Jesse Kline: Canada can’t build anything — and the unions want to keep it that way - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out Idle No More protesters block a highway and rail line in Manitoba in 2013. (ROBIN DUDGEON / PORTAGE DAILY GRAPHIC/QMI AGENCY) By Jesse Kline November 3, 2026 at 6:30 a.m. Canada is a place where nothing substantial ever gets built, and the people who would actually benefit from a construction boom are intent on keeping it that way.

Last year, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade attacks on Canada were heating up, there appeared to be a broad consensus in this country that things needed to change — that we had to get shovels in the ground rather than allow bureaucrats, special interests and politicians to stand in the way of economic development.

But that “consensus” started to fray as soon as the federal Liberals actually tried to institute reforms. Their latest attempt to fast-track infrastructure and maintain labour peace, Bill C-39, is being met with apocalyptic rhetoric from unions, Indigenous groups and environmentalists, who are threatening a return to the labour unrest of the Trudeau era and a revival of the Idle No More protests that rocked the country 14 years ago.

A statement released by the United Steelworkers union last week warned that, “Indigenous leaders across Canada have called for an Idle No More 2.0 in the midst of attacks on Indigenous communities” — namely, Bill C-39.

It claimed that First Nations leaders are concerned about the legislation’s ability to designate “regions of national interest,” which, once they pass a regional assessment under the draconian Impact Assessment Act and are approved by government, would allow for easier permitting within them.

Ottawa has taken pains to ensure that Indigenous consultations form the backbone of all its approval processes and many may recall that one of the key drivers behind the original Idle No More movement was poor living conditions on remote reserves such as Attawapiskat, Ont., which had few prospects for economic development.

That could meaningfully change for many remote First Nations communities if Canada really can get its act together and start building mines, pipelines and other infrastructure in long-neglected parts of the country, especially in a day and age in which active steps are taken to ensure that First Nations have a say over, and a financial stake in, projects that run through their territories.

As the Post’s Jamie Sarkonak wrote in these pages, the draft legislation aims to get projects approved within a year, but allows for additional Indigenous consultations, which could extend the timeline past the 365-day mark. Yet even this isn’t enough for the United Steelworkers, which claims that the year-plus timeline is too short to allow for meaningful “Indigenous participation and environmental scrutiny.”

If labour unions were actually looking out for the interests of their members, they would recognize that removing the layers of bureaucracy that can hold up a port expansion in Vancouver for seven years or a mine in Ontario for 15 would be a boon to the unionized workers who are responsible for building the equipment and putting shovels in the ground. But this is Canada, a country where obstruction is often done for its own sake.

Bill C-39 is basically a sop to the labour movement. While it tries to prevent strikes by requiring collective bargaining to begin six months before a contract expires, extending the “conciliation period” and providing more federal supports during the bargaining process, it also implements new guardrails that must be followed before the labour minister can order striking workers back on the job, while providing stricter protections against “wage theft,” stronger health and safety measures and other pro-labour amendments.

Curiously, it is the changes to Sec. 107 of the Canada Labour Code, which allows the minister to intervene in strikes, that has really riled up the unions. In a press release, the Canadian Labour Congress announced that labour leaders are setting up a “war room” to fight the Sec. 107 changes, and threatened that it will lead to “years of labour conflict and costly court battles.”

The unions may have a point if the legislation was giving the minister new powers, rather than putting limits on an existing right. Sec. 107 currently states: “The minister, where the minister deems it expedient, may do such things as to the minister seem likely to maintain or secure industrial peace and to promote conditions favourable to the settlement of industrial disputes or differences and to those ends the minister may refer any question to the board or direct the board to do such things as the minister deems necessary.”

In other words, the minister can do whatever she wants as long as she thinks it’s prudent. Bill C-39 adds that before the minister takes any action, she must procure and consider a report from a newly created special mediator and be under the opinion that “the strike or lockout that is underway adversely affects or may adversely affect the national interest.”

The stipulation that the strike must already be “underway” is the crucial bit that seems to have caught many business interests off guard. While the current wording appears to give the minister broad leeway over when she can intervene, the updated language would require the production of a special mediator report and workers to already be on the picket line. Nevertheless, union leaders are disingenuously framing this as an attempt to “take away our right to strike.”

Not to be outdone, the always-anxious environmental lobby is fearmongering over the potential effects of the bill’s shortened approvals timeline and empowerment of the minister to approve “enabling activities” before a project has been given the green light.

In a Globe and Mail interview, Queen’s University ecologist John Smol cited a hypothetical situation in which the minister orders a lake to be drained for a project that doesn’t end up getting approved. That, of course, would seem to be a highly unlikely scenario that, if it were to occur, would likely have a greater impact on the minister’s political career than any ducks that called the lake home.

An even more alarming hypothetical would be one in which the Liberals continue to allow special interests to retard economic development and fail to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen the Canadian economy and turn this country into the energy and natural resources superpower it was always meant to be.

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Reparations shakedown against the U.K. is all too convenient