‘This system is going to provide more stability and more predictability, so people know what the rules are,’ says expert
The federal government tabled legislation on Monday that would fundamentally overhaul how Ottawa manages labour disputes and collective bargaining in federally regulated industries – formalizing years of increasingly frequent ad hoc interventions and putting Canada's airlines, railways, and ports on notice that the informal rules governing their labour relations are about to become a great deal more explicit.
Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, proposes to amend the Canada Labour Code to introduce new conditions on when the Minister of Jobs and Families can invoke Section 107 – the executive power to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to suspend a strike or lockout. Previously used at the government's discretion alone, future use would require the minister to satisfy two conditions: a formal declaration that the dispute is adversely affecting the national interest, and a report from a newly created special mediator.
The bill also requires parties in sectors with a history of labour disruption to begin formal bargaining at least six months before a contract expires. Following any work stoppage, government-facilitated relationship repair between management and unions would become mandatory. On the worker protection side, Bill C-39 adds 100 new federal health and safety officers – increasing inspection capacity by approximately 70 per cent, according to the federal government’s announcement – along with 26 new CIRB staff to address a mounting backlog of worker complaints against employers, and strengthened measures to crack down on worker misclassification.
A collective bargaining framework codified
The scale of Ottawa's pivot on Section 107 is difficult to overstate. According to a Government of Canada parliamentary brief published in January 2026, Section 107 was used 10 times from 2023 to 2025, compared to a handful of uses in the four decades prior. That pattern is precisely what Bill C-39 seeks to address – not by removing the power, but by wrapping it in due process.
The new framework in Bill C-39 is a meaningful step forward, not because it restricts the right to strike but because it replaces an opaque, reactive system with clear, litigable rules, says Ian Lee, associate professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa. "It formalizes it through Parliament and makes it explicit,” says Lee. “This system is going to provide more stability and more predictability, so people know what the rules are. That was one of the complaints of unions and companies is that it’s all ad hoc."
The new legislation is less a break from the past than a formalization of it – particularly in the federally regulated transportation sector as an example, says Lee. "The transportation sector has the de jure right to strike, but they de facto do not," says Lee, noting that both Liberal and Conservative governments have repeatedly intervened in transportation sector disputes across multiple decades, with public pressure from communities, businesses, and local elected officials consistently driving those decisions.
"Politicians don't legislate workers back to work for fun. The last thing they want is controversy," says Lee. "The fact that they've done it so many times, through legislation and then through Section 107, tells me how strong the political pressures are across the spectrum, across the country, across industries – because the country is so dependent on the transportation system."
Earlier this year, a Senate committee report recommended Ottawa be empowered to halt strikes and impose contracts through binding arbitration in the rail and marine sectors.
The right to strike – still protected?
Labour groups have raised concerns that the legislation's national interest test could function as a standing trigger, since virtually any significant work stoppage carries economic consequences. The Canadian Labour Congress warned in its May 26, 2026, submission to the federal government’s consultations on labour relations that "the government cannot offer workers overdue protections with one hand while taking away bargaining power with the other," saying the proposals would further restrict bargaining and normalize government intervention in labour disputes.
Lee, who describes himself as having been unionized for 38 years and who served five years on his union's executive finance committee, draws a sharp legal distinction between the proposed legislation and the precedent at the centre of the Supreme Court' of Canada's landmark 2015 ruling, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan. In that case, the court struck down a provincial law that stripped all public servants in Saskatchewan of the right to strike – a blanket prohibition with no exceptions.
"That decision was about a law that just simply banned, across the board, categorically, all strikes in the public service of Saskatchewan. This was not a decision about where they'd legislated one striking union back to work," says Lee. "[The federal government] can very correctly say we did not ban the right to strike, unlike the government of Saskatchewan in 2015, which did."
Federal Labour Minister Patty Hajdu offered the same framing when the bill was tabled. "This legislation will protect the right to strike while reinforcing the responsibility of unions and employers to negotiate in good faith, helping ensure workers and employers can continue to navigate challenges together,” Hajdu said in a statement on Monday.
While a constitutional challenge from unions is anticipated, Lee believes the legislation around the invocation of section 107 is carefully constructed to withstand scrutiny – precisely because it’s conditional rather than categorical, and because the 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling itself explicitly acknowledged that certain workers can have their strike rights restricted on essential services ground.
“I’m sure that the lawyers at the Department of Justice went through the Supreme Court decision with a fine-toothed comb many times over,” says Lee.
What targeted sectors can expect at the bargaining table
The most immediate implications fall on human resources and labour relations professionals in the three sectors the bill specifically targets. The context of how Section 107 was used to end the Canada Post labour dispute in 2024 is instructive – under the new framework, organizations in ports, railways, and airlines that have previously experienced significant work stoppages will be formally identified as priority sectors, subject to mandatory early-bargaining timelines and post-dispute mediation requirements.
Lee believes the sector-specific targeting will have a moderating effect at the bargaining table regardless of how individual organizations feel about being singled out. "It's going to provide a cooling effect because much as they may fume and be very upset at the fact that they’re being targeted and highlighted, it's going to be based on past strikes. It's going to be evidence-based," he says.
Bill C-39 packages these labour code amendments alongside accelerated major project approvals, port governance reforms, and trade corridor strengthening – framing collective bargaining reform explicitly as an investment signal rather than a stand-alone workers' rights measure. “I think [Prime Minister Mark Carny] sees this as changing hearts and minds of Canadians,” says Lee. “It'll be a strategic mistake on the part of the labour movement if they try and block him from doing these reforms, because he'll say this is designed to save Canada and reduce our dependence on [the U.S.].”
