The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed a union’s claim that a 2018 back-to-work law, which ended a series of rotating strikes by Canada Post workers, violated the workers’ rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Friday’s decision affirmed a lower court finding that the Charter claims were moot because the 2018 law was no longer in force.
The OCA said that it would have alternatively found that the 2018 law did violate workers’ right to freedom of association. However, like the lower court, the appellate court found that the federal government was still justified in ending the workers’ strike under s. 1 of the Charter, which subjects Charter rights to “reasonable limits.”
The rotating strikes took place over five weeks in the fall of 2018. Workers had begun striking in October, nearly a year after the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Canada Post started negotiating a new collective agreement.
In November, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters that “all options [would] be on the table” to resolve the labour dispute if the parties could not reach a resolution soon. Later that month, the Postal Services Resumption and Continuation Act was tabled in Parliament and received Royal Assent.
The law ended the strike, extended the parties’ previous collective agreement until they could agree on a new contract, banned lockouts and strikes while the collective agreements were in effect, and ordered the Minister of Labour to refer disputes between the parties to a mediator-arbitrator.
In the summer of 2020, the parties reached an agreement with the help of the appointed arbitrator and applied it retroactively. They extended the contract another two years in 2021.
Despite this resolution, the union pursued an application in court, arguing that the 2018 law breached its members’ Charter-protected rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association. The union said its goal was to secure a court ruling that made it challenging for Parliament to enact back-to-work laws, ensuring that future collective bargaining would proceed “without government influence by way of it introducing – or even signalling that it will introduce – back-to-work legislation.”
A lower court declined to assess the merits of the union’s Charter arguments, ruling that the issues were moot since the 2018 law’s limits on strike activity were no longer in effect, the arbitration process had ended, and the parties had reached new collective agreements.
The OCA sided with the lower court. The union had argued that the question of whether back-to-work laws breach freedom of association rights under s. 2(d) of the Charter is a matter of “public importance such that a resolution is in the public interest.” However, the OCA found that other cases had already resolved the question.
“We agree with the application judge’s view that a determination on the merits would have limited precedential value,” the OCA said.
“In the labour relations context, s. 2(d) and s. 1 questions turn heavily on the specific legislation at issue and the specific factual context leading to its enactment,” the appellate court said. “The factual context leading to the current dispute is unlikely to be replicated in future labour disputes, and the legislative measure in future back-to-work legislation is unknown.”
Counsel for the union did not respond to a request for comment. Employment and Social Development Canada was unable to provide a comment by publication time.