Last summer, about 25 Rogers technicians in Abbotsford, B.C., stood on a picket line for something that should never have been controversial: equal pay for equal work. They were not asking for luxury. They were asking for fairness. If two people do the same job, they should earn the same wage.
When Canada’s federal anti-scab law took effect in June 2025, many workers thought it was a real breakthrough. It was supposed to stop employers in federally regulated workplaces from using replacement workers to break strikes and weaken bargaining power. But Rogers quickly showed how a big corporation can turn a legal protection into a loophole.
Instead of respecting the spirit of the law, Rogers brought in managers from across the country to do the work of the striking technicians. The company could hide behind job titles all it wanted, but workers knew the truth. If someone is doing a worker’s job to undermine a strike, that is scabbing. A suit & tie does not make it any less true.
Those 25 workers spent more than four months without paycheques while Rogers kept business moving and profits protected. They eventually won a deal in late October 2025, but the bigger problem never went away. The loophole stayed open, waiting for the next employer willing to exploit it.
And Rogers is not alone. In Windsor, Unifor reported that Titan Tool used scab labour during a long lockout earlier this year while the locked-out workers remained on the line. PSAC members are facing the same kind of pressure. At the Bank of Canada, security officers represented by PSAC went on strike in late June, and the Canada Industrial Relations Board ordered the Bank to stop using contracted workers to replace them. These are not isolated cases. They are warning signs.
That is why Don Davies’s Bill C-284 matters. It is meant to close the gap that lets employers bring in outside managers or other substitutes and pretend they are not replacement workers. A right that can be worked around is not much of a right at all.
This is where the NDP is doing what workers need a party to do: show up, name the problem, and push for a fix. They helped force the original anti-scab law into law, and now they are moving to strengthen it. They are doing this even as corporations have shown exactly how ready they are to game the system.
Now the question is for everyone else in Parliament: where are you?
Working people are done with slogans. They are done with glossy statements about how much they matter. They want action. They want a law that actually stops employers from starving out workers and their families to win a dispute.
It is time for the parties and members of the Canadian Parliament to choose a side and actually stand up for workers.
These are my opinions written to get you thinking about what actually matters in this province. Fairness. Accountability. Who gets helped and who gets left out. Agree with me or don’t. But let’s have a respectful conversation.