Lobbying Information
Subject Matters
- Aboriginal Affairs
- Budget
- Climate
- Constitutional Issues
- Economic Development
- Education
- Employment and Training
- Environment
- Health
- Immigration
- Industry
- Infrastructure
- International Development
- International Relations
- International Trade
- Justice and Law Enforcement
- Labour
- Mining
- National Security/Security
- Pensions
- Science and Technology
- Sports
- Taxation and Finance
- Telecommunications
- Transportation
Subject Matter Details
Grant, Contribution or Other Financial Benefit, Policies or Program
- ESDC with regard to secure funding for Canadian Council on Learning and Work and Learning Knowledge Centre
Legislative Proposal, Bill or Resolution
- Bill C-45 - An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts
- Bill C-62 - An Act to amend the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations Act and other Act
- Bill C-65 - An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (harassment and violence), the Parliamentary Employment and Staff Relations Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 1
- Bill C-71 - An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms
- Bill C-74 - Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1
- Canada Labour Code Part I - Industrial Relations;
Canada Labour Code Part II - Occupational Health & Safety
- Canada Labour Code Part III - Employment Standards
- Canada and United Nations Agreements on Climate Change with regard on how implemented and the effect of workers in Canada
- Canadian Human Rights Act with regard to Part II
- Comprehensively ban the use, import and export of asbestos in Canada.
Develop a federal registry of all buildings owned and operated by the government of Canada that contain asbestos.
- Convene a First Ministers conference—a follow-up to COP21—to agree to national emissions-reduction targets and a framework for mitigating climate change.
Introduce a national carbon-pricing scheme.
Convene a Just Transition Task Force (JTTF) to design a Just Transition framework for inclusion into the National Climate Change strategy and ensure that any labour adjustment mechanisms include income support programs to help workers and families affected by climate change and climate change policies.
- Criminal Code Act, with respect to Part II
- Employment Equity Act, with regard to Parts 1, 2, 3
- Establish a national multi-stakeholder skills development advisory board with union representation.
Invest new money in Labour Market Development Agreements to expand access to skills training programs for unemployed Canadians who are eligible for Employment Insurance.
Invest new money in Workforce Development Agreements to expand access to skills training programs for unemployed Canadians who do not qualify for Employment Insurance, and target this new money at groups that are under-represented in Canada's labour force.
Invest in a new program to strengthen union-based apprenticeship training.
Establish Community Benefits Agreements with provinces for federally funded infrastructure projects, procurement contracts and building maintenance.
Take action to improve the timeliness, reliability, accessibility and governance of Labour Market Information in Canada.
Invest new money to renew and expand the Aboriginal Skills and Employment Training Strategy.
Invest new money to develop or expand pre-apprenticeship programs to help Canadians explore skilled trades and gain the skills they need to enter high-demand trades.
Invest in a new program to attract and retain more women in apprenticeship training and jobs in the skilled trades.
Restore funding for literacy programs and core funding for literacy organizations, and invest in a new national workplace literacy program in partnership with unions.
New initiatives to advance the goal of lifelong learning for working adult Canadians.
New initiatives and investments to promote apprenticeships and skilled trades career options.
- Formerly Bill C-290: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sports betting), with respect to economic benefits and crime reduction.
- Immigration and Refugee Protection Act related to the security Certificate provisions, the detention and deportation provisions
- Implement a uniform, national entrance requirement of 360 hours worked for EI benefits; increase the benefit level from 55% to 60% of insurable earnings; and base benefit and duration calculations on a 30-hour workweek.
Reduce the EI benefit waiting period to one week from two.
Reform the EI appeals process and reinstate the tripartite process that existed prior to the Social Security Tribunal (SST).
Extend the EI Compassionate Care Benefits from six weeks to six months of benefits and permit benefits to be shared and taken in blocks over a yearlong period.
Reduce the entrance requirement for all special benefits to 300 hours and extend the eligibility period, implement eight weeks of ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ dedicated parental leave for a second parent or caregiver, introduce a 70% income replacement rate for maternity and second parent leave, and establish a minimum amount for all parental leaves that is not less than a full-time minimum wage.
Fund gaps in coverage for the “black hole” in Employment Insurance for seasonal workers.
- Implement civil society’s Blueprint for Canada’s National Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls, including by amending the Canada Labour Code and Occupational Health and Safety Regulations to classify domestic violence as a form of workplace violence, and provide paid domestic violence leave and other workplace supports to workers experiencing domestic violence.
- Implement the 94 recommendations of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.
Establish and adequately support a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls to its completion.
Ensure that the federal government respects the autonomy of municipalities to declare “Sanctuary” designation for non- status migrants. Beyond the designation, ensure that the federal government respects the autonomy of municipalities to adopt and implement policies that concretely support non-status migrants.
The Canada Border Services Agency must expand alternatives to detention while the immigration status of non-status migrants is resolved.
Introduce legislation adding gender identity protections to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Bill C-16, which adds gender identity protections under the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act, received royal assent in June 2017.
- Implementation of a national, universal pharmacare program
- Initiate a Parliamentary review of Canada’s current electoral system and explore alternative models that reflect the principles of fairness, equality, representative
Implement the recommendations of the all-party Parliamentary Committee of Electoral Reform to replace Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system with one based on proportional representationness and accountability.
- Labour Mobility and Agreement on Internal Trade with respect to the impact on colective agreements, qualifications standars in trades
- Reform the Investment Canada Act to ensure that the review of significant foreign investments and takeovers in Canada is open, transparent and rules- based and that the criteria used for the net benefit test are clearly defined and enforceable.
Restore the Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations tax credit.
Instruct Canada Post Corporation (CPC) to develop a plan to expand postal services, including restoring home postal delivery, instituting postal banking services, and reopening rural post offices to restore postal services in rural communities.
Establish a roundtable of stakeholders to develop a national automotive strategy to coordinate multi-level efforts to promote investment in the Canadian industry.
Create and invest in a steel industry action plan that encourages Canadian manufacturers to use Canadian made steel.
Commit to at least $20 billion into infrastructure spending over the next decade.
Halt the privatization of public services and prohibit the use of federal funds that encourage the privatization of public services at the provincial, territorial, and municipal levels.
Establish a national fund to equitably compensate families of first-responders who die on the job. The fund should allocate baseline compensation regardless of the region, city, or province/territory in which they work.
Fully invest in Canadian cultural institutions and the creation of Canadian content. Ensure all Canadians have access to plentiful, high-quality Canadian film, television and news media; created- for and made-by Canadians; on all media platforms and that the government play an active role in ensuring this through financial contributions and robust regulation.
Create a balanced approach to broadcast regulation to ensure Canadians can produce and enjoy Canadian content, including requiring US and foreign digital media platforms with significant Canadian income (such as Netflix, Amazon, and Google) to pay corporate income tax and appropriate sectoral contributions on profits from products or services sold or rented in Canada.
Reform copyright laws to ensure all cultural workers receive fair compensation for their work.
New measures and investments to support Canadian journalism.
- Renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to achieve better outcomes for workers and the environment.
Oppose ratification of Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
Renegotiate the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in light of its problematic features, notably investor-state provisions and its built-in privatization agenda.
Reform Canada’s trade remedy system to improve enforcement of trade remedy measures and give unions full standing in trade remedy cases.
- Repeal Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.
Initiate a comprehensive review of federal public service labour relations to conform to the Charter of Rights and reflect the values of fairness and equality.
Reverse the previous Conservative government’s Bill C-4’s changes to federal essential services, dispute resolution process and arbitration selection factors.
Repeal the previous Conservative government’s Bill C-4’s changes to the definition of danger in the Canada Labour Code, to ensure that workers can refuse unsafe work, and hire more federal health and safety inspectors.
Repeal the Conservative government’s Bill C-59’s unilateral changes to federal sick leave system.
Implement the recommendations of the 2006 Arthurs Commission examining reforms to Part III of the Canada Labour Code.
Introduce new measures that will prevent employers from using contract flipping as a means of undermining the wages, benefits, and job security of workers.
Establish a federal minimum wage of at least $15 an hour and index it to inflation.
Ratify ILO Convention No. 98: Right to Organize & Collective Bargaining.
Reinstate a fair wages policy for federal procurement contracts.
Work with provincial and territorial governments, Crown prosecutors, judicial educators and law enforcement agencies to promote the criminal negligence provisions of the Criminal Code allowing prosecution of senior management when workers are killed on the job.
Implement Canada’s legal responsibilities under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, including the implementation of the 3-Year Action Plan to address violations of human and labour rights in Colombia.
Urge Canadian-based companies involved in the import or investment of garment products from Bangladesh to join the renewed Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, and assess the General Preferential Tariff for Least Developed Countries.
Reform the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and International Mobility Program to aggressively enforce the law and defend workers’ rights, establish a pathway to permanent residency for low-wage migrant workers, and expand permanent immigration in place of low- wage temporary migration.
Eliminate the four in/four out requirement of permits issued for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Establish an Anti-Scab Law that amends the Canada Labour Code to make it illegal to use replacement workers during a labour conflict.
Support the development of new ILO standards on global supply chains and violence in the workplace.
Promote the ratification of ILO Convention 81, concerning labour inspections; Protocol 29, Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention, and Convention 189 (domestic workers); Ensure the implementation of ratified conventions including Convention 98 (right to organize and collective bargaining), and Convention 138 (minimum age).
- Repeal the discriminatory Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015 (Bill C-51) and Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (Bill C-24).
Make the Disability Tax Credit refundable.
Reinstate the 5-Year Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism (CAPAR) to comply with the requirements of the UN World Conference Against Racism.
Establish an independent human rights ombudsperson for the extractive sector that would regularly report to the public and have the authority to investigate complaints, issue binding remedy for violations and provide policy recommendations to government and companies to prevent their recurrence.
Ensure labour rights and human rights violations throughout the world are addressed by lobbying the Canadian government as required to apply government-to-government political pressure.
- Retirement Security - Bill C-27, An Act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985
- Secure CPP Expansion.
Eliminate or defeat Bill C-27, which allows for the abandonment of accrued defined-benefit pension benefits in the federal private sector and Crown corporations.
Bill C-27 has been languishing at second reading in the House of Commons since October 2016.
Enact Bill C-384 (Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act) to provide pensioners with “super-priority” in bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings.
Ensure that the CPP expansion includes “drop-out” provisions for excluded groups of workers, like those receiving CPP disability benefits or caregivers away from paid work in order to look after young children.
Reform the GIS to allow low-income seniors to earn more income without seeing their benefits clawed back.
Review the CPP survivor and other benefits as part of the federal-provincial triennial review of the CPP.
Provide regular reporting, including online access, of CPP statements for individuals to inform them about the CPP retirement pension they are earning each year, and strengthen their confidence in and support for the public plan.
Increase the take-up rate of CPP, OAS and GIS benefits by proactively enrolling eligible beneficiaries.
- Secure a commitment from the federal government to jointly design and implement a universal prescription drug program with the provinces and territories, based on the following principles: universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness, public administration and portability.
Both the interim report of the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare (ACINP) and Budget 2019 advanced some of the preliminary steps towards the implementation of national pharmacare. The Advisory Council will submit its final report in June 2019.
Commit to stable and long-term funding at a minimum of 25% of current health care spending and a national Health Accord that increases federal health transfers to provinces and territories by 6% a year, based on the resumed use of an equalization formula for the Canada Health Transfer to provinces and territories.
Enforce the Canada Health Act.
Develop a national seniors’ strategy to address the health needs of an aging population.
Strengthen provincial, territorial and federal legislation on mental health in the workplace.
- Table pay equity legislation, as per the recommendation of the 2016 Report of the Special Committee on Pay Equity, which would include establishing a Pay Equity Commission with clear and broad enforcement authority.
Repeal the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act (PSECA).
Strengthen the federal Employment Equity Act, and reinstate the lower government contract threshold for the Federal Contractors Program with restored mandatory compliance requirements.
Legislative Proposal, Bill or Resolution, Regulation
- Railway Safety - Bill C-49, Transportation Modernization Act
Policies or Program
- Canada and World Trade Organization Negotiations with regard to Labour side agreements
- Canadian Industrial Relations Board with respect to representation re appointments
- Climate Change - Domestic Policy on Emissions and Standards
- Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
- Industrial Assistance Programs with respect to plant closure and employees assistance
- ESDC - Labour Program - International Labour Activities and Canada's Positions at International Labour Organisation to facilitate trade Union involvement at the International Labour Organisation-
- Labour Rights in Trade and Investment Agreements with respect to killing of unions members in Colombia
- Proposed Trade Deal with Pacific countries for the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership with respect to labour side agreements that would impact workers in Canada
- Proposed Trade Deal with South American countries for Mercosur with respect to labour side agreements that would impact workers in Canada
- Temporary Foreign Workers Program with respect to regulate and administrate- wage calculations, compliance and enforcement of working conditions
Regulation
- Domestic and International Regulation with regard to Asbestos
Communication Techniques
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Written communication
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Oral communication
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Grass-roots communication
Government Institutions
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Bank of Canada
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Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB)
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Canadian Heritage (PCH)
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Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT)
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Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT)
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Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA)
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Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC)
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Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
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Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
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Finance Canada (FIN)
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Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO)
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Global Affairs Canada (GAC)
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Health Canada (HC)
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House of Commons
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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC)
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Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB)
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Indigenous Services Canada (ISC)
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Infrastructure Canada (INFC)
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Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED)
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Justice Canada (JC)
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Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)
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Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI)
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Prime Minister's Office (PMO)
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Privy Council Office (PCO)
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Public Safety Canada (PS)
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Senate of Canada
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Statistics Canada (StatCan)
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Transport Canada (TC)
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Treasury Board Of Canada Secretariat (TBS)
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Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC)
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Women and Gender Equality (WAGE)
In-house Organization Details
Description of the organization's activities
The Canadian Labour Congress exists to: Promote the interests of its affiliates and advance the economic and social welfare of Canadian workers, including those who are unemployed or retired. Affiliate national, international, regional and provincial labour unions. Respond to requests from affiliates and chartered bodies to help them extend the benefits of collective bargaining to workers not yet in unions. Set up and assist provincial and territorial federations of labour and local labour councils. Work for laws that protect workers' rights, such as free collective bargaining and the right to strike, and the security and welfare of all Canadians. Protect and strengthen our democratic institutions and ensure full recognition and enjoyment of the rights and liberties to which we are entitled. Safeguard the democratic nature of the labour movement and respect the autonomy of every affiliate. Help create and participate in coalitions with groups that share our goals and principles. Promote peace and freedom throughout the world and work with labour movements and peace groups in other countries. Provide an efficient and orderly method for settling disputes between affiliates. Actively encourage mergers between compatible affiliates to create stronger, more effective unions and reduce conflict and duplication. Speak for labour on national and international issues, explain union policies and represent the labour movement with national and international agencies. Keep the labour movement independent of political control while encouraging workers to exercise their full rights and duties as citizens and play their rightful part in the political system at every level. Promote labour media and other means of informing and educating union members. Encourage the sale and use of union-made goods and union services through the use of the union label and other symbols.
Responsible officer name and position during the period of this registration
Beatrice Bruske,
PRESIDENT
Organization's membership or classes of membership
Members of the Congress are: affiliated national, international, regional and provincial unions; directly chartered local unions; and chartered provincial and territorial federations of labour and local labour councils.
Government funding
No government funding was received during the last completed financial year.
In-house Organization Contact Information
Address:
2841 Riverside Drive
Ottawa, ON K1V 8X7
Canada
Telephone number:
613-521-3400
Lobbyists Details
Lobbyists employed by the organization
- Laurie Antonin,
National Representative, Political Action & Campaigns |
No public offices held
- Michael Luff,
National Representative, Political Action & Campaigns |
No public offices held
- Emily Norgang,
Senior Researcher, Social & Economic Policy |
No public offices held
- TARA PEEL,
NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR HEALTH, SAFETY, AND ENVIRONMENT |
No public offices held
- CHRIS ROBERTS,
DIRECTOR, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC POLICY DEPARTMENT |
No public offices held
- Larry Rousseau,
Executive Vice-President |
No public offices held
- VICKY SMALLMAN,
DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS |
No public offices held
- Siobhán Vipond,
Executive Vice-President |
No public offices held
