The Right to Strike: The Supreme Court of Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Arc of Workplace Justice

In a momentous decision, released on 30 January 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan (SFL) that the right to strike is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom's guarantee of freedom of association. Writing for the majority (5:2), Justice Abella asserted: The conclusion that the right to strike is an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process in our system of labour relations is supported by history, by jurisprudence, and by Canada's international obligations … The right to strike is not merely derivative of collective bargaining, it is an indispensable component of that right. It seems to me to be the time to give this conclusion constitutional benediction. The case is significant not only for the Court's conclusion that the freedom of association protected in section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter includes the right to strike, but also because it signalled that the gradual expansion of the scope of constitutional protection for labour rights that began in 2001 with Dunmore, had not been reversed in 2011 in Fraser. In fact, Justice Abella began her judgment in SFL by remarking that ‘clearly the arc bends increasingly towards workplace justice’. The crucial issue before the Court was the constitutionality of provincial legislation that unilaterally designated public sector workers as essential and prohibited them from striking.... --Introduction (footnotes omitted)