Opinion: Colleen Bauman and Mark Rowlinson’s Op-Ed regarding Bill C-39 in the Toronto Star
On Tuesday, September 29, 2026, The Toronto Star published “Mark Carney says he’s protecting Canadian workers. It’s Orwellian doublespeak,” an article by Colleen Bauman and Mark Rowlinson discussing the federal government’s proposed changes to section 107 of the Canada Labour Code in Bill C-39 (the Building Canada Strong Act). Colleen and Mark point out contradictions in how the Prime Minister has described the Bill compared with what the Bill actually does:
In George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the Ministry of Peace conducts war and the Ministry of Plenty manages shortages. Prime Minister Carney says the changes to section 107 of the Canada Labour Code in Bill C-39 (the Building Canada Strong Act) are built “in solidarity with workers,” that they “absolutely reinforce the right to strike,” and that they come “with real guardrails” for “strategic sectors.” Each of those claims deserves the Orwell test: what does the text actually do?
For 40 years, no one thought the existing section 107 of the Canada Labour Code could be used to override lawful and constitutionally protected strikes. Then, in 2024, the government decided to use it for what had always previously required an Act of Parliament: order rail workers, port workers, postal workers and flight attendants back to their jobs and hand their contracts to an arbitrator. Eight times in the last three years the Liberals have used section 107 in this manner.
The unions went to court, arguing that section 107 did not permit overriding the constitutionally protected right to strike or the Code’s detailed rules on when a strike is lawful, and did not quietly replace the parliamentary vote that back-to-work legislation has always required. Those cases are undecided.
But rather than protecting the right to strike by repealing s. 107, the government is proposing to spell out for the first time in explicit terms that where a lawful strike has occurred, the minister may direct the Board end the strike.
Yet, the government describes this as reinforcing the right to strike. The Ministry of Plenty would recognize the technique.
Now to the so-called “real guardrails.” First, the minister must be “of the opinion” that the strike “adversely affects or may adversely affect the national interest,” based on whatever the minister finds relevant, including “significant impact on the Canadian economy” and “serious social disruption.”
But consider how this would work. Every national strike has a significant economic impact. A rail stoppage stops freight. A port stoppage stops cargo. A test that every conceivable case satisfies is not a restraint on the power. And the minister need not even wait for any actual impact, only that there “may” be an impact.
Nor is the power confined to so-called “strategic sectors.” Rather, it reaches any lawful strike within federal jurisdiction, from a bank call centre to a grain elevator.
And the power is triggered by the Minister’s opinion. Canadian courts defer heavily to ministerial judgment. A three-paragraph opinion about potential impact on supply chains will survive review, which will arrive, if at all, long after the arbitrator’s award has issued and bargaining is over.
Second, there must first be a special mediator’s report. But the special mediator is no independent check either. The minister appoints the mediator and sets the mandate. The law requires only that the mediator’s report be “considered.”
And then, perhaps most cynically, the bill provides that the minister “may” (not must) consider the impact on Charter rights, That is a paper trail for government lawyers, not a limit on the decision.
Calling any of these “guardrails” is doublespeak in the strict sense: a word chosen because it means the opposite of what the clause does.
Ironically, the prime minister’s comments were made outside the United Nations, on a trip described as intended to build a UN better equipped to deliver on human rights and to “defend the rules that protect our sovereignty.” Canada is a party to ILO Convention No. 87, which as the International Court of Justice recently confirmed, protects the right to strike as an international human right. It is an odd way to champion the international rules-based order: defend it at UN headquarters, the day after tabling at home a power of exactly the kind the ILO would regard as going too far. Indeed, no other G7 or European trading partner provides the executive with any equivalent executive power to end strikes.
Until now, ending a legal strike required MPs to stand in the House and vote for it, in public, with their names recorded. That accountability was a guardrail. Bill C-39 removes this and calls the removal reinforcement. Parliament, and Canadians, should not accept the vocabulary.”
“Originally published in the Toronto Star on September 29, 2026”
For more on Bill C-39, see Mark Rowlinson’s public remarks on Bill C-39 alongside the Canadian Labour Congress President Bea Bruske on September 22, 2026: https://www.cpac.ca/headline-politics/episode/canadian-labour-congress-responds-to-govts-new-economic-bill?id=1ebd2cfb-1dfc-4795-ae14-047b5f1ec04e
Lawyers
Colleen Bauman, Mark Rowlinson