Mark Carney’s omnibus Bill C-39, also known as the Building Canada Strong Act has the fingerprints of the Business Council of Canada all over it, writes Nikolas Barry-Shaw. Photo courtesy Mark Carney/Facebook.

To understand what the federal government is doing today, you need only look at what the Business Council of Canada was advocating yesterday.

That quip—slightly modified—by veteran journalist Donald Gutstein is probably the most helpful guide to understanding the origins of Mark Carney’s controversial Bill C-39, which has roused the ire of labour, environmentalists, and First Nations.

Canada’s CEOs have been celebrating the legislation—and with reason. The bill’s multifaceted assault on labour rights, environmental standards, and international and treaty obligations to First Nations is perfectly aligned with the long-standing aims of Corporate Canada.

In the boardrooms of Canada’s leading corporations, executives view environmental rules as unnecessary “red tape” and First Nations’ land rights as obstacles to be bulldozed. They see workers exercising their right to strike as a cancer that must be stopped “before they metastasize,” a problem that governments should “permanently resolve” through legislation, their lobbyists at the Business Council of Canada suggest.

While the Carney government defends Bill C-39 as a necessary response to a time of crisis, many of its provisions can be traced back to policy demands by the CEO lobbying group that date back to before Trump was in office.

In the name of nation building, Bill C-39 is fast-tracking a corporate agenda that doubles down on the worst features of Canada’s economic structure, an agenda that will leave widening inequality and broken treaties, accelerating climate change and expanding sacrifice zones in its wake. And it has fingerprints of the Business Council of Canada all over it.

A sprawling, 243-page omnibus bill modifying 18 pieces of legislation, Bill C-39, also known as the Building Canada Strong Act, has been called “Canada’s most consequential economic legislation in decades.” C-39 would confer sweeping powers on federal cabinet ministers to speed up major projects like pipelines and data centres and limit the right to strike of workers in federally-regulated sectors.

Bill C-39’s changes to the labour code will make it easier for the federal government to shut down strikes in sectors including airlines, telecoms, ports, and railways by invoking the “national interest.” This attack on the right to strike would make the Canadian government’s strikebreaking powers the most far-reaching of any G7 country by far, according to the Canadian Labour Congress.

“Under Bill C-39, the right to strike will only exist in the abstract,” CUPE National President Mark Hancock said in testimony before the special committee reviewing the legislation, echoing the views of labour leaders across Canada. “Because a right that can be taken away the instant it’s exercised is not a right at all.”

On the environmental front, Bill C-39 allows federal ministers to accelerate assessment timelines, unilaterally approve project proposals and even designate “regions of national interest” where the usual assessment processes don’t apply. It’s not for nothing that environmental groups have dubbed C-39 the “Bulldoze Nature Bill.”

Bill C-39 could have significant knock-on effects for Indigenous peoples too. Compressed timelines for approval of major projects like pipelines, LNG terminals, and data centres could infringe on treaty rights and lead to governments and companies bypassing meaningful consultation, First Nations leaders are warning.

“When we look at the details,” write Hadrian Mertens-Kirkwood, Jon Milton, and Rachel Pettigrew in an analysis of Bill C-39 for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “it becomes clear that the main purpose of this legislation—much like the rest of the federal government’s policy agenda—is about clearing the way for greater corporate profit, at the........

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