Quebec Court of Appeal Uphelds Constitutionality of Restrictions on Collective Bargaining

In early July, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the constitutionality of Bill 30, An Act respecting bargaining units in the social affairs sector and amending the Act respecting the process of negotiation of the collective agreements in the public and parapublic sectors. The bill was originally declared unconstitional by the Superior Court of Quebec in 2007.

In coming to its decision, the Court of Appeal relied primarily on two Supreme Court decisions: 2007’s Health Services and Support – Facilities Subsector Bargaining Assn. v. British Columbia and Ontario (Attorney General) v. Fraser, decided in April of this year. Essentially, the Court found that while both the Canadian and Quebec Charters protect the freedom to associate, neither one guarantees any particular bargaining scheme.

Bill 30, which came into force in 2003, reduced the number of bargaining units in the province’s health care sector by over two-thirds, from 3,671 to 1,200. Moreover, the bill restructured the province’s health and social services bargaining units by creating four bargaining units per establishment, with the membership of each unit defined according to a series of job titles. This resulted not only in drastic changes in the membership of each union, but also in the grouping together of many professionals with divergent interests in the same bargaining units. Perhaps most significantly, the bill removed health-care workers’ right to strike, forcing them into interest arbitration if they were unable to successfully negotiate to fruition.

This decision appears to be inline with the above-mentioned recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada on the subject. What do you think?