PARLIAMENT HILL, Ottawa—Labour Minister Lisa Raitt won’t risk a strike at Air Canada disrupting March break, and tabled back-to-work legislation that passed a House of Commons vote Wednesday to send the dispute to binding arbitration.
“Our government is very concerned that a disruption at Air Canada will damage Canada’s fragile economic recovery,” Raitt said when introducing the legislation Monday.
She said a million Canadians are set to travel and would be left stranded should the airline’s pilots or machinists strike or be locked out.
“We will take swift action to ensure that Canada’s economic recovery isn’t negatively affected, and that Canadians across the country who rely on air services are not unduly impacted.”
Raitt rejected a reporter’s suggestion that she made frequent use of back-to-work legislation, citing some 35 times Parliament has passed similar legislation since 1950, noting that Liberal governments were behind 19 of those.
Raitt has tabled such legislation three times, in 2009 for railway operations, 2011 for Canada Post, and now for Air Canada. The record for the most back-to-work legislation in a single year goes to former PC Labour Minister Marcel Danil, who tabled three of four such acts in 1991 under Progressive Conservative PM Brian Mulroney.
“Right now the NDP is giving a speech talking about how we should let things stay the way they are,” Raitt said. “That’s unacceptable. You cannot have this impacting the economy and you just simply can’t strand millions of Canadians without any means of getting back to their homes. So we’re acting.”
Raitt said the work stoppage would knock 275,000 employees off the job and leave a million Canadians, mainly families, “scattered around the world.”
Motion Infringes on Charter
But pre-empting a strike was the wrong move, according to NDP Labour critic Yvon Godin.
