(updated July 2008)

• In the past 28 years Canadians have seen a serious erosion of their right to organize into a union and engage in full and free collective bargaining.

•  Federal and provincial governments in Canada passed 189 pieces of legislation since 1982 that have restricted, suspended or denied collective bargaining rights for Canadian workers.

• Canada now has one of the worst records of any Western country in the promotion and protection of labour rights.

• Of the ILO’s 188 Conventions, Canada has only ratified 30.

• Canada has only ratified three of the 30 ILO Conventions developed since 1982.

• Canada has ratified only five of the eight ILO core Conventions. Canada is one of only nine countries in the world that have not ratified Convention No. 29 - Forced Labour (1930). Canada is one of only 29 countries in the world that have not ratified Convention No. 98 – Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining (1949).  Canada is one of only 51 countries in the world that have not ratified Convention No. 138 – Minimum Age (1973).

• Since 1982, unions in Canada have filed more complaints with the ILO’s Freedom of Association Committee than the national labour movements from any of the ILO’s 183 member States.

• There has been 79 ILO complaints filed against Canadian federal and provincial labour legislationsince 1982.

• Of those 79 complaints, the ILO has reached decisions on 77 and found that freedom of association principles had been violated in 73 of the cases.

• Over 90 percent of all ILO complaints on restrictive labour laws passed in Canada since 1982 were found to be in violation of ILO freedom of association principles.

• Workers’ rights in Canada have been chipped away in the last 28 years to the extent that the collective bargaining process favours employers.

• The legislative framework for union organizing and collective bargaining is much more restrictive than what existed at the beginning of the 1980s.