Worker rights, including the right to strike, are largely absent from the Carney government’s “Building Canada Strong” narrative, says Fred Wilson. Photo courtesy Teamsters Canada/Facebook.

Canada’s new Liberal government has decided it’s time to get things done. In early May, the government announced its new policy, “Getting Major Projects Built in Canada.” It does away with multi-year assessments, replacing them with a one-year cap on federal approvals for “major projects like mines, ports, airports, pipelines, nuclear facilities, and transportation infrastructure.” The “build, baby, build” spirit was reinforced by a 30-day consultation window before the new timelines are legislated.

The “Building Canada Strong” theme was also used in April to open another 30-day consultation on potential reforms to the Canada Labour Code. That consultation focused on major labour relations issues affecting workers’ rights: mandatory bargaining timelines, essential services designations, sectoral bargaining and federal intervention, including the use of Section 107, which has been used to order striking workers back on the job. Canadian unions raised an alarm that the rushed process could not possibly do justice to the need for labour law reforms and was instead aimed at restricting collective bargaining and strikes that potentially could slow down or interrupt major project construction or transportation logistics in ports, railways, and airlines.

The pedal-to-the-metal pace of those massive decisions and the snail’s-pace modernization of workers’ rights to align with new economic realities is a study in contrasts that should give pause and prompt reflection on the place of workers in the rush to build things.

In early May, the federal government gazetted regulations implementing new labour law provisions addressing wage discrimination and abuses by temporary help agencies. These provisions, which will come into force in October, introduce “equal treatment” changes to the Labour Code that prohibit federally regulated employers from paying workers differently on the basis of full-time, part-time, or temporary status. If the hourly wage or method of payment differs between a regular worker and a part-time worker, the worker can request a review and have their wages adjusted. The equal treatment provisions also apply to temporary help agencies, which will be required to ensure workers receive treatment equivalent to that of regular employees at the client employer. The new law also prohibits temporary help agencies from charging workers various training or placement fees.

These seem like fairness laws that should be heralded, but there wasn’t even a media release to announce the new rules. That could be because the actual amendments to theLabour Code were passed eight years ago in 2018, but they were never implemented while industry associations lobbied the government over the operational regulations to limit their application and impact. The publication of the regulations in the Canada Gazette finally brought the amendments into force with a whimper.

But before praising the new government for finally implementing equal treatment measures for workers, a........

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