The News Rundown

Air Canada operations remain suspended amid federal government intervention

The Air Canada flight attendant strike that unfolded in many different ways over the past week shows how different players in Canada react to collective bargaining, strikes, and wage increases, from the government, to corporations, and unions. It's going to cause ripple effects for unions, wages and strikes going forward.
On paper, it seemed like a sure win for Air Canada. Its flight attendants would strike, paralyzing air transportation in the country. The strike would be extremely unpopular, as Canadians would accuse the flight attendants of disrupting their travel plans for exaggerated salary demands. The government would intervene to force the flight attendants back to work, to the public’s applause. Binding arbitration would enforce a settlement that the company could very well live with.
Nothing went as Air Canada expected it to, and the flight attendants won generous pay increases and pay for work done on the ground, an industry precedent. What happened? What happened is that most Canadians took the side of the striking flight attendants, and the former Crown corporation overwhelmingly lost the crucial communications fight.
First and foremost, Air Canada grossly underestimated how damaged its reputation is in Canada. Blinded by its high rankings in the Skytrax international surveys, the company believed that Canadians would put the blame for the labour dispute on the union and the workers. In fact, an Angus Reid poll showed that a majority of Canadians supported the flight attendants’ demands.
Indeed, most people blamed the company for mismanaging the situation, not communicating with its passengers and offering little support and covering no or little of the passengers’ additional expenses. (Air Canada finally announced on Tuesday an “exceptional disruption policy” to help cover “transportation expenses which customers may have incurred to get to their destination during this disruption.”)
Canadians have very high expectations for what they consider “their” national airline. Yet, there are plenty of people who have travelled with Air Canada and can share at least one horror story of delay, cancellation, bad food and atrocious communications with stranded passengers. Therefore, Air Canada began the dispute with its flight attendants with a two-strike count.
Second, Air Canada poorly communicated its offers to the union, while the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), representing the 10,000 flight attendants, was wise to focus its communications on ground work pay rather than on the steep salary increases it was demanding. Most Canadians did not know that flight attendants were not paid for work done before the airplane takes off and, naturally, found it unacceptable. Air Canada’s lame explanation that this was industry practice convinced no one. Neither did its unexplained offer of a “new provision for ground pay .”
Thirdly, CUPE representatives were everywhere in the media. Air Canada spokespersons were not as ubiquitous. The company’s CEO, Michael Rousseau, was invisible, giving only one shaky interview to Bloomberg BNN; Rousseau was apparently more concerned with calming shareholders than with reassuring passengers. CUPE held a massive advantage by turning the media to their side.
The Carney government assumed that Canadians would enthusiastically support its intervention by invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, forcing the flight attendants to return to work, and that CUPE would comply.
In open defiance of the back to work order, flight attendants organized with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) instead refused to obey Ottawa’s back-to-work order and continued to picket outside airports across the country. After two days in which Air Canada’s management insisted it would not negotiate, the union’s leadership declared victory earlier this week, announcing a tentative agreement it says will put an end to the unpaid work at the centre of the dispute.
However, when the union leadership announced that they would rather go to jail than have the flight attendants come back to work, there was barely any condemnation from the public. Realizing this, Minister of Jobs Patty Hajdu announced that she would review unpaid ground work in the airline industry, calling the practice “deeply disturbing.” Too little, too late: the communications fight had already been lost. Air Canada agreed to resume negotiations, and a deal was quickly reached, the airline presumably granting concessions that it was not expecting to make at the outset of the dispute.
For its part, Ottawa has increasingly relied on Section 107: a hitherto obscure provision in the Canadian Labour Code that grants it the authority to “maintain or secure industrial peace” without even having to consult Parliament. In effect, this means the federal government can now end a strike by sending an email to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) — an option the Liberals have repeatedly (and successfully) exercised in the face of potential actions by postal, rail, airline, and port workers in just the past year alone. When Prime Minister Carney and Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hajdu (whose newly-named department incidentally replaces the old Ministry of Labour) moved last weekend to strong-arm Air Canada flight attendants, they were therefore drawing on an established playbook and seem to have expected the same result.
On its face, the heavy-handed use of Section 107 that has increasingly defined Ottawa’s approach to industrial relations represents a clear violation of workers’ Charter rights. But it has also sent a wider signal to employers at big companies, especially those connected to vital infrastructure: that when workers vote to walk off the job the feds can always be counted on to come to their rescue. The CEO of Air Canada said as much in an interview yesterday, effectively conceding that the company was caught flat-footed by the union’s refusal to return to work.
The tentative deal secures Air Canada flight attendants at least 60 minutes of ground pay, for their time before each flight, at a rate of 50 per cent of a flight attendant's hourly rate, with that rate increasing five per cent each year.
The airline is also proposing immediate pay increases of 12 per cent for flight attendants with five years or less of service with Air Canada, and eight per cent for those who have worked at the airline longer than that. Salaries would increase three per cent in the second year, 2.5 per cent in the third year and 2.75 per cent in the fourth year.
According to Air Canada, their operations are almost back to normal this weekend after frequent cancellations earlier in the week, which added more bad will from customers. During the transition to full resumption of service, the airline says it expects that some flights will still be cancelled.
By refusing the government’s back to work order and forcing management back to the table, flight attendants have thus secured an important victory against low wages and precarious work. But, given the federal government’s increasing reliance on Section 107 to “ensure industrial peace” (in the code’s somewhat Orwellian phrasing) they have also written a new chapter in Canada’s labour history and set an important precedent in industrial relations that could have far-reaching consequences in the months and years ahead.
The Carney government may well have been counting on just such an approach if and when its apparent plans for massive public service cuts come to fruition. But, thanks to Air Canada’s flight attendants, it will surely think twice before trying to override the Charter rights of striking workers again.
Supplementals:

This week was the by-election in Battle River-Crowfoot that saw Pierre Poilievre begin his return to the House of Commons. He won with 80.4% of the vote.
Earlier this year Damien Kurek won with 82.8% of the vote.
For anyone who knows rural Alberta politics, this outcome was not a surprise.
This story is going to be covering the media reaction to the win and their erasure of the stories they wrote in the days leading up to the by-election.
This story has been an eye opener in that even in what might seem to be the most innocuous situations, it’s important to keep archives of the media’s articles.
Why? Stories posted in the 48 hours up to the by-election and into the afternoon cast doubt on whether or not Poilievre’s margin of victory in by-election would be large enough and what that means to his leadership.
Throughout the campaign there were also discussions about whether or not the Battle River-Crowfoot riding was a safe bet for Pierre Poilievre.
Max Fawcett writing in the National Observer questioned whether or not Pierre Poilievre could win and whether or not independent Bonnie Critchley, a 22 year army reservist and farmer, could stage an upset.
We’ll have more about Critchley’s campaign later.
The media up until the day of the election was questioning whether Poilievre would hit the traditional margins seen in the riding or if he’d be below 70% or below 65% even.
The goal posts were then moved again with another political commentator, Julie Simmons with the University of Guelph in Ontario, said if Poilievre saw less than the average of the Conservatives in the last few elections it could cause trouble for his leadership.
This is the classic case of eastern establishment media commenting on Alberta affairs and having no clue what is going on.
The truth: unless a politician or a political party abandons the tenants of Western Canadian populism, they’re going to get elected. In fact a scare crow with a blue shirt probably would have won the by-election.
BBC News reporting out of Toronto also called the by-election a crucial test. The BBC news article was not edited unlike the Canadian ones.
The BBC said that Poilievre was expected to win but raised the same questions about leadership if the vote percentage was lower.
The longest ballot committee also was thought that it could have played a role but with no longest ballot committee candidate getting more than 11 votes and Poilievre winning by 35,535 votes it’s safe to say they were not a factor.
I had mentioned that we’d come back to Critchley. Throughout the summer the media, mostly the CBC through CBC Edmonton, were running consistent pieces pumping up Bonnie Critchley.
We have to question if the hope was maybe to inflate Critchley enough to play spoiler allowing someone else to win but the fact is that Critchley came in second because in rural Alberta no one wanted the Liberals or NDP.
If one goes back and looks at Google News listings or YouTube listings, you will see that there is a consistent stream of articles and videos talking about Bonnie Critchley.
There was also the discussions that took place about whether or not having the leader in riding is good for representation casting doubt on whether or not people would want to vote for Poilievre given this reasoning.
CBC also highlighted a group of farmers that have described voting as “being colour-coded [and] if you voted for somebody else, you almost felt like a rebel."
CBC insisted this was changing.
The reality is that having a leader in a riding is good because it draws a higher amount of staff.
Poilievre has also opened his constituency offices, plural, one in Camrose and one in Consort.
The discussion around Bonnie Critchley continued even after the votes were counted. With Critchley winning 10% of the vote it spurred stories across the mainstream media calling it “significant” using her own words.
Political analysts including Lori Turnbull, from Dalhousie, said, “to get over 5,000 votes for an independent candidate running against a professional politician who’s going to go in as a leader of the opposition, that’s significant. She certainly managed to harness a feeling in the riding that is, I think, directed at someone who was running in that riding, who doesn’t live there.”
Again, this is the same old story of political analysts who know nothing Alberta offering opinions and Albertan media taking them at face value.
Critchley herself should be happy because an independent rarely does this well, we should not take that away from her.
We just need to caveat it with the fact that most of this was built up by the media during and after the campaign.
Her message that parties need to pay attention and listen to people is important because that has been the downfall of many parties and leaders in Alberta history.
Critchley also questioned whether or not there were irregularities with the vote.
She cited a disinformation campaign and election day “shenanigans” and she was “not 100 per cent surprised by how everything turned out.”
Upon being pressed further she said she’d defer to Elections Canada na the RCMP and questioned mocked up Elections Canada signs that had disclaimers telling people how to vote and books with names handed out with the parties in the front and independents in the back.
This is a typical concern to have following an election and probably valid. But in previous elections we were told by the media that if there was any doubting of the results, that could be dangerous - nothing from the media here on this.
The by-election outcome was expected and happened within the percentage of votes that was expected, the only ones surprised by this were the media, to the point of them editing their stories and deleting their former takes on the matter that were wrong.
Supplementals:

First Nations say 1-month closure of Joffre Lakes Park not long enough

The popular BC park Joffre Lakes Provincial Park is going to be closed for a month starting on September 2nd, in order for "Indigenous cultural practices" to take place in the park and for the local First Nations to harvest plants in the park without outside interference.
The one month closure of the park, located east of Pemberton on the Sea to Sky Highway 99, has actually angered First Nations, who says they wanted a two-month closure, from Aug. 22 to Oct. 23, that the community needs “to reconnect with the land, conduct ceremonies, and gather food and medicines” as well as give the area a rest period from recreational use.
The Lilwat and N’Quatqua nations say the closure from Sept. 2 to Oct. 3 is a “continuation of colonial decision-making” that does not respect Indigenous authority over their traditional lands.
The park was previously closed this year for three weeks, starting April 25, then for two weeks in June. The closures stem from a 2024 agreement between the province and the nations that aimed to protect the park’s natural ecology while giving time to the nations to engage in cultural practices. That followed the two nations moving proactively in the summer of 2023, asserting their rights and title to harvest in the area, and pressing the province to close the park for most of September that year.
The B.C. government says it’s the third and final such closure of the park this year. The province had said this week that the closure times are in line with last year’s and balance cultural, conservation and public access needs. The Ministry of Environment and Parks also said the dates ensure Joffre Lakes will be open for public use on the Labour Day weekend.
Lil’wat Nation lands and resources coordinator Roxanne Joe called the move 'a huge disrespectful action.' and said: “They’re not honouring or hearing our voices, it goes to show time and time again they are not putting out title and rights at the forefront of any land use or recreation.”
Joe said the move represents a failure of the province’s duty to consult First Nations, adding that the park was created in the first place without the consultation or blessing of the two nations whose territory it is within.
Members of the Lil’wat and N’Quatqua First Nations held a ceremony, briefly blocking Highway 99 near Pemberton, B.C., on Friday to voice frustration with the province’s plan.
BC Conservative Opposition critic for indigenous relations and reconciliation Scott McInnes said the province had “fumbled” the issue around Joffre lakes through its “ideological pursuit of reconciliation.”
“Now it’s at the point where we … have two nations that are very upset because the expectation has been built up for them that they have unilateral control over access to the public park and, again, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act really sets the groundwork for this type of divisive reconciliation to happen from this NDP,” he said.
“There has to be a way where both the Lil’wat and the N’Quatqua have access to the park to practice their constitutionally-protected rights but which also is an exclusionary to the public who also has the right to access that park.”
This issue shows the difference in expectations between First Nations regarding UNDRIP and the government's expectation of reconciliation. The closure of Joffre Lakes is clearly not pleasing anyone, and the BC government's all in approach is not making friends.
Supplementals:

https://globalnews.ca/news/11346028/joffre-lakes-first-nation-protest/

Firing Line

Canada to drop many retaliatory tariffs in olive branch to Trump

On Friday afternoon Canada announced that we will be dropping the retaliatory tariffs on US products that comply with the existing CUSMA trade deal. The goal, lower trade tensions with the White House.
The move being made to align Canada’s tariff policy with the United States.
The tariffs put in place were on a broad collection of good tariffed at 25% while the US mostly tariffed steel, aluminum, lumber, cars, and trucks.
Mark Carney himself said that this move was to prepare the ground for a review of CUSMA which is expected to start in the coming months, this comes from an assurance given by Donald Trump, that removing the tariffs would start negotiations in the coming months.
The counter tariffs affected about $30b in US goods that included things like orange juice, wine, clothing, motorcycles, and hundreds of pages of more items.
These tariffs were put in by the Trudeau administration with encouragement from Premier’s like Doug Ford, Wab Kinew, and David Eby.
Carney brought the hockey metaphors out again in his press conference, saying, “you drop the gloves in the first period — when you're late in the game, dropping the gloves and taking the extra penalty might not be the best thing to do.”
In the context of trade deals that the Americans have with other countries, Carney also said, “We have the best deal. Look at the numbers. Our tariff rate is 5.5 per cent. We have 85 per cent of our goods that are free trade — it’s not what we used to have, (but) nobody has a deal with the United States that they used to have… It is still better than that of any other country.”
Parsing this out, had Canada not retaliated under the Trudeau administration, our trade deal with the US would have been the best that any country has.
This is also probably not the best thing to say publicly heading into CUSMA negotiations.
We know that it was only us and China that responded with retaliatory tariffs. Initially we were told this was fake news perpetrated by the Trump administration but now even our own government admits that the retaliatory tariffs were blocking negotiations.
As recently as this week Ontario Premier Doug Ford was pushing for more retaliatory tariffs.
Following the news on Friday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew was questioning the decision to drop counter tariffs and that he felt it was not the right time to drop the tariffs.
When talking with CBC he said, "I'm not a fan of this move. Is this 'elbows down?' Think Canadians want to see a stronger response to Donald Trump. I think Canadians want us to fight for this country that we love so much. This doesn't seem to match the moment.”
The moment in question of course is that defence of Canada. The defence of Canada that the entire spring election campaign was predicated on.
Pierre Poilievre in his press conference summed this up best, “his signature promise in the last election was that he was going to put elbows up, negotiate a win, and match American tariffs... Those are his promises… It was the promise on which he ran his entire election campaign… Either he admits that he was wrong all along or that he knowingly spread falsehoods to get elected.”
Initially once the question of tariffs started floating around we saw two approaches, the first, by people like Premier Danielle Smith saw an effort to have direct meetings with Donald Trump and influence the media around him. She did not support doing anything and everything to stand up to the US, for this she was branded as a traitor by some in the media.
The other approach after Trudeau’s meeting in November at Mar-a-Lago was to gear up for war with counter tariffs.
That meeting started the 51st state push based on what Trudeau said. That 51st state rhetoric led to an increasingly adversarial relationship with the new administration making counter tariffs easier.
This is the direction that the media, federal governing parties, and most of the older population in Canada went.
It created a situation where it was counter tariffs above all else to defend Canada because there is a segment of the Canadian population that sees themselves as so superior to the Americans that they could not stand what was happening under the Trump administration so they had to do something.
That something was economic warfare with a country 10 times our size.
That something also saw an election campaign where if you were not against the US you might as well have been a traitor to Canada.
But now the tariffs are being removed and we’re effectively starting the relationship over after 9 months.
The Canadian media establishment has some soul searching to do after this, it was apparent early on to anyone who understood tariffs and economics that the retaliatory tariff move was a feel good measure and not good for the long term.
Why did the Canadian media not put an end to this charade sooner and why did they willingly participate in brainwashing Canadians that this would work?
At the end of the day, the Liberals used the media, propaganda, to manipulate the electorate to vote for them and I don't think the media has realized that yet.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“You drop the gloves in the first period — when you're late in the game, dropping the gloves and taking the extra penalty might not be the best thing to do.” - Mark Carney’s hockey metaphor on the recent trade developments with the US.

Word of the Week

penalty - a disadvantage or handicap imposed on a player or team, typically for infringement of rules

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Show Data

Episode Title: In the Penalty Box
Teaser: The Air Canada strike has been resolved, Pierre Poilievre is easily elected in rural Alberta, and a popular BC provincial park is closed to non-First Nations for a month. Also, Mark Carney drops retaliatory tariffs on the US.
Production Code: WC-432-2025-08-23
Recorded Date: August 23, 2025
Release Date: August 24, 2025
Duration: 1:04:51
Edit Notes: Pause before BC

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX