Government set to test new Bill 89 against unions

The dispute that has curtailed bus and métro service in Montreal is more than just a local inconvenience for commuters. For HR leaders across Canada, it is an early signal of how far governments may be prepared to go when work stoppages disrupt services that touch a broad segment of the public.

The Quebec government is preparing to invoke a statute adopted earlier this year, often referred to as Bill 89, ahead of its scheduled implementation date of November 30th. By doing so, it would gain immediate authority to step into the ongoing strike by roughly 2,400 maintenance employees at the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), whose walkout has restricted transit service largely to peak hours and late evenings since the end of October.

For human-resources professionals, particularly those in unionized workplaces or organizations delivering public-facing services, the STM conflict offers a preview of a more interventionist environment in which governments – and not just employers and unions – play a decisive role in shaping the outcome of labour disputes.

From historic strike activity to legislative response

The backdrop to this dispute is an unusually intense period of labour activity in Quebec.

In 2023, the province recorded about 691 work stoppages, the highest number ever documented and well above its previous peak from the mid-1970s. Strikes constitute the overwhelming majority of those stoppages. At the national level, person-days lost to labour disputes have climbed to levels not seen for decades, with education and public administration – sectors that are heavily represented in Quebec – driving much of the total.

This statistical surge followed an extraordinary wave of public-sector strikes in late 2023. Hundreds of thousands of workers in health care, education and social services, many of them grouped in the Front commun coalition, engaged in rotating walkouts and a province-wide general strike. Separate actions by teachers and other groups intensified the cumulative impact on schools, hospitals and government services. Most of those disputes were settled only during 2024, after protracted negotiations.

Those events left a lasting mark. For unions, strike action has proven to be an effective way to secure wage catch-up and improvements in staffing and working conditions after years of tight budgets. For employers and policy-makers, the same events underscored the vulnerability of essential and quasi-essential services when multiple unions are prepared to walk off the job at the same time.

Back in August, four faculty associations at McGill University filed a legal challenge against Quebec’s Bill 89.

Bill 89: a new tool in the HR landscape

It is in this context that the Quebec government adopted Bill 89, formally titled An Act to give greater consideration to the needs of the population in the event of a strike or a lock-out. The statute, passed in May 2025, was originally set to come into force on Nov. 30. The current STM dispute has prompted the government to move up that date through new legislation, effectively allowing it to use the statute’s powers immediately.

Bill 89 introduces several elements that HR professionals should understand, particularly if they operate in sectors that affect the public directly.

First, the statute creates a broader category of services that must be maintained during a work stoppage. Existing “essential services” rules, which typically focus on health and safety, are supplemented by a new concept of services that ensure the well-being of the population. Public transit, utilities and other everyday services could be captured by this language, depending on how it is interpreted.

Second, the statute gives the Labour Minister authority to refer an ongoing dispute to binding arbitration when specific conditions are met. If a strike or lockout is considered to cause, or risk causing, serious or irreparable harm to the public and mediation has not resolved the conflict, the minister can require the parties to submit to arbitration. When that step is taken, strike or lockout activity must cease.

Third, Bill 89 strengthens enforcement. Employers and unions that fail to maintain required services face the risk of daily monetary penalties, adding a financial dimension to the legal consequences associated with ignoring orders from the labour board or courts.

If the government applies these provisions to the STM dispute, the Montreal conflict will become the first real-world test of how Bill 89 works in practice – and how willing the state is to use its new tools.

Back in September, the Quebec government launched a province-wide campaign to raise awareness about the Labour Standards Act, aiming to educate both employers and employees on key issues.

A pattern of structural reforms

For HR leaders, Bill 89 should be seen alongside another major initiative: the overhaul of the health and social-services network through Bill 15, adopted in December 2023.

Bill 15 creates a new agency, Santé Québec, which becomes the single employer for much of the health and social-services system. Local bargaining units are effectively folded into a province-wide structure. The reform centralizes management and standardizes HR processes on an unprecedented scale.

Unions argue that this change weakens local autonomy and makes it harder to tailor working conditions or staffing approaches to local realities. From an HR management perspective, however, it reflects a desire for more consistent policies, clearer lines of authority and potentially greater flexibility in reallocating staff and resources.

Taken together, the transit-strike response and the health-care reorganization show a government that is not only bargaining hard, but also changing the institutional rules under which HR and union relations are conducted.

What it means for HR practitioners

For organizations operating in Quebec – and, by extension, for those in other provinces watching these developments – several implications stand out.

1. Government intervention is now a real contingency

Where a work stoppage affects services that are visible and widely used, HR teams need to factor in the possibility that the state may step in. That could include mandatory arbitration, stricter requirements around service levels, or both.

This does not remove the need to negotiate; in most cases, employers will still want to reach an agreement at the table. But it adds a layer of complexity. HR professionals will need to track legislative thresholds, understand how regulators interpret “serious or irreparable” harm, and plan communication strategies that take into account the public and political dimensions of a dispute.

2. Strike planning must account for enhanced service obligations

Under Bill 89, minimum-service arrangements may become more demanding. Employers and unions alike will be under greater pressure to design strike plans that respect the new statutory category of services linked to the population’s well-being.

For HR teams, that means working closely with operations leaders to identify critical functions, map staffing needs, and ensure that contingency plans can be implemented without breaching the law. Documentation and record-keeping will become increasingly important if enforcement bodies scrutinize whether service levels have actually been met.

3. Centralization changes the role of local HR

In large systems such as health care, the shift toward a single employer can alter the day-to-day role of HR managers at the facility or regional level. Collective agreements may be bargained centrally; decisions around staffing models or pay scales may be made higher up in the organization.

Local HR professionals may spend more time implementing province-wide policies and less time negotiating local arrangements. At the same time, they may become crucial conduits for communicating frontline realities back to central decision-makers so that policies remain workable on the ground.

4. Litigation risk is rising

Unions and labour-law experts have already signalled that Bill 89 is likely to be challenged under the Charter, particularly in light of Supreme Court decisions that recognize a protected right to meaningful collective bargaining and to strike. HR teams should anticipate that major disputes may generate parallel litigation about the constitutionality of government interventions.

While such court battles will be led by legal counsel, HR will be central in supplying evidence about operational impacts, staffing levels, and the feasibility of maintaining services. Accurate data and clear documentation of decision-making processes will be essential.

A new equilibrium in labour relations

The Montreal transit strike may, in the end, be resolved through more familiar means: concessions at the bargaining table, internal adjustments to schedules or staffing, and a return to work without the full force of Bill 89 being deployed.

Even if that happens, however, the dispute has already highlighted a shift in the environment facing HR professionals in Quebec. A province that has experienced record numbers of work stoppages is now experimenting with more assertive legislative tools. Unions are preparing to push back, including in the courts. Employers are caught between service expectations from the public and the need to maintain constructive relationships with their workforces.

For HR leaders, the lesson is not that strikes are going away – they remain a central feature of collective bargaining in Quebec and across Canada. The lesson is that the legal and political framework surrounding those strikes is evolving, and that effective HR strategy will increasingly require understanding not only collective agreements and workplace culture, but also the broader regulatory and public-policy context in which disputes unfold.