When federal politicians talk about protecting working families, they usually do it in front of a backdrop of union hardhats and high-visibility vests. But when those same workers actually exercise their right to walk off the job, Ottawa’s warm words vanish behind the closed doors of the Cabinet room. What follows isn't a conversation about fair pay or working conditions; it is a swift, quiet administrative strike-breaking operation.
For months, the federal government has been running a quiet public consultation on the Canada Labour Code, asking labor groups and employers how Ottawa should manage industrial disputes in federally regulated sectors like rail, ports, and air transport. The government's premise sounds almost reasonable on the surface: Ottawa wants to update its administrative playbook, establishing clear guidelines for when and how the Labour Minister can step into a stalled negotiation.
On August 5, 2026, the Canadian Labour Congress delivered its answer in a second formal submission to the federal review. It did not offer suggestions on how to polish the government's tools. Instead, it delivered a blunt refusal to cooperate with the entire exercise. CLC President Bea Bruske put the core issue directly: "The government is asking the wrong question... You don't fix a problem by writing a manual for it. The federal government has repeatedly used section 107 to undermine free collective bargaining. The answer isn't to codify that power. It's to repeal it."
She is entirely right. Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code is not an administrative tool for managing labor peace. It is an executive trapdoor that allows the Minister of Labour to tear up constitutional rights whenever a strike becomes politically uncomfortable for the cabinet.
The Statutory Trapdoor
To understand how Ottawa routinely short-circuits collective bargaining, you have to look at the exact wording of the law itself. Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, R.S.C., 1985, c. L-2, contains just 63 words, but they give the Labour Minister near-total discretionary power over labor disputes across every federally regulated industry in the country:
"107 The Minister, where the Minister deems it expedient, may do such things as to the Minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences and to those ends the Minister may refer any question to the Board or direct the Board to do such things as the Minister deems necessary."
In practice, those 63 words operate as an executive shortcut. In past decades, if a federal government wanted to force striking workers back to the job, it had to face the public floor of the House of Commons. It had to introduce emergency back-to-work legislation, endure debate from opposition MPs, defend its choices in the news, and take the political heat for passing a law that stripped workers of their leverage.
Section 107 allows a Minister to bypass Parliament entirely. With a stroke of a pen, the Minister can issue a directive ordering the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to step in, halt a legal strike or lockout, extend an expired collective agreement, and force the union into binding arbitration. There is no debate in the House, no vote on the floor, and no parliamentary accountability. A single minister simply deems it "expedient," signs an administrative order, and turns off the union's right to strike.
The Government’s Convenient Excuse
The government defends this executive power using a very specific rationale. When Minister of Labour Steven MacKinnon invoked Section 107 during the national rail dispute, his justification was steeped in concern for the broader national interest. On August 22, 2024, MacKinnon stood before reporters and declared:
"I have directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to assist the parties in settling the outstanding terms of their collective agreements by imposing final, binding arbitration. I have also directed the board to extend the term of the current collective agreements until new agreements have been signed..."
The official argument is always the same: Canada’s supply chains are fragile, trade flow is vital, and a prolonged shutdown of railways, grain ports, or airlines will inflict catastrophic damage on farmers, businesses, and everyday consumers. The state, Ottawa argues, must intervene to "maintain or secure industrial peace."
If that official rationale were honest, the logical metric of success would be clear: Section 107 intervention would produce stable, long-term labor agreements and encourage both sides to reach fair compromises before a crisis hits.
Instead, the real-world data shows the exact opposite. When corporate executives know that Ottawa holds an administrative kill-switch, their strategy changes overnight. Why sit at a bargaining table for three months, compromise on wages, or fix dangerous scheduling practices when you can simply hold out until a strike deadline looms? The employer knows that as soon as the trains stop or the planes are grounded, the Labour Minister will panic about supply chain press releases, reach for Section 107, and force binding arbitration.
Section 107 does not secure industrial peace; it manufactures industrial gridlock. It signals to private employers that they can refuse to bargain in good faith, trigger a lockout, and rely on the federal government to freeze worker wages and order everyone back to work. The government claims it is protecting the economy, but it is actually acting as an unpaid human resources firm for federally regulated monopolies.
The Constitutional Reckoning
Ottawa's routine use of Section 107 is not just bad public policy; it is fundamentally unconstitutional.
The right to strike is not a minor privilege handed out at the discretion of a Cabinet minister. Under Section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, every Canadian worker is guaranteed the freedom of association. Eleven years ago, the highest court in the country made it explicitly clear that this freedom includes the right to strike.
In Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan, 2015 SCC 4, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the right to strike is an indispensable component of meaningful collective bargaining. The justices recognized a basic reality: without the legal ability to withdraw their labor, workers have no real power to negotiate with massive corporate employers. Bargaining without the right to strike is nothing more than begging.
That constitutional reality is why the government's current stance is on borrowed time. The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC) has already filed Notices of Constitutional Question and six applications for Judicial Review in Federal Court, challenging the legality of Section 107 ministerial directives. The court challenges argue what should be obvious to anyone who reads the Charter: a minister cannot use an administrative clause in a federal statute to erase a fundamental constitutional right.
Writing the Playbook for Industrial Sabotage
This brings us back to the government's current review of the Canada Labour Code. What Ottawa wants to do now is write a set of official rules and administrative guidelines for how Section 107 is deployed. They want to set up criteria, draft operational manuals, and create a predictable framework for executive intervention.
They are trying to put a neat, bureaucratic veneer on an unconstitutional act. Putting a standardized process around an abuse of power does not make it legitimate; it simply turns an arbitrary overreach into standard operating procedure.
If a government believes that certain sectors—like railways or grain terminals—are so vital to the country that a work stoppage cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, then the government needs to have the courage to say so openly. It should introduce explicit legislation, defend that choice before Parliament, and accept the political consequences from Canadian voters.
Instead, successive Liberal ministers have preferred the shadow option: keeping a vague, 63-word clause in the legal cupboard, waiting until an industry stalls, and then quietly ordering an administrative board to break the dispute.
When you strip away the polished press releases and the concern over supply chains, Ottawa’s position becomes obvious. The federal government treats constitutional rights as conditional privileges—valid only as long as they don't cause an inconvenience for major corporate shippers or create bad political headlines for the minister.
If Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu and Mark Carney want Canadians to believe that they respect the rule of law and the constitutional rights of working people, they can start by dropping the administrative manual. They need to repeal Section 107 entirely and force corporate employers back to the hard, necessary work of negotiating at the bargaining table.
Until the government gives up its administrative strike-breaking button, its talk about standing up for Canadian workers will remain exactly what it is: cheap rhetoric written for a photo-op.
The Hammer will be watching.
