Opinion: Why Canada needs better data on strikes, unions and other labour issues
In the summer of 2025, the federal government quietly pulled national strike and lockout data from public view. The move followed a complaint from the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), the second-largest trade union federation in Quebec.
The CSN learned that an employer organization was waging an anti-union campaign using flawed data published by Statistics Canada. The data artificially inflated the number of strikes in the province, leading the Montreal Economic Institute to falsely assert that since 2023, 91 per cent of Canadian work stoppages had affected Quebec.
On Dec. 16, the corrected data was restored without comment.
Months of missing data made it difficult for........
