Last week, the federal Liberal government tabled legislation that would dramatically expand the role of the state in collective bargaining and entrench a mechanism it has used repeatedly to terminate lawful strikes without a vote in Parliament.
Introduced on September 21, Bill C-39, formally titled An Act respecting certain measures to strengthen the economy, bundles together changes dealing with infrastructure approvals, transportation and labour relations. Buried in Part III, Division 1 are sweeping amendments to Part I of the Canada Labour Code governing collective bargaining in federally regulated industries.
The package contains several changes unions have long sought, including stronger successor rights when contracts are re-tendered and easier access to first-contract arbitration. But these improvements sit alongside a much more consequential restructuring of federal collective bargaining: earlier mandatory state intervention in some negotiations, the creation of a “special mediator” whose report would be published before a strike or lockout, and the rewriting of Section 107 to explicitly authorize the labour minister to end a lawful work stoppage and impose binding dispute resolution where the minister believes the “national interest” is threatened.
The changes could amount to one of the most significant restrictions on collective bargaining rights of the post-war era. The concern is not simply that strikes could be ended. Governments have repeatedly legislated workers back to work. Bill C-39 instead proposes to normalize a system in which a single minister can effectively decide whether workers in federally regulated industries will be permitted to exercise their right to strike at all.
In this respect, the legislation contains echoes of a much earlier period in Canadian industrial relations. Before the modern collective bargaining regime consolidated during and after the Second World War, Canadian labour policy relied heavily on compulsory conciliation, cooling-off periods, and public investigations intended to restrain industrial conflict. The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act of 1907, for example, prohibited strikes and lockouts in specified industries until a conciliation board had investigated and reported publicly on the dispute.
Bill C-39 does not recreate that system. But its underlying philosophy — that strikes are problems to be pre-empted through ministerial intervention, public exposure of bargaining positions and compulsory third-party processes — represents a notable departure from the modern system premised on workers and employers testing their bargaining power through lawful economic action.
From Section 107 to Bill C-39
The legislation arrives after two years in which Ottawa has repeatedly intervened in collective bargaining under Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code.
Section 107 historically granted the labour minister broad authority to take measures intended to “maintain or secure industrial peace,” though this was never interpreted to mean the ability to terminate strikes unilaterally. Beginning in 2024, however, the Liberal government began using the provision in an unprecedented way: directing the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to terminate lawful work stoppages and, in most cases, impose binding arbitration.
The Liberals invoked Section 107 against WestJet mechanics, CN and CPKC railway workers, longshore workers at West Coast ports, Montreal and Quebec City port workers, Canada Post workers, and, in August 2025, Air Canada flight attendants. The government itself reported that since 2023 there had been 10 Section 107 referrals, nine of which involved ending or suspending work stoppages and/or imposing arbitration.
These interventions have generated constitutional litigation. The Teamsters challenged the 2024 railway intervention, arguing that it violated freedom of association under Section 2(d) of the Charter. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) similarly challenged the government’s December 2024 intervention in its Canada Post strike, while the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has contested the government’s intervention against Air Canada flight attendants.
The latter use of Section 107 was by far the most dramatic. After Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu invoked the provision only hours into flight attendants’ August 2025 strike, CUPE members remained off the job despite the resulting return-to-work order. The CIRB subsequently declared the continued strike unlawful, but workers remained out until August 19, when CUPE and Air Canada reached a tentative agreement securing partial gains for members.
Against this background, Ottawa launched a review of the federal labour relations framework this year. Unions complained that the consultation gave participants limited time to respond to dozens of questions concerning major aspects of federal labour law. Unifor, for example, called the exercise “wholly insufficient” and “fundamentally flawed,” warning that its premises appeared to treat strikes as disruptions to be prevented rather than an essential component of collective bargaining.
Bill C-39 and its far-reaching changes are the result of this truncated process.
The ‘Special Mediator’ And The ‘National Interest’
The centrepiece of the new proposed system is the so-called “special mediator.”
Under Bill C-39, in specified bargaining relationships the government would intervene considerably earlier. Where the parties have a recent history of imposed arbitration or work stoppages, bargaining would begin roughly six months before the existing agreement expires and government conciliation would also begin early. A special mediator could then enter the process before workers have acquired the legal ability to strike.
The special mediator would have 21 days to attempt to settle the dispute and, failing that, submit a report to the minister. That report would subsequently become public. The legislation explicitly states that the process is intended to occur before a strike or lockout and to ensure at least 10 days between publication of the mediator’s report and a work stoppage.
As York University labour law professor David Doorey observes in his analysis of the bill, this resembles an old Canadian labour relations idea associated with former prime minister and minister of labour Mackenzie King: expose the parties’ bargaining positions publicly and hope public opinion pressures them toward moderation. Doorey notes that there is little evidence this approach historically produced the desired result.
There is another problem. Once a special mediator appears, both parties will know that imposed arbitration is likely to come next.
Bill C-39’s revised Section 107 expressly permits the minister to direct the CIRB to resume operations, extend a collective agreement or impose binding dispute resolution after a lawful strike or lockout begins, provided the minister has considered the mediator’s report and believes the work stoppage “adversely affects or may adversely affect the national interest.”
This proposed “national interest” test is extraordinarily broad. The minister “may” consider whether a dispute has or could significantly affect the economy or cause serious social disruption (i.e., do exactly what a strike is intended to do) and whether government intervention affects freedom of association. However, nothing requires the minister to assign particular weight to those considerations. Moreover, what exactly this “national interest” entails is entirely unclear.
The operative test remains what the minister believes.
The minister: must consider the mediator’s report but need not accept its recommendations; may consider the statutory factors but is not limited to them; ultimately retains the power to decide whether intervention is warranted. This is an astonishing amount of power in the hands of a single person.
If enacted, the implications of these changes could be substantial.
The past two years have shown how repeated government intervention can change employer calculations during bargaining. Teamsters Canada argues that its 2024 railway experience already demonstrated the problem: employers can bargain knowing that their political pressure on Ottawa may provide an alternative to reaching an agreement with workers. Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau similarly acknowledged that the airline had not prepared for a strike in 2025 because it anticipated government intervention.
The special mediator process risks institutionalizing precisely this expectation of government intervention. Rather than functioning simply as neutral mediation, its insertion into negotiations could signal that bargaining has entered a pathway potentially leading toward the invocation of Section 107 and binding arbitration.
Hajdu has described Bill C-39 as putting “guardrails” around Section 107 and insists that intervention would remain a measure of last resort. But rather than guardrails, the proposed changes would build the statutory architecture to supercharge ministerial intervention and make it an ordinary feature of federal collective bargaining.
Labour Promises A Fight
The labour movement is predictably incensed.
Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske said union leaders representing workers across the country were unanimous that “any new restriction on the right to strike is unacceptable.”
Labour lawyer Mark Rowlinson characterized the proposed safeguards as “nonsense,” arguing that the legislation still leaves extraordinarily broad authority in the hands of the minister. “A right you cannot exercise is not a right,” Bruske continued.
Unifor has likewise promised to oppose the changes. National president Lana Payne warned that granting the minister power to override strike action would change employer behaviour at bargaining tables, while Quebec director Daniel Cloutier questioned whose conception of the “national interest” would ultimately determine when workers could exercise collective bargaining rights.
Teamsters Canada president François Laporte warned that Bill C-39 could undermine incentives for employers to bargain seriously. Drawing on the union’s experience in the 2024 railway dispute, Laporte argued that employers could increasingly direct their efforts toward securing government intervention rather than reaching settlements with unions.
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) made a similar argument. OFL president Laura Walton pointed to previous confrontations over governments restricting labour rights and said Ontario workers would again resist legislation they viewed as undermining the right to strike.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation, CUPE went further.
On September 23, CUPE’s national executive board unanimously adopted a resolution saying the union would defy Bill C-39’s restrictions on strike action if the legislation passes without amendment. In a union press release, national president Mark Hancock argued that the Charter right to strike cannot depend on the discretion of whichever minister happens to hold office, while secretary treasurer Candace Rennick said legislating against strike action would not prevent the union from mobilizing its membership.
This declaration carries particular significance because CUPE members at Air Canada have already demonstrated that such defiance is both necessary and effective when organized at scale.
If Parliament passes Bill C-39 in its current form, it would formalize ministerial involvement in federal collective bargaining and pose an existential risk to the right to strike.
The stakes are clear. While unions have signalled that they may take legal action to challenge Bill C-39, this should not be the sole course of resistance or substitute for mass action. The right to strike is under threat like perhaps never before. The labour movement needs to act like it.
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