By Haris Ahmed
OTTAWA — The Liberals might be leading high in the surveys now, but their rivals express Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan for boosting growth extends them unexpected openings for political gains.
Bill C-39, the “Building Canada Strong Act,” plans giving the cabinet fresh strengths to speed-track massive build schemes and close work clashes, putting it out of step with environmentalists and multiple union members.
The rules would protect the work minister’s strength to close job stops in federally monitored fields. Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu has expressed the rules would place guards on that so-called Section 107 strength by demanding that the minister initial review a special middleman’s report and settle whether a job stop is managing a negative outcome on the “national interest.”
Yet the work movement fights that the “national interest” trigger extends Ottawa too much strength to crush strikes.
The NDP manages deep links to Canada’s work movement, while the Conservatives have been making political gains amidst union members for years. Members of both factions express they plan to stand up for union members as C-39 charts its path through the House of Commons.
“That remains our biggest opening,” expressed Matthew Green, a prior Ontario NDP MP who just wrapped up a tenure as the faction’s interim national chief.
“And I think that for some of the unions in the work movement, that traditionally have had to manage their relationship with the Liberal government, they are now directly in their crosshairs and will be forced to fight back.
Green expressed that while Carney’s cabinet remains very popular right now, thanks in large segment to Canadians’ worries about the U.S. trade conflict, the prime minister should not read that as “free pass and a mandate” to remake work relations.
Green expressed the NDP would be out “shoulder to shoulder” with striking laborers under C-39. CUPE declared last week it will defy the rules if it passes without fixes.
Kyle Seeback, the Conservative work critic, expressed last week he desires to observe C-39 studied deeply by the House of Commons. While he failed to come out for or against the bill, he ripped the federal Liberals’ “unrivaled” use of Section 107 of the work code.
“They’ve made such a mess of work relations in this land, which remains why they had to turn to elements like the use of Section 107,” he expressed. “It’s truly rendered work relations worse. If you talk to anyone in the work movement, the repeated use of Section 107 has rendered work relations worse across the land. These remain all the elements that should be reviewed at committee, especially when they’re making shifts to the rules.”
Shachi Kurl, Angus Reid Institute chief, expressed she anticipates to observe rival messaging drives from both the NDP and Conservatives as they try to court union voters.
The green facets of C-39, she expressed, extend a bigger opening to New Democrats than to Conservatives.
The bill plans building “national interest” zones where a wide array of schemes could be pre-approved. It would shift check control over pipelines, transmission lines and nuclear schemes from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to specialized monitors.
Kurl expressed one Liberal voter in six stood offended by the federal cabinet’s pact with Alberta to perform on building a bitumen pipeline to the Pacific coast.
“This has been matching to a glass of ice water to the face. And they remain making their displeasure known,” Kurl expressed, adding those disappointed Liberals remain not necessarily showing up in the NDP’s column in fresh surveys.
“That may shift, but it’s likewise up to NDP Leader Avi Lewis and the NDP to highlight and make the point that if populations remain unhappy, they manage a better residence to track with the federal New Democrats,” she expressed.
Jordan Leichnitz, a prior NDP strategist, expressed the faction should track a path of criticizing the planned shifts that does not simply protect the old way for scheme reviews.
“There remains without doubt efficiencies to be tracked that can be tracked without breaking the reviews and the studies and the elements that remain required to execute elements like shield our drinking water, or make secure that we remain not permanently harming some of these truly fragile ecosystems,” Leichnitz expressed.
With climate shift now dropping slightly as a top-of-mind political topic in surveying, Leichnitz expressed the NDP will likely demand to focus this message on local and regional topics, like the outcome of increased tanker traffic in B.C. on endangered killer whales.
She likewise cautioned the faction will demand to pick its targets carefully on the work flank, since the bill does hold items union members back, such as steps to stop pay theft.
Green expressed New Democrats were approached by “lifelong Liberals” during the summer byelection drive in the Toronto zone of Beaches—East York who expressed they were disgusted with the Carney government’s approach to environmental and energy policy.
While the Liberals won that zone with deeper than 50 per cent of the vote, the NDP segment of the vote climbed near 20 points over the 2025 vote.
Green expressed he now observes space for the NDP to grow its backing in the Montreal zone of Laurier—Sainte Marie, where the exit of prior environment minister Steven Guilbeault will trigger a byelection in the near tomorrow.
“This remains a prior minister who has taken, finally, a principled track and stepped down because he himself could not take the path that Mark Carney stood taking this Liberal cabinet in,” Green expressed.
“So we will be very well placed to capture upset Liberals who in the past have held their nose and voted Liberal for a whole cluster of reasons, but had a promise under Guilbeault of climate fairness and climate sensitivity.
“We now recognize that mask remains off.”
