The State of Scabs in Canadian Labour

On June 20, 2025, Bill C-58 came into effect, banning the use of temporary replacement workers, or scabs, in “federally regulated workplaces” [1]. This long-awaited labour reform strengthens the bargaining power and democratic force that workers in the federally regulated private sector (FRPS) possess through striking. FRPS workers include many of those in banking, airline work, telecommunications (companies like Rogers and Bell), and shipping (companies like Canada Post and Purolator). They make up about 6% of the Canadian workforce [2]. Bill C-58 does not apply to workers in the federal public service, meaning the federal government may still hire scabs against their own unionized workers [3]. The federal public service comprises 357,965 workers as of 2025 (262,696 in 2017) [4] as opposed to an estimated 910,000 FRPS workers in 2017 [5]. While Bill C-58 is a win for FRPS workers, those in the federal public service remain conveniently excluded. 

Only Quebec and British Columbia have similar legislation in effect [6]. Quebec and British Columbia respectively comprised 22.3% (8,695,659) and 13.7% (5,319,324) of Canada’s population (38,929,902) in 2022 [7] with unionization rates of 38.9% and 30.1% in 2023 [8]. FRPS workers had a unionization rate of 31% in 2022 [9]. I mention unionization rates because non-unionized workers cannot legally go on strike in Canada [10]. The benefits that scab-bans afford Canadian workers remain limited by unionization rates. A record high of 37.6% of Canadian workers were unionized in 1981, falling to 30.4% by 2023 [8]. While it is difficult to say exactly how many Canadian workers may potentially benefit and currently benefit from the three scab-bans without statistics of workers per province provided by the government, it is clear from the numbers above that the potential coverage is a large minority of Canadian workers, and the actual coverage is around a third of that minority (given unionization rates). While Bill C-58 is a step in the right direction, Canada has a long way to go before it is free from scabs.  

The Quebec scab-ban was passed back in 1977, meaning that it has taken the federal government nearly FIFTY YEARS to follow suit and meet the demands of Canadian workers [6]. Meanwhile, the British Columbia scab-ban was introduced in 1993 [6] and notably, a similar law was passed in Ontario that same year, only to be repealed in 1996 due to a change in government [11]. Not only is the process of labour reform slow and arduous, but it is immensely fickle. As demonstrated in Ontario, statutory victories for workers are unreliable and can be stripped away with a change in the electoral winds. However, if Ontario were to change course, the impact would be significant; after all, Ontario represents 38% of the nation’s population [7]. Even though Ontario’s unionization rate is below the national rate at 26.3% [8], the potential coverage (were all workers unionized) of scab-bans would easily jump from a strong minority to the vast majority of Canadian workers. 

This blog post is limited in scope to a single, yet notable reform against one of the more offensive practices employers use to suppress democracy in the workplace. Labour unions are democratic bodies providing collective representation to workers, allowing them to wield their individual power together as a mass. Striking allows the controlled majority to challenge the will of the controlling minority through an organic act of people’s power, or democracy. Scabs, whether they be temporary or permanent, counteract the economic pressure exerted against employers by striking workers. Hiring scabs is a direct affront to the collective will of striking workers and has no place in a society claiming to be free and democratic. Think tanks like the Fraser Institute have been vocally opposed to scab-bans: in response, I will address one of their arguments from their 2017 online pamphlet, The Economic Effects of Banning Temporary Replacement Workers. 

This is what I have named the ‘double standard argument’. The pitch is 1: if employers cannot hire scabs, they cannot continue operations, leading to lower profits and risking the employers’ customers switching to a competitor and shrinking their market share. 2: Employers still have to pay rent and property taxes, while Unions “can provide strike pay to cushion the financial impact on workers” and “find employment elsewhere while the strike” continues. 3: This creates “a clear imbalance in the way the law is applied to employers and unionized workers” [12]. 

1: Yes, employers face economic consequences when workers strike. Lower profits, market share, and losing customers are a direct consequence of an employer’s reluctance to adequately compensate and treat their employees. Workers can stop work and fight for more, but they cannot give themselves more within the prevailing legal order. The power to give more only lies in the hands of the employer (and government mandated binding arbitration). The heightened economic pressure workers wield against employers when scab-bans are in place only partly corrects the inherently unequal and undemocratic relation of power that employers hold over their employees.  

2: Workers also have rent and property taxes to pay. Most contentious here is the strike pay argument. The Fraser Institute only says in a footnote that strike pay is “money from the Union” and either misleadingly or ignorantly makes no attempt to explain where Unions get their money from. Unions get their money from the wages of the workers who comprise them. Each individual member contributes a small portion of their pay, through union dues, to protect their interests collectively [13]. Strike pay does not materialize out of thin air. Strike pay is a slice of each worker’s pay deliberately held back in the contractually predictable occurrence of a strike. There is no double standard or unfairness to strike pay, as employers are, if anything, more capable of setting aside money to support their ventures during strikes than are workers. 

Nothing is said of how much strike pay amounts to. This differs depending on the Union, but here are three examples compared against Alberta’s minimum wage of 15$/hour, the lowest in the country [14]. UNIFOR members receive 50$/day and 350$/week [15]. Weekly strike pay at UNIFOR is just over 23 hours of work on Alberta’s minimum wage. CUPW members receive $56.20/day and at most $281/week [16]. Weekly strike pay at CUPW is less than 19 hours of work on Alberta’s minimum wage. CUPE members receive $300/week in exchange for 20 hours of picketing or other assigned duties, incrementally increasing ultimately to $400/week on the 16^th week of striking [17]. Weekly strike pay at CUPE is at worst 20 hours of work with Alberta’s minimum wage, and at best (after 4 months of striking!) just under 27 hours. The Ontario Living Wage Network calculates, based on a 35-hour work week for 2025, that the Greater Toronto area has the highest living wage in the province at $27.20/hour, while the lowest is the London Elgin Oxford area at $21.05/hour [18]. The three strike pay rates listed above are far from qualifying as a living wage in Ontario. It should come as no surprise then that striking workers may need to find employment elsewhere during a prolonged strike. Of course, like any worker, a human employer is just as capable of finding work elsewhere during a strike. There is no double standard. 

3: The Fraser Institute concludes that the law is applied unequally in favour of workers against employers. This implies that the relationship between employees and employers is an equal one. It does not take a historian to conclude that it never has been. At Confederation, the employer’s relationship over their workers can be best described as despotic. That of an absolute monarch over their subjects. This is most clearly illustrated by the British Master and Servant Acts introduced to Canada in 1847 and in effect during Confederation [19]. Under this legal regime, servants (workers) faced criminal penalties for breaching employment contracts with their masters (employers) [19]. Workers could be jailed for offences as trivial as quitting without notice or disobeying their masters’ orders [19].  

Until 1872, unionizing would get you charged with criminal conspiracy and was only legalized through the Trade Union Act, passed in response to the then-illegal Toronto Printers’ Strike [20]. There was no minimum wage in any Canadian jurisdiction until 1918 [21]. The first minimum wage laws of 1918 only applied to women and children working in British Columbia and Manitoba [21]. Nor were there any legal limits on working hours or workplace safety standards at Confederation [19]. Politically, the vast majority of working Canadians were not even represented in their respective legislatures until 1920, when property qualifications on voting were finally dropped [22].  

The years 1941-1943 saw striking en masse, with one third of unionized workers in Canada striking in 1943 [23]. In response, Canada adopted the American Wagner model starting in 1944 with the Federal Order-in-Council PC 1003, creating enduring regulations like compulsory conciliation before lawful strikes, mandatory arbitration, government-supervised votes on unionization, a right to collective bargaining [23] and prohibiting striking before a contract is up [24]. Unionization rates would double in Canada from 16% in the early ‘40s to 34% in the mid ‘50s [23]. The Wagner model simultaneously legitimizes and constrains labour within a narrow procedural legal regime. Meanwhile, the foundational inequality of employer-employee relations persists: as Donald Wells notes “management reserves the right to make decisions in all areas that are fundamental to control of the labour process” while “the union has a contractual obligation to uphold not only these management rights but all other powers of management that have not been specifically qualified by the contract or by law” [24]. While the Wagner model may have been a step forward, it is far from the end point. 

Put simply, the relationship between employers and employees has never been equal. Labour reforms are by their very nature imbalanced towards workers, because without them, workers would have no legal protections whatsoever. 

Bill C-58, while a step in the right direction, is only a step, and there will need to be many more steps if Canadian workers wish to correct the foundational inequality inherent in employer-employee, master-servant relations. I hope that with the help of this research, I have made it easier to understand the federal government’s ban on temporary replacement workers within the bigger picture of the Canadian labour movement. 

-MK