Putting politics ahead of public

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2024 (277 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the right decision, but Canadians can rightly ask why it took so long.

Yesterday morning, federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon announced that he is sending the labour dispute between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

If the board determines negotiations between the two parties are at an impasse, it has been directed by MacKinnon to order the 55,000 striking CUPW members back to work under the existing collective agreement until May 22, 2025. If that happens — the odds are high that it will — mail could begin moving again by as early as next week.

In defence of his decision to intervene in the dispute, the minister told reporters that “Canadians are rightly fed up.” That’s an understatement.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business recently estimated that the Canada Post strike has cost Canada’s small- and medium-sized businesses more than $1 billion, with the damages increasing at a rate of $76 million per day. The organization also projected that Manitoba small businesses are losing $3.34 million daily. All those losses will continue to mount until the postal service fully resumes operations.

Beyond those costs, millions of Canadians, rural Canadians in particular, continue to suffer significant inconvenience and hardship. On Tuesday, the Assembly of First Nations complained that the postal strike is delaying supplies of medicine and other necessities to rural and remote communities. There have also been reports of Canadians and foreign nationals forced to wait for critical documents, and that Service Canada is holding tens of thousands of passports due to the strike.

Despite all that harm, despite the fact that the federally appointed mediator withdrew from the negotiations two weeks ago, and despite calls by business organizations for the government to bring the strike to an end, MacKinnon took no formal steps to end the crisis until yesterday.

When mediation broke down, he said that sending the dispute to binding arbitration was “not in the cards,” and that mediation would only resume “once the special mediator has clear evidence that both parties have sufficiently modified their respective positions.”

Binding arbitration — a step we called for 10 days ago (“Time for government to end postal strike,” Dec. 4) — would have immediately ended the dispute, avoiding all of the harm that has occurred because of the strike since then.

Given that reality, why did MacKinnon sit on the sidelines for so long? Why did he send it to the Industrial Relations Board instead of choosing binding arbitration?

The answer is obvious: politics and self-preservation. He could not act sooner, and could not impose binding arbitration without running a dangerous risk of having his very unpopular government forced into an election they are desperately trying to avoid.

Earlier this year, the government used its authority to end nationwide rail strikes, as well as strikes at the ports of Vancouver and Montreal. Those measures resulted in accusations and litigation, alleging that the government had unfairly and prematurely interfered in the collective bargaining process. Even more ominously, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh threatened to defeat the minority Trudeau government, forcing an election.

Last Monday, the Trudeau Liberals survived a non-confidence motion in the House of Commons after Singh and his NDP caucus members voted against the motion. The motion had been brought by the Conservatives, based upon Singh’s criticism of the Liberals’ handling of labour issues.

If MacKinnon had stepped in to end the postal strike earlier, after Singh’s warnings following the rail and port strikes and before Monday’s non-confidence vote, it would have been virtually impossible for the NDP leader and his MPs to vote in favour of allowing the government to remain in office.

If the NDP caucus had voted in favour of the Conservative motion, or had simply abstained from voting, Canadians would be in the first days of a Christmas election campaign that MacKinnon and his fellow Liberal MPs would very likely lose in a landslide.

It is reasonable to infer that the Trudeau Liberals could not allow that to happen and, in response to the existential risk posed by the Conservatives’ non-confidence motion, they held off on ending the postal strike until after they survived that motion.

And, by sending the dispute to the Industrial Relations Board instead of ordering binding arbitration, the Liberals can say that they haven’t actually ended the strike — a hair-splitting point that may help them survive the next non-confidence motion, when it comes.

It is often said that politics is a dirty business, but this is as crass as it gets. The Trudeau Liberals put their political interests ahead of the interests of millions of Canadians who have been inconvenienced by the postal strike, and the thousands of businesses that have suffered monetary losses.

MacKinnon says that “Canadians are rightly fed up.” He’s more correct than he realizes.