The Decibel - Liberal omnibus bill sparks outcry from unions, environmentalists

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

On Monday, the governing Liberals tabled their first bill of the new session of Parliament. Bill C-39, also called the Building Canada Strong Act, is over 240 pages long and aims to streamline and speed up development approval. It also makes changes to the Canada Labour Code that have upset union leaders.Bill Curry is The Globe’s deputy bureau chief in Ottawa. He has been covering the new legislation and explains what exactly Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is proposing and what it is willing to sacrifice to boost building in Canada.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has already had a busy month, going toe to toe to toe with the U.S. on tariffs in the trade war, courting international investors and trying to forge closer ties with Europe. And now, with Parliament resuming, Canadians are waiting to see how Carney will govern at home. This is a crucial session of the House of Commons. We are going to introduce some of the most consequential legislation, not just of this government. but in decades. Let's do it. Exactly. One of these quote-unquote

consequential legislative bills was announced at the start of the week. It's called the Building Canada Strong Act. The government says it's needed as part of their efforts to speed up building big projects in Canada. But how they intend to do that is drawing some criticism.

Bill Curry is the Globe's Deputy Bureau Chief in Ottawa, and he's been covering the announcement of this new law. He's on the show to explain what we know so far and what the government is willing to sacrifice in the name of building bigger and quicker. I'm Mena Karam and Welms, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Bill, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Madica. Good to see you too.

So we heard off the top of the show from the Prime Minister talking about this consequential legislation, and this would include this Building Canada Strong Act. Now, this is a big omnibus bill, and we're just talking Tuesday morning. people are still taking the time to read through the details of what was announced on Monday. But from what you know so far, Bill, what is your take? Just how significant is this legislation?

Yeah, this is definitely a big deal. There's going to be a lot of debate about this, and we're already seeing that just in the first few hours since the bill came out. And I think for your listeners to take a step back, you probably heard a lot during the last few election campaigns about Bill C-69, which the liberals passed in 2019. And that's been very controversial. It was a reform of the way environmental assessments are done. It created a new Impact Assessment Act, which is at the time a new way to review proposals for major projects and hear feedback from the public about what they think about the projects. And that was brought in at the time by a liberal government that said that this would increase environmental protections

and make sure that indigenous consultation is done in a better way, that the public can be more involved. But the flip side is it generated a lot of pushback, particularly from the energy sector and the Alberta government and Saskatchewan government, who saw it as excessively burdensome on trying to get things done. Pierre Pollyoverly picked up on that, calling it the No Pipelines Act.

and he's been calling it for it to be repealed for a long time. And what this is is kind of like a workaround to some of the more controversial from the business point of view part of C69 to get around that and get things moving more quickly. So essentially this new legislation could maybe in some ways replace that previous legislation that some people had issues with then it sounds like. Exactly, yes. So the Carney government has been chipping away at C69. So rather than doing a full repeal of it, as Pierre Pahliav had been calling for, we had the Building Canada Act of C5 from last year that talked about designating projects as being in the national interest, and those created some specific exemptions for C-69.

And this kind of takes that exemption practice further and applies it to a broader range of projects. Okay, so this is important, right, because this then covers everything from development, regulation, environmental stuff, transportation regulation. This is a giant bill. This is more than 240 pages. So there's a lot of things in here, Bill. What is the rationale behind it? What is the government's goal with this legislation? And how does that fit into Carney's priorities? Well, it's really at the core of his priorities about getting big things built quicker. Some of the context, I think it might be helpful to think back to just a few days ago. I and some of my colleagues were in Toronto at the Four Seasons Hotel covering a pretty interesting summit where investors from around the world were invited at Mr. Carney's request to kind of mix and mingle for a couple of days in Toronto.

This was a big deal. We talked about this last week, this massive investment summit. Massive investment summit, exactly. And one of the main issues that comes up when you talk to investors is kind of a bit of unsurricular. certainty, if they're going to invest billions of dollars in Canada, can they get assurances that win or lose, they're going to get a decision relatively quickly, or are they just going to get bogged down in endless consultation, which is somewhat of the reputation that Canada has gained over the last few years in the business world? So the current government is trying to

respond to that, and the ministers were all, their main slogan yesterday with this bill was one project, one approval, one year. Very broadly, the new process will establish clearer and more efficient federal review timelines to get shovels in the ground faster and reduce delays and duplications by streamlining approvals and coordinating and assessment processes. Our standards will be simple. one project, one review, and one year to a decision. So instead of having perhaps a couple different regulators that you have to go through

and then extra steps for permitting, the idea is to condense all of this into a really quick process where it's all wrapped up within one year and you're only dealing with one regulator. So that's the inspiration, is to address that concern that investing, in Canada is way too complicated. This is supposed to be a pitched investor saying, we've heard you, we're going to simplify these things, and you're going to get an answer up or down within one year. Okay, so it sounds like they really want to increase the efficiency then of these projects. And as you've mentioned a bit, Bill, this isn't the first piece of legislation from this government meant to speed up development, right? There was also this Building Canada Act from earlier that

had a similar goal. And that act set up this major projects office. So we're already seeing some movement in this direction. But broadly, how is this new legislation that they're bringing forth now? How is this different? Well, I think C5, which was the act that you're talking about from last year, was fairly narrow in that it required cabinet to designate a specific project as being in the national interest. And from there, you could get exemptions from the Impact Assessment Act, which is the law that was created under C-69 that we talked about. So this... So that previous one, then, you had to basically have a project that was in the, quote,

national interest in order to go through this process. Exactly. Whereas this is going to kind of apply those workarounds to a broader range of projects. And so for things like pipelines, instead of going through the impact assessment agency, you would go through a different regulator, the Canadian Energy regulator, or a nuclear project, instead of going through the impact assessment agency, So you'd go through the Canadian nuclear safety regulator. So where there had been potentially some duplicative review processes,

this shrinks it down into one project, one review, as the government says. I guess I wonder how they're going to be able to drastically speed up development in this way, right? Because there's things in place for reasons to have those checks and balances there. So how are they going to do this without changing the standards around environmental or indigenous rights? Well, I mean, that's at the core. You've struck the core of the debate here. A lot of the critics are questioning that. We had a news conference just a few minutes ago from Cindy Woodhouse-Nepernak, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. And that was her point exactly, was that one year is pretty tight to do consultations. I mean, you just look at, you know, a project like a pipeline, which is very top of mind because a lot of this is inspired by the potential of a second. pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast. I mean, you will be crossing territory that impacts dozens of First Nations. So, you know, it's not like you're just doing one consultation here.

Some of these projects, especially interprovincial projects, you are dealing with many communities, many cities, towns, First Nations. So trying to get all of that wrapped up and permanent and approved within a year is ambitious. Yeah. And we're going to come back to that a little bit later. But I also want to address another change that we saw with this omnibus bill. And this is around changes to the Canada Labor Code, specifically around Section 107. And this outlines the rules when the government can essentially force striking federally regulated workers back to work. And by that we're talking about more than just bureaucrats here, right? We're talking about port workers, air travel workers, railway workers. There's actually 1.4 million workers that are federally. regulated. So, Bill, what is the change that the government is making here? Well, what is inspiring in is we've had a lot of, as your listeners would know, a lot of high profile labor disruptions in federally regulated areas that have had widespread in economic impacts. This could mean Canada post strikes that impact small business, strikes by pork

workers in British Columbia. We've had a couple labor disruptions at WestJet. Last year, there was an Air Canada work stoppage. So the federal government has been using this clause in the Canada Labor Code called Section 107. The kind of essentially forces an end to these strikes. The unions have been pushing this, challenging this in court as unconstitutional. So part of this bill that was introduced on Monday has some changes to that section. It doesn't remove it entirely, which is what the unions had been asking for. Instead, it has some new sections that essentially involves a process where a special moderator would be brought in relatively early in the process if it seems like things aren't going well. And it sets new criteria as to when cabinet can use this power.

So definitely different perspectives on this. The government, Patty Hyde, the minister responsible, saying that these changes put a guardrail on it, make it harder to use, make it clearer that this is a tool of last resort. Unions completely disagree with that. They argue that this is going to make this the common practice, and they view it as an attack on their fundamental right to strike. We'll be right back. Let's dive a little bit further into this bill when we're talking about the environmental

side of things. We've talked about what this bill includes, but I think we should maybe dive a bit into the reaction and the impact that it's going to have. What have environmental groups specifically said about this bill? environmental groups are furious with this latest legislation. They really see it as a real step back from some of the conditions that had been in place under the previous system. So I guess a bit of context. So when you switch regulators, the energy regulator or the nuclear regulator, they still take the environment under consideration. So, you know, the caveat is environmental concerns

are still factored into this new proposed process. But the argument, that environmental groups will make is that that broader public interest consideration that you had under the Impact Assessment Act is being sacrificed in the name of efficiency here to get projects moving more quickly. They're pretty concerned about the amount of power that Cabinet is giving itself in this law to essentially grant exceptions. So a lot of the time when a major project is approved, there are conditions attached to that. And the initial reaction from the environmental groups are saying that there's a kind of

an open-ended power for cabinet ministers just wave away those kind of conditions or, you know, make it far easier to get projects approved. And, you know, if there are issues being raised on the environmental front, the government, for various reasons, could just decide that those don't apply. So I think when we get into the committee study, parliamentary study, Potentially there could be debates around curbing that power or better defining that power because the environmental groups are saying at the moment it's very open-ended. And that's a concern. On the flip side, we now have a majority government with the liberals having enough seats to form a majority. So they are not obligated to agree to any amendments.

So that will be interesting to see how far they go and using their majority. Do they push through this as originally written? Or are they going to be open to amendments given the strong? concerns that we're seeing from indigenous leaders, environmental groups, and the unions. I also want to ask you maybe about the other side of things here, which is people, groups that might be happy about these changes. And I want to specifically ask you, Bill, about Alberta for a moment and the provincial government's reaction to this bill. There has been much criticism from Premier Daniel Smith regarding the federal government's previous regulatory standards,

because they said it slowed down development projects, tied them down with too much red tape, essentially. Does this new bill, is this going to appease Alberta's concerns? Well, certainly the Alberta government's initial reaction was positive. They have been quite favorable to the Carney government's actions on the energy front. We've certainly seen Danielle Smith, Premier, and Mark Carney have been in negotiations about an additional pipeline. We could get an update on that fairly soon, based on the timeline they've laid out. So I think a lot of the process being laid out in this bill is tied to that

issue of pipeline development because you've got the pipeline project and also there's proposals before the major project's office of a major port expansion near Vancouver which would be the terminus for that pipeline. So those are the kinds of things that would have to go through these

review processes. So it's all connected but to your point the initial reaction from the Alberta government was positive. The business community reaction was positive. The oil and gas sector also very positive reaction to this. As you mentioned, this is the latest in a step too. We had seen just a few weeks ago some regulatory changes that were in the same vein of speeding up approvals for pipelines and oil and gas projects. Can I go back to the labor stuff just for a minute here? But we talked a

little bit about the concerns that some people have with the labor changes to this bill. This is not a small deal. How could this impact workers' rights to strike? Well, the legislation sets out kind of criteria and steps that would happen before the federal government intervenes to bring an end to a work stoppage. And so from the government's perspective, these are guardrails and ensuring that this is used as a last resort. And the language in the bill talks about only stepping in if there's some kind of economic consequence to the strike. But we've seen the initial reaction from union leaders are saying, well, of course, there's going to be an economic impact to a strike. That's the whole point of a strike.

That's why you strike, yes. Exactly. So they really just don't get that argument. That's the whole point of a strike to create some economic pressure on the other side to act. Another thing that we haven't really talked about that, about the government highlights is this special mediator that's going to be involved. And Patty Hyde, the minister, response to what was saying that she thinks this will be effective because one new twist is that if the mediating hasn't solved the problem, after a few days this special mediator will be able to release a report publicly. which she said would essentially let people know if one side or the other is not bargaining in good faith. So she thinks this could create public pressure if there's one side that's just going through the motions at the bargaining table,

that this is going to essentially publicly shame them into working more aggressively towards a deal. That's the government's take. Obviously the unions are not sold. When Patty Heidi was asked to respond to the government's view that this is actually a third. threat on the right to strike. She said that was inaccurate. You're talking about strengthening, or this bill, the purpose is to strengthen the worker-employer relationship. Why is weakening the right to strike what's needed to strengthen that relationship? Well, there's no provision in the labor code changes that we're proposing that weakens the right to strike. So that's incorrect. In fact,

what it does is put a guardrail around a very contentious tool, Section 107, that many unions had said was used without transparency by the minister. And so in terms of workers' rights, we're actually strengthening their rights that if in a worst case scenario, a minister must refer to the CIRB parties who are deadlocked in dispute that there are stronger criteria the minister. They don't agree, though. They say this is weakening the right to strike. Well, they're incorrect, and I would encourage them to certainly contact us. All right, Bill, in our last few minutes here, can we look at the political reaction from the Hill? How is conservative leader, Pierre Polyev and NDP leader Avi Lewis. How have they been reacting to this legislation?

Well, the NDP leader Avi Lewis really pounced on this. He was very much in line with the reaction from unions on the labor front, agreeing that is, in his view, a threat to the right to strike. And then on the regulatory changes, he says that the Kearney government is essentially agreeing to the wish list of big business. So politically, I think a lot of this is kind of in the wheelhouse of the NDP, when the government is shifting rules to, in a way that pleases large companies, then that's the kind of thing that historically the NDP would want to weigh in on. So he's definitely going to be a strong critic of this legislation.

The conservatives initially had little to say, other than to say that they were studying it. it could be a bit of a challenge politically for the conservatives because they have been trying to make inroads with the unions. And so they may not want to be wildly offside with the unions on the labor front. At the same time, they've been pushing four changes to C-69 and the existing model for project approvals for a very long time. So do they see this as a win or do they see this as a half measure? because it's not fully repealing C-69. I think we'll see probably within the next few hours when Pierre Pollyev weighs in.

The challenge for any opposition party with these kinds of bills, we see this oftentimes with budget bills, things that are in the hundreds of pages, there might be some things that they really like, but then there could be things that they really don't like. And so they're really in a bind. They might like some things, not like other things. And then if they vote against it over the parts that they don't,

like, then the government will say that, you know, they're resisting or opposing things that are popular. And of course, that's a government strategy, too, right? Throw it all into one bill and make the opposition have that decision there. Yes, that's a whole other podcast. We will talk about that one day. The problem with omnibus legislation in this town, yes. Before I let you go here, Bill, I really want to know what this all signals to you.

You're our Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief. You've reported on many federal governments. What does it say to you that Carney decided to open this session of parliament with this piece of legislation. What does it tell you about the approach that he's going to be taking to governing this fall? Well, it's clear that he is very serious about getting projects moving quickly, responding to the concerns of investors that he had invited to the Investment Summit last week in Toronto, and he's willing to take some heat for it. I'm interested to see, you know, did he fully expect the kind of reaction that he's getting so far? Because it's been quite strong

from the labor unions, which, you know, for the most part, he has tried to keep on side, especially on things like dealing with the trade negotiations with the United States. He's kept the unions involved in those consultations. But this is a pretty strong pushback in the initial hours since this bill came out, including from the environmental movement. It'll be interesting to see, does that build over time? Does it fade? with a bill this complicated, oftentimes it can take days or weeks before its full impact is fully understood as all the lobby groups and their lawyers really dive into this.

So it's certainly something that is going to be dominating the political debate over the next few weeks in Parliament. And given, as you point out, that the prime minister decided to make this the first bill introduced when they come back, he seems to be quite okay with that being. the dominant debate for this fall session. Bill, it's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks a lot, Maitka. That was Bill Curry. He's the Globe's Deputy Bureau Chief in Ottawa.

That's it for today. I'm Manika Ram and Wilms. This episode is mixed by Rachel Levy McLaughlin. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer,

and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.