OTTAWA — Business groups fed up with unreliable supply chains are asking the federal Liberals to put measures into their next budget to stop strikes and lockouts in goods-moving industries and protect key transportation links from blockades.

“Recurring labour disruptions continue to inflict damage to Canada’s economy and reputation,” warned the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in a submission to the House of Commons finance committee, which collects requests for each federal budget before the government produces it.

The budget legislation should give the federal cabinet the authority to “compel binding arbitration for the resolution of a labour dispute in sectors that are essential to Canada’s supply chains, including railways and ports,” the submission said.

“My response is: They can pound sand, this is not going to happen,” Lana Payne, national president of the vast private-sector union Unifor, said in an interview. About 49,000 of its 315,000 members work in transportation, according to its website. “If they expect a very big fight, then that’s the way you get one, is to try and push the government to erode workers’ rights right now.”

In July 2023, longshore workers in Vancouver struck on and off for a month without the Liberals threatening back-to-work legislation, obstructing goods in Canada’s biggest port. Later in the year, workers operating the St. Lawrence Seaway went on strike for a week. Those followed a two-week strike by key CN Rail workers in 2022, which ended when the union and CN agreed on their own to binding arbitration. 

CN also filed a budget submission asking to be treated as an essential service, with mandatory mediation and arbitration to head off strikes or lockouts, modeled on such rules for the specialist ship pilots who helm freighters in harbours and major waterways.

“Unlike other industries where strikes mostly affect the operation of the concerned employers, the ripple effect of work stoppages in the rail industry extend beyond the railway company itself,” CN’s submission said. “As an exporting country, Canada’s economy is significantly affected by strikes in the transportation sector. The reality is that railways are bigger, in economic terms, than their own business.”

The U.S.-based Global Cold Chain Alliance, which represents businesses in refrigerated warehousing and transportation (including 34 in Canada), wrote a budget submission asking for perishable products to be kept moving despite work stoppages or emergencies. Bulk grain shipments get this treatment at ports otherwise stilled by strikes or lockouts.

“Supply chain infrastructure for cold storage capacity is reliant on planned cycles of food producers harvesting produce and proteins,” the submission said. Having perishable food sitting in storage is expensive, burns energy and takes up refrigerated containers that are supposed to be used for transport, it said.

Recent labour trouble “has had a negative effect on perception of Canadian supply chain reliability and could result in significant trade implications,” the group warned.

The Canadian Pork Council echoed the call for special treatment of its products, asking that shipping perishable food be treated as an essential service.

Less provocatively, the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, representing Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, asked for certain “high volume, high value trade corridor” infrastructure such as the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ont., to be designated as critical.

The CVMA’s idea is that would allow swifter responses to disruptions and include preparations for governments and industries to communicate better, the submission said: “Often companies only learn about potential disruptions when imminent. Ongoing monitoring of factors that could result in critical infrastructure disruption is needed and access to this information [should be] available to companies so advance planning is possible.”

CVMA head Brian Kingston told The Logic by email that its call isn’t about labour reforms or banning work stoppages.

“We are calling on government to establish better communication channels with industry to ensure that trade-dependent sectors are aware of disruptions well in advance. This will allow for the development of contingency plans to mitigate the impact of disruptions,” he wrote.

Parliament has sometimes passed laws ordering ends to specific work stoppages, often in transportation. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Liberal government has done it twice: to end rotating strikes at Canada Post in 2018 and to end a strike at the Port of Montreal in 2021. Such bills typically send unresolved disputes to arbitration.

Passing a law requires Parliament to be in session, majorities of MPs and senators to agree, and the governing party to be willing to have a public fight lasting at least several days while the bill gets through two houses. The Chamber of Commerce’s proposal would see Parliament delegate power to the cabinet, making the process much simpler.

Knowing binding arbitration will prevent damaging stoppages leads to less work toward agreements at negotiating tables, Unifor’s Payne said. Also, although arbitrated contracts have been good for some workers, especially police officers and firefighters, she said they don’t produce breakthrough reforms.

“If workers did not have the right to strike, to be able to fight over things like same-sex benefits, like harassment, like all kinds of things that we achieve at a bargaining table, it’s very difficult to get them in there,” she said. “Those kinds of wins or gains, they only come from struggle.”

Labour shortages, especially in goods-moving industries, have given workers a little more clout after years of deteriorating working conditions, she said: “Working people finally feel that they have some power, and for any government to say,  ‘We’re going to take that power back,’ I think you want to be very careful at this moment.”