulnerability’ in the service of repressing unions is a familiar government tactic — similar justifications were used when removing the right of Toronto Transit Commission workers to strike.

According to the language of Bill 89, Quebec’s Administrative Labour Tribunal, which enforces the province’s labour code, would be empowered to “order” the maintenance of services deemed essential and impose binding arbitration to end work stoppages. The labour minister would be able to refer parties involved in a work stoppage to the tribunal whenever he or she believes a strike or lockout poses risks to ‘social, economic or environmental security.’

Quebec already has essential services legislation limiting strikes and lockouts in health and public service sectors. The new law, if enacted, would extend such designations to education, municipal services and some of the private sector, and grant additional powers to both the provincial government and the Labour Tribunal to limit workers’ right to strike, imposing binding arbitration as an inferior alternative.

Perhaps most troubling, amendments set out in the bill grant the labour minister the power to unilaterally refer a strike or lockout to arbitration if “the intervention of a conciliator or a mediator has not been successful” and the minister considers the work stoppage to pose irreparable harm to the population, a vague criteria potentially open to broad interpretation.

The bill also sets out fines ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per day for violations of a tribunal decision (i.e., striking in defiance of an order to suspend a job action).

Following a series of large and lengthy strikes in 2023 and 2024, the Quebec government is patently trying to contain the power of the most militant labour movement in Canada. In late 2023, unions organized in the Common Front staged a series of escalating strikes across the public and para-public sectors in pursuit of improved wages and working conditions.

In addition, striking teachers in the province closed 800 schools in a dispute that lasted from November 2023 to January 2024.

These high-profile strikes registered some of the largest numbers of workers on strike and person-days lost to strikes in Canada since comparable data was first collected in the 1940s.

Then, in the late summer of last year, more than 2,000 hotel workers walked off the job, affecting 22 hotels in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City, and showing that labour militancy is not confined to the public sector.

In most years, Quebec accounts for well over half of all work stoppages in Canada, despite only about 22 per cent of Canada’s population living in the province. Facing a labour movement far less quiescent than in other Canadian jurisdictions, the right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government is thus looking to limit workers’ right to strike, taking a cue from the federal Liberals.

Predictably, unions in the province and across the country are incensed, with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), a labour federation representing some 330,000 members, calling the bill “a declaration of war.” The CSN has vowed to fight the government in court, if the bill is ultimately passed into law.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) referred to the proposed law as “an opportunistic but vain attempt to attack yet again the right to strike.”

Unifor, as well, released a statement opposing the bill and challenging the government’s framing of its legislative amendments as necessary to ‘protect the public.’

Criticism has also come from outside the labour movement. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, for example, issued a statement saying the organization was “deeply alarmed” by Bill 89 and characterizing the bill as “a direct attack on the right to strike.”

Other critics see the legislation as revenge for the 2023-24 teachers’ strike.

Unions, however, were not caught by surprise when Boulet ultimately tabled his bill. Late in December, the labour minister drew the ire of unions when he first suggested introducing legislation to grant the provincial government more power to intervene in strikes.

In a year-end review, he identified the federal government’s use of s. 107 of the Canada Labour Code to end work stoppages without recourse to back-to-work legislation as inspiration for his proposed new law. The federal Liberals used this discretionary power to end work stoppages involving rail, port and postal workers across Canada last year.

In response to Boulet’s comments at the time, CUPE Quebec characterized the minister as “the Grinch trying to steal the right to strike.” “Let him be warned: workers in Québec are no fools and will not forget this underhanded attempt to undermine a fundamental right,” the union said in a press release.

Additionally, the union warned: “CUPE reminds the minister that the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the right to strike is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Any attempt to restrict this right will inevitably hit a wall in the courts.”

Indeed, the federal government’s zealous use of s. 107 has already been challenged by the unions against whom it was used last year. Although we may have to wait some time to receive decisions in these cases, it’s not unlikely that the courts will find the Liberals’ actions against the Teamsters, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada, CUPE, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to have been unconstitutional.

The bill also comes at a time of growing anti-union sentiment and actions from employers in Quebec. According to the CSN, their affiliated unions have experienced 17 lockouts in the past 12 months, something the labour organization says it hasn’t seen in years.

Then, of course, there is the case of Amazon, who recently shuttered seven facilities in the province rather than negotiate a collective agreement with one unionized warehouse. The CSN and impacted workers are now in a rearguard battle to win some kind of remedial justice, calling for a boycott of the online retailing giant and pressuring governments to reconsider their business relationships with Amazon.

At a time when workers are being squeezed by a years-long cost-of-living crisis, the CAQ government in Quebec has resolved to make matters worse by further limiting unions’ ability to fight for better wages and conditions. The government has no justification for its action whatsoever, other than nakedly catering to the whims of employers.

Workers and unions should take note: if they can do this in Quebec, they can do it in any Canadian province. All workers have an interest in fighting back against this egregious bill.

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