A coalition of natural resource and industrial goods producers has been pushing to limit shipping workers’ ability to strike, according to internal documents, with the federal government appearing to reciprocate with labour reform legislation introduced last week.
In a presentation to deputy Transport Canada minister Arun Thangaraj on Jan. 12, acquired by Do Not Pass Go through a freedom of information request, the Western Canadian Shippers’ Coalition (WCSC) said repeated port and rail strikes were costing Canada billions in economic losses and damaging its reputation as a reliable trading partner.
In response, the organization – whose members include Canpotex, Suncor, West Fraser Timber, Census, Nutrien, K&S Potash and Teck Resources, among others – recommended immediate “automatic essential service designation for rail/port based on economic thresholds,” along with complementary sectoral bargaining, works councils, better coordination with government and enhanced mediation measures.
Introduced last Monday, Bill C-39 – the Build Canada Strong Act – proposes sweeping reforms to the Canada Labour Code that reshape how the government can intervene to end or prevent strikes in federally regulated sectors, including transport.
Specifically, the bill rewrites and expands Section 107 to give the government more ability to shut down strikes or lockouts if they are deemed to be against the “national interest.”
Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu last week said the measures are intended to give the government better tools to resolve labour disputes that have a deep national impact and that don’t appear to have a resolution at hand. Labour unions, however, say they are a “fundamental attack” on the right to strike.
“If government can end a strike because it is having an economic impact, employers have less reason to compromise and reach a deal,” said Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske in a statement. “That weakens collective bargaining before government ever uses the power.”
The WCSC says its members ship more than $150 billion worth of products annually and spend more than $6.5 billion on transportation costs. In its presentation, the group said the Canadian transport sector experienced 62 work stoppages in 2023-2024, costing the nation $54.6 billion, with daily rail disruptions amounting to $341 million. Canada’s strike rate amounted to 50 to 100 days per 1,000 workers, compared to one or two days in Austria.
The WCSC said its other suggested measures, such as the government-employer-union councils found in Austria and Ireland, prevent crises through dialogue between parties, and legal strikes with negotiated minimum service – as in France and Spain – balance worker rights and economic protection.
In briefing notes provided to Thangaraj for the Jan. 12 meeting, the government acknowledged that the group had been lobbying both the Transport and Labour ministries and had made at least three substantive submissions on labour last year. The notes said the two departments would continue “to flag both the immediate and complementary measures you are proposing.”
The WCSC presentation shows three major collective agreements with CN, CPKC and the BC Maritime Employers Association expiring soon, which means the proposed Labour Code changes could affect more than 11,000 employees – including railway yard workers, conductors, marine traffic regulators, ship and dock foremen, and others.
“They’re like Ticketmaster with all the surcharges and fees.”
Bill C-39 also partially delivers another key WCSC request by extending so-called “interswitching,” which allows a shipper located on a single rail line to request that their freight be moved by a competing railway at a regulated rate.
The distance limit on this switching has typically been 30 kilometres from an interchange between two railways, but a pilot project initiated under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extended the range to 160 km. That test expired in 2025, but Bill C-39 proposes to implement it for another 48 months, though the WCSC had asked that it be made permanent.
The group’s presentation also requested that Transport Canada take action against what it says are unfair surcharges and tariffs by the dominant railways, CN and CPKC – a total amounting to its members being overcharged $900 million between 2013 and 2022. It also asked for changes to a final offer arbitration (FOA) system used in disputes that they say favours railways, “to address CN’s and CPKC’s monopoly pricing and conditions.”
WCSC and CPKC did not return requests for comment. Transport Canada says it is aware of the shippers’ requests for action on surcharges and FOA, but did not elaborate on whether any measures are being considered or in the works.
“Transport Canada continues to engage with stakeholders on issues related to rail transportation and the efficient movement of goods across Canada's supply chains,” said spokesperson Sau Sau Liu in an email.
James Nolan, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan who has written and advised governments on issues such as interswitching and railway surcharges, is not surprised that there is no apparent plan to tackle the WCSC’s monopoly complaints.
The shippers do indeed suffer from information asymmetry, he tells Do Not Pass Go, where the railways know all about their business but the same isn’t true in reverse, which complicates the arbitration dispute system.
“The government isn’t really sure what to replace [FOA] with. Do you force the railways to give away lots of information? It’s a very complex problem if you’re going to solve it that way,” he says. “[But] they’re like Ticketmaster with all the surcharges and fees.”
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ILLEGAL, UNENFORCEABLE AND EVERYWHERE: CANADA’S NON-COMPETE PROBLEM
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Ian Scott has landed at public relations and lobbying firm EARNSCLIFFE STRATEGIES, sources tell Do Not Pass Go. The former chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, whose term ended in 2023, is perhaps best known for his controversial meeting over beers at an Ottawa pub with BELL chief executive Mirko Bibic in 2019 while the company had an active appeal open at the regulator. The CRTC under Scott ended up largely reversing a previous decision on wholesale internet rates that Bell and other telco incumbents had challenged, which led to a host of independent service providers including Distributel, Ebox and Vmedia being bought up by bigger players. Earnscliffe lobbies government on behalf of many large companies, with current or recent clients including Honeywell, Eli Lilly and Bell. Earnscliffe did not return requests for comment over the weekend on what Scott’s role will be or which areas he’ll be working in. The firm’s representatives have met with government officials on behalf of Bell at least eight times this year so far, according to the federal lobbyist registry.
🏠 HOUSING
The federal government last week introduced new measures and money to prevent rental housing from being scooped up and consolidated by developers and corporate property owners. The non-profit CANADIAN HOUSING ACQUISITION FUND will manage $1.5 billion and help community housing providers acquire and maintain so-called at-risk rental properties. The initiative could protect up to 7,000 properties in its first five years, the government says. Proponents are welcoming the move, saying it’s been “an uphill battle” to keep properties away from the private market. “What this fund does is it gives us access to a funding source that makes it much easier for us to go out there and buy a 30-unit building for what a private investor is trying to sell,” one housing expert tells the Toronto Star.
🛒 GROCERIES & RETAIL
The Competition Tribunal has ordered NORTERA to pause its acquisition of B&G FOODS CANADA’s Green Giant and Le Sieur canned and frozen vegetable brands until a legal challenge against the transaction can be heard. The Competition Bureau is arguing that the deal is a “merger to monopoly” that will give Quebec-based Nortera, which already owns major brands including Arctic Gardens and Del Monte, a 90- and 80-per-cent market share in canned and frozen core vegetables, respectively. Nortera is arguing that the deal is required to protect its business against cheap imports.
It was a good week for the Competition Bureau, with the enforcement agency also scoring a win in its property controls case against grocery giant EMPIRE. The Nova Scotia-based company – which owns Sobeys, Farm Boy, Safeway and other chains – has agreed to stop using contracted property controls that prevent rivals from opening stores near its own operations. These restrictive covenants, as they’re known, have also been deployed to prevent food products from being sold at nearby dollar stores, gyms and other retailers, and have blocked new groceries from opening even after Empire stores have closed down or moved. LOBLAW and WALMART have also voluntarily agreed to drop their usage of these restrictive covenants, though its noteworthy that they haven’t done so in any legally binding way.
And one last win for the Competition Bureau, with the agency announcing it had also reached an agreement with KALIBRATE, a British company that provides gas stations with market intelligence software. The company has agreed to stop sharing retailer-specific information that can reveal a competitor’s sales or pricing practices, and that it will only share aggregated data that does not identify retailers. Kalibrate has also agreed to share that data only after a time delay. The Bureau says its investigation of the company concluded that Kalibrate’s Market Intelligence product allowed competitors to access confidential and competitively sensitive information, which could result in coordination and higher gas prices for consumers.
Related to the rental housing news above, food security advocates are calling on the federal government to implement similar safeguards for smaller grocery retailers. While the recently announced Food Secure Strategy promises money to smaller competitors and beefs up measures against abuse of dominance by large grocery chains, several loopholes exist. “The strategy must also have guardrails not only against large mergers, but consolidation of smaller players,” writes Food Secure Canada policy lead (and Do Not Pass Go podcast guest) Aaron Vansintjan in Policy Options. “If it hands out grants to small businesses that are then bought up by larger ones, that becomes another backdoor to funnel public money to the oligopoly that is contributing to the spiralling cost of food.”
The good news is that retail is getting more competitive in Canada. The bad news is that it’s mostly in the high-end. More than 20 international brands opened their first standalone stores in Canada in 2025, up from 15 a year earlier, according to Retail Insider. Fourteen of those 20 – including TOM FORD, AMI PARIS and MASON MARGIELA – chose Toronto for their first locations, with the upscale Yorkdale Shopping Centre playing an outsized role. On the flip side, Greek discount retailer JUMBO is opening soon on the site of an old Toys R Us store at Vaughan Mills in Toronto, with more stores planned across Canada.
🕺 ENTERTAINMENT
The PARAMOUNT-WARNER BROS. merger saga has finally drawn to a close… or has it? Last week started with the news that the U.S. states fighting the $111-billion (U.S.) mega-deal had come to a settlement with the companies, but it ended with a coalition of remaining opponents winning a last-minute delay. The “Block the Merger” group, consisting of entertainment industry organizations, advocates and creators, on Thursday won a motion to file briefs requesting a public-interest review, a decision that kept the transaction from wrapping up last week as Paramount had hoped. The mega-deal thus continues to be a political hot potato, with Paramount’s Trump-friendly owner David Ellison threatening to move the company out of California, not to mention having to pay a $1-million-a-day fee to Warner Bros. if the merger isn’t completed by Oct. 1. The settlement with the states does not require Paramount to split off any businesses but instead focuses on promises of movie output, independent oversight of CBS News and CNN, and spending guarantees.
With a new boss taking over, CINEPLEX may be up for sale. The company last week announced its new chief executive Bill Walker, who previously led competitor LANDMARK CINEMAS, is undertaking a strategic review that will consider a range of options, “including but not limited to a potential sale of the company.” Cineplex, which has around 75-per-cent of the movie market in Canada, had agreed to be acquired by U.K.-based CINEWORLD back in 2019, but the deal fell apart as the Covid pandemic shut down theatres around the world. Movie theatre chains have only recently started to experience growth again, making the timing right for a potential Cineplex sale. Reports earlier this year pegged U.S.-based CINEMARK and REGAL CINEWORLD as potential buyers.
Ontario has fined STUBHUB $20,000 for selling tickets above face value, contravening a law against doing so that came into effect in the spring. The fine is the second issued by the province, following a recent $25,000 penalty issued to fellow reseller SEATGEEK. StubHub continues to maintain that the province has not instructed the company on how it is to verify the face values of tickets on its platform. Despite the fines, both companies continue to list huge numbers of tickets to events well above face value. As of Friday morning, level 500 tickets to the Blue Jays’ final regular season game at the Rogers Centre in Toronto this past Sunday were starting at $113, for example.
Speaking of tickets, the Federal Court last week tossed out a drip-pricing case against TICKETMASTER brought by B.C. student Kamaria Kuling. Kuling had argued that the additional, non-optional fees the LIVE NATION-owned company added to the base charge of a comedy show ticket she bought had amounted to illegal and deceptive drip-pricing. Judge Denis Gascon saw it differently. In his judgment, he ruled that the additional fees were above-board because they were displayed on the same screen, immediately above the base ticket price – thereby making them line items, rather than drip pricing. As legal firm Gowling puts in its analysis, line items are legal and not the same as drip pricing. This differs notably from the Competition Bureau’s 2024 court win against CINEPLEX over its $1.50 online booking fee. In that case, the theatre chain’s fee “was below the fold, invisible without scrolling or clicking, and the page design discouraged looking further,” Gowling says. The firm says Gascon’s ruling is “a critically important judicial interpretation of the Competition Act’s drip pricing provisions” that provides clear guidance to online merchants on how they should be designing their websites. Cineplex is continuing to appeal the $38.9 million in penalties and legal costs it was hit with, while the Bureau’s drip-pricing case against Canada’s Wonderland owner SIX FLAGS is ongoing.
🏦 BANKING
The merger wave with credit unions continues hot and heavy, with B.C.-based TRU COOPERATIVE and Ontario’s LIBRO CREDIT UNION announcing a deal. The companies say the merger, if approved, would bring together two of the country’s largest cooperatives, serving 470,000 members with more than 2,200 employees and $33 billion in combined assets and assets under administration. We recently looked at why this merger frenzy is happening, with technological change and regulatory burdens the key reasons. New rules are also allowing credit unions to expand outside of their traditional provincial confines, a clear factor in this particular merger.
🛢️ RESOURCES
It shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve been following the sector, but Canada’s oil patch is heading towards its biggest year of deal-making in nearly a decade. The Financial Post reports that oil and gas producers have totalled more than $30 billion in mergers and acquisitions over the first nine months of 2026, putting the full-year tally on track to beat the record $53 billion set in 2017. The difference this time, analysts tell the paper, is that firms such as SHELL and TAMARACK VALLEY are making acquisitions from positions of strength, rather than merging out of necessity as they did in 2017. “Inflation and commodity pricing have simply made producing assets very attractive right now,” says one. “When corporate development teams run the numbers today, acquisitions look appealing and can pull forward returns for shareholders.”
🚨 COMING UP
Do Not Pass Go turns one this week! On Thursday’s podcast, we look back at some of the greatest hits over the past 12 months and spill the tea on what’s next (spoiler: expansion and lots of good things!). Plus, we’re joined by The Hatchet co-founder and Do Not Pass Go “grandfather” ARSHY MANN for a conversation on the State of Things.
Some news on Oracle's financial situation could impact the Paramount/WarnerBros deal.
https://myinvestingnews.com/oracles-stock-collapse-could-derail-the-ellisons-110-billion-media-empire/
Hi Peter,
Just published on September 23.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/24/oracle-data-center-force-majeure.html?lid=gghteyai965e