Canada’s union leaders want the Liberals to stop using a contentious piece of the country’s labour code and are prepared to back Air Canada’s flight attendants in their illegal strike to draw a “line in the concrete’” with the Carney government.
A tentative deal was reached early Tuesday between Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), but not before the federal government had invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to force flight attendants back to work. That section allows the jobs minister to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order parties into arbitration or end strikes to “secure industrial peace.” The Liberal government has used it eight times since 2024 to end strikes or lockouts, including work stoppages at railways and port strikes.
