Proposed legislation before the House of Commons would give Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government explicit authority to stop employees from going on strike and force them to resolve issues with their employer.
The bill only applies to federally-regulated employees and if the minister of Jobs and Families decides that the industry or workplace is in the national interest.
Nunavut’s hamlet, housing and municipal workers would be affected, but Government of Nunavut and Qulliq Energy Corporation employees would not, according to Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) North.
If strikes can be shut down, then unions will have a harder time negotiating better contracts for employees, according to PSAC North, a union representing 14,000 employees across Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.
“We are demanding that Mark Carney keep his hands off our bargaining rights, and we will continue to fight on behalf of all workers in the North and across the country,” said Josee-Anne Spirito, regional executive vice-president for PSAC North.
Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hadju denied claims that her government is attempting to interfere with strikes.
The bill is aimed at creating a predictable investment environment for major infrastructure projects, so employers know what they’re getting into when they spend money on developments in Canada, according to the federal government.
“This legislation will protect the right to strike while reinforcing the responsibility of unions and employers to negotiate in good faith, helping ensure workers and employers can continue to navigate challenges together,” Hadju said.
Stronger rules to force employers to pay wages, the hiring of 100 new health and safety officers nationally, and 26 new staff to clear the backlog of complaints against employers across the country are also part of the government’s proposed legislation.
Spirito said that the proposed legislation’s benefits to unions on contract negotiations, wage theft, worker misclassification, and bargaining rules don’t cancel out the back-to-work rules.
“Ultimately these changes accompany a major shift that would effectively strip thousands of workers of the ability to exercise their right to strike,” Spirito said.
The federal government already has the power to end strikes by email and send employees back to work, under a process called binding arbitration.
In August 2025, Air Canada employees refused to comply with a back-to-work order from the federal government, remaining on strike until their demands were met.
The government’s new bill seeks to enshrine the back-to-work orders into law, according to Spirito.
“This is something workers have been fighting to get rid of, but Bill C-39 would normalize this mechanism and make it the law, giving the minister explicit power to terminate strikes and impose binding dispute resolution based solely on their ‘opinion’ of what is in the national interest, without ever having to be accountable to Parliament or to workers,” Spirito said.
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William Koblensky Varela, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Nunavut News.