Canadian workers have been through the wringer in the past couple of years. We have seen widespread strikes pivotal to the supply chain across the nation, and at the same time, we have witnessed the Labour Minister crushing every single one of them through an unprecedented legal apparatus. While workers are clearly responding to pauperisation and worsening labour conditions, the extent to which the government will tolerate even union-led grievances has diminished significantly. This is also something that has been shown across the continent, with the historic defeat of the rail workers strikes in the US in 2022 demonstrating how quickly politicians of all stripes will crush anything with the potential to hurt capitalist profits. This is especially true in matters of national competition, now entering a fevered pitch as Trump’s tariff salvos hit dozens of countries around the world. It is in this context that a Canadian ruling class, already stridefully attacking workers, can utilize a rediscovered nationalism as a new weapon. However, it should be emphasized that the legal tools in question are not solely the outcomes of political conflicts led by ‘bad leaders’, but are also continuous with the general assault on the working class by the ruling class. It is precisely in this context, while workers are clouded with nationalism, that the general tendency of policing and preparation for clampdowns manifests itself.

Here in Quebec, we see a prime example of this sort of development with Bill 89, a bill detailing exceptional legal powers to shut down industrial action if it is contrary to ‘public interest’. While legal scholars have already challenged the pretext of the bill under the vague wording of what is the ‘public interest’, there is also a concrete motive that is especially important to workers. Given the tightly intertwined nature of capitalist production, any strike can potentially pose a threat to ‘public interest’, not just tied to the most profitable or strategically important industries; hotel staff, daycare workers, SAQ employees, all could in principle be harming the public interest if capitalist holdings in these relevant industries decline. The vagueness of the language is therefore not a legal aberration or an attempt to secure power for one faction of the bourgeoisie, but a necessity in order to be able to present, and defend capitalist society as a single coherent organ. A strike under such a scheme transforms into something objectionable not just economically, but morally. The key is therefore the change from strikes being tolerated, evaluated, and negotiated through as transactional affairs - as something mediated through official bodies and the legal apparatus, into a reappraisal of their character necessary for the reproduction of society as a whole. In such a context, pharmacists going on strike would be politicised and clamped down upon with ease, because one can invoke countless examples of grandma getting her medication late due to industrial action to get workers on the picket back to work. Thus the Quebec National Assembly aims to further legally solidify the justifications of back to work orders which have already been imposed on port and postal workers in the recent past. This upgraded policing from the state is something that we as workers have seen before in the form of ‘no strike’ clauses developed during the great imperialist confrontations in the 20th century. Although Quebec is still far away from wartime production, the tools capitalists developed to pacify the working class in times of dire need can always resurface and the path towards authoritarian policing re-emerge.

In light of this development, examples of strikes in non-critical industries immediately become attacks on society at large. Hotel staff suddenly strike not for wages, but out of a perverse hatred for elderly customers. Daycare workers strike because they hate and want to punish children. SAQ workers strike because they are lazy and inconsiderate. Any number of contrived and extreme examples can be invoked, but as the capitalist crisis deepens, and as imperialist confrontations sharpen, milestones such as Bill 89 become important reference points for capital in preparing the working class for further misery.