In the summer of 2025, the federal government quietly pulled national strike and lockout data from public view. The move followed a complaint from the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), the second-largest trade union federation in Québec.
The CSN learned that an employer organization was waging an anti-union campaign using flawed data published by Statistics Canada. The data artificially inflated the number of strikes in the province, leading the Montreal Economic Institute to falsely assert that since 2023, 91 per cent of Canadian work stoppages had affected Québec.
On Dec. 16, the corrected data was restored without comment.
Months of missing data made it difficult for employers, unions and researchers to make sense of trends and emerging patterns in Canadian labour relations. Worse yet, the flawed data helped influence a debate and shape public opinion about labour law reform in Québec.
This episode highlights a persistent problem: Canada does a poor job of gathering vital labour relations information. In a period of rising inequality and renewed union-management conflict, stakeholders need better and more accurate data.
What disappeared and why it matters
For decades, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Statistics Canada have published national data on strikes and lockouts. These figures allow journalists, members of the public and other stakeholders to track where conflicts are occurring, how large they are, how long they last and the number of workers involved over time.
Labour relations data is a basic need for the purpose of work-related policy analysis. Without timely and reliable figures, it becomes increasingly difficult to analyze current workplace conflicts, compare them across sectors or provinces or place them in historical context.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Long-term, consistent data sets are especially important because they allow researchers to identify trends: whether work stoppages are becoming more frequent, which industries are most affected and how policy changes may be influencing workplace conflict. When that continuity is broken, so is the ability to understand how the labour relations landscape is changing over time.
While ESDC’s public tables were unavailable, Statistics Canada’s historical tables, on which researchers often rely, were also negatively affected. The government offered no public explanation on its website for why the data were taken down, though ESDC now indicates that revisions were made to recent data covering Québec.
Canada lags behind other countries
Other countries show that better labour relations data collection is possible. In the United States, for example, the National Labor Relations Board consistently releases statistics on union certification applications and unfair labour practice cases, giving the public regular insights into trends in unionization and workplace conflict.
Some Canadian provincial labour boards publish annual reports, but nothing at the federal level matches the depth and timeliness of U.S. labour relations reporting. This leaves Canada with a patchwork of partial figures instead of a coherent national picture of how unions, employers and workers are interacting.
Despite the return of ESDC’s work stoppages data, Canada still lacks crucial information on the broader system of labour relations. There is currently no timely national source for data on new union certifications, membership levels in individual unions, unfair labour practices, strike votes, health and safety work refusals, or duty of fair representation complaints.
Researchers looking for this information must often wait for uneven provincial annual reports or file individual requests with provincial labour boards and Statistics Canada, which can be slow and costly.
In some cases, the data is not collected at all. The result is a system in which some of the most important features of labour relations are effectively hidden from public view by administrative fragmentation.
Models Canada could follow
Canada already has models that show how a national labour relations data system could work. The Ontario Ministry of Labour’s collective bargaining database, for instance, tracks public and private sector negotiations, wage settlements, mediation and arbitration outcomes, and even the contents of recent collective agreements.
The Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada shows that provincial data can be combined to create a clear national picture. Working with provincial workers’ compensation boards, it produces national statistics on injuries, fatalities and other workplace safety issues.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
The ESDC could use this model to build a national labour relations database that would include information on union certification applications and outcomes, membership trends by sector and region, unfair labour practice complaints and work refusals.
Such a resource would help policymakers see what’s happening in Canada’s workplaces, allow unions and employers to compare bargaining results, and help journalists and the public evaluate how well labour laws work. It would also strengthen academic research and support better labour relations policy.
Expanding public access to labour relations data would also send a clear signal that the federal government understands the value of evidence-based policy decisions. In a period when official statistics on wages, jobs and prices are under political pressure in other countries, Canada has an opportunity and a responsibility to strengthen its own commitment to open, reliable labour relations data.
