Scrap Bill C-39: Defend the right to strike and stop the corporate agenda of deregulation and privatization agenda!
The Communist Party of Canada calls for the immediate withdrawal of the Carney government’s Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act. This 246-page omnibus is an attack on the working class, Indigenous rights and the environment. It attacks the right to strike, rewrites collective bargaining in the Canada Labour Code, guts environmental regulation, and creates sweeping new powers to designate “regions of national interest.” Sold as a response to tariff threats, it is a Trojan horse for the corporate agenda of deregulation and privatization and for eliminating workers’ constitutionally protected right to strike.
At the centre of the labour changes is an expansion of Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. It already allows the minister to “take any measure” they think likely to maintain industrial peace. In practice, a single minister can email the Canada Industrial Relations Board to end a legal strike and impose binding arbitration, without Parliament debating or voting.
Over the last two years, Section 107 has been used against Montreal and West Coast dockworkers, CPKC and CN rail workers, Canada Post sorters and carriers, and Air Canada flight attendants. In every case, the CIRB ordered workers back and broke the strikes in all but the Air Canada strike, where workers defied the order and won.
Bill C-39 doubles down on Section 107. It leaves existing language and adds supposed criteria: the minister must consider a special mediator’s report and then determine that a strike adversely affects the “national interest.” The minister must only “consider” the report, not follow it, and it remains entirely up to ministerial discretion. This is how the government can unilaterally end legal strikes and gut the power of the trade union movement in Canada. This is how the Carney government aims to drive down workers’ wages and living standards and increase corporate profits.
The message is clear: employers can avoid serious bargaining and wait for a friendly Liberal or Tory government to shut down a strike. This blatant attack on free collective bargaining and the right to strike encourages employers to provoke strikes or lockouts. The Communist Party of Canada demands the repeal of Section 107 and Bill C-39 and fights for a Labour Bill of Rights that would enshrine the right of all workers to strike, picket and organize, in Canada’s Constitution.
The Carney Liberal government claims these changes are necessary to stop strikes. But strikes are the main tool the working class has to advance its interests. In 1872, Toronto printers struck for the nine-hour day. They were arrested, but the struggle helped win a shorter workday. In 1945, Ford workers in Windsor struck and won the Rand Formula, establishing union recognition and dues checkoff across Canada. In 1981, postal workers struck for 42 days and won paid maternity leave, the first federal union to do so, benefiting women workers – union and non-union – across Canada. Strikes have won living wages, good pensions, health and safety laws, public services and equality rights. Strikes are not an obstacle to the “national interest”, but they are an obstacle to gross exploitation and profiteering by corporate monopolies.
Bill C-39 directly affects 1.4 million workers in federally regulated industries and sectors, including air transportation, ports, rail, telecommunications, uranium mining and processing, and postal services. But the threat extends to all workers. Provincial governments are already moving to limit the right to strike. In Ontario, Doug Ford’s Conservative government invoked the notwithstanding clause in 2022 to pass the Keeping Students in Class Act, pre-emptively criminalizing job action by 55,000 education workers. Alberta’s United Conservative government under Danielle Smith did the same to teachers last year with Bill 2, the Back to School Act, forcing an end to a three-week provincial teachers’ strike. Quebec’s CAQ government passed Law 14, allowing it to force striking public transit workers into arbitration and continue working for the public’s “wellbeing.” These moves are not limited to Conservative led provinces. This fall, Manitoba’s NDP government moved to declare Dynacare laboratory workers an “essential service,” stripping them of the right to strike and bargaining power. Carney’s Bill C-39 will establish a new and much lower federal standard that provincial governments will eagerly match or drive down further. The Communist Party of Canada calls on all workers, in federally and provincially regulated workplaces, to unite against these coordinated attacks and to press the Canadian Labour Congress into action to defeat this anti-labour legislation.
Bill C-39’s “regions of national interest” are a direct attack on Indigenous sovereignty, democracy and environmental protections. The bill will allow any area to be designated a special zone where approvals are “streamlined,” construction can begin before federal permits are granted, and companies can pay offset fees if their projects harm fish habitat. It imposes one-year time limits on assessments and lets ministers waive conditions meant to protect the environment. This would make it practically impossible to meaningfully consult Indigenous communities on major projects, which is constitutionally required. The Assembly of First Nations has warned the Prime Minister against “abusing” his majority government powers to pass the bill and limit debate.
The Communist Party of Canada continues to demand full, prior and informed consent of Indigenous nations on all projects affecting their territories and the strengthening of environmental protections to stop the corporate destruction of the environment and the poisoning of communities.
This legislation and the other major reforms of the Carney government are not about jobs or sovereignty. If Carney were genuinely committed to defending Canadian sovereignty, he would reduce corporate influence and expand public ownership. The Communist Party of Canada fights for public ownership of key sectors like auto, steel and energy, expanded healthcare and education, and social housing to create jobs. To protect sovereignty, we demand Canada’s withdrawal from the USMCA and NATO, the main institutional ties to US imperialism, which is growing more violent to the point of threatening annexation.
The way forward is struggle—grounded in unity within the labour movement and in a people’s coalition that includes everyone facing attacks from the Carney agenda: Indigenous nations facing rollbacks of consultation over mining and pipeline projects; all those fighting for a just green transition to avert climate catastrophe; those affected by healthcare privatization; students facing attacks on accessibility and quality of education; immigrants whose rights are being rolled back; and all working people experiencing declining wages and living standards.
When Air Canada flight attendants defied a Section 107 order, stayed on the picket line and forced the employer back to the table, they proved unity and militancy can win. Now is the time to organize escalating mass action and build the solidarity necessary to defeat Bill C-39 and protect the right to strike. Stop Bill C-39!
Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada