Bélanger: This is Solidarity News on RadioLabour. This is a RadioLabour Canada report recorded on Friday, May 15th, 2026. I’m Marc Bélanger. In the report this week: workers take to the streets at the CLC National Convention in Winnipeg this week, the LabourStart report about union events, and singing.
Bruske: The time has finally come to take it to the streets, my friends. Today we’re going to rally for Canadian jobs because we know the moment that we are in.
Bélanger: That is Bea Bruske, the President of the Canadian Labour Congress. The CLC held its 31st Constitutional Convention in Winnipeg this week. The Congress is the largest labour organization in Canada. It brings together dozens of national and international unions, plus provincial and territorial federations of labour, representing more than three million workers across the country. Just before the street demonstration started, a number of union leaders spoke to the convention delegates.
Scott Lunny, United Steelworkers
Lunny: Hello, delegates. I’m Scott Lunny. I’m the Western Canadian Director for the United Steelworkers. And I want to talk about our jobs — our union jobs. All of our union jobs are important. They’re critical to us, to our families, and to our communities. Our resource jobs, like the miners in northern Manitoba; the manufacturing jobs, like the steelworkers in Selkirk; our municipal workers in our communities; workers in education and healthcare; our postal workers; our federal and provincial public sector workers; and our building trades friends build our communities. And those jobs are under attack. They’re under attack from governments. They’re under attack from corporations, from tech bros. They’re under attack from the billionaire class and Donald F-ing Trump. And we are pushing back. You are pushing back. But friends, if we do that together, if we fight back together, we can win.
Sharon DeSousa, PSAC
DeSousa: My name is Sharon DeSousa, and I’m the National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Our public services are under attack. Municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal. And I have a message to tell you. We’re not going to take this shit. It is time for us to stand up and fight. Because I will tell you something. When public services collapse, it’s privatized. It’s contracted out. And what happens? Every single one of us, our families, our communities suffer. So are you going to stand up for public services? Are you going to stand up for good wages? Are you going to stand up across this country, coast to coast to coast, to defend your brothers, sisters, and friends, to ensure that we have good unionized jobs? When we are united, we are stronger. Solidarity.
UFCW Canada
Sawyer: I’m Barry Sawyer, National President of UFCW Canada. Delegates, sisters, brothers, and friends. Across this country, working people are feeling the pressure. The cost of living continues to go up. And at the same time, too many good Canadian jobs are disappearing, being outsourced, or replaced with insecure work. At UFCW Canada, we know that protected Canadian jobs means protected Canadian communities. Because when a food processing plant closes, or a warehouse job is contracted out, or retail workers lose stable hours, it doesn’t just affect that workplace. It affects entire towns, families, and futures.
Canadian workers in this room are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fairness. We need governments at every level to invest in Canadian workers, Canadian agriculture, Canadian manufacturing, and Canadian food production. We need stronger labour laws that stop the race to the bottom and hold employers accountable when they exploit workers or abandon communities. And let’s be clear: protecting jobs also means protecting the workers who do them. This means fair wages, safe workplaces, benefits, pensions, respect on the job, and pathways to permanent residency for migrant workers who help feed this country.
UFCW Canada members show up every single day to work in grocery stores, food plants, warehouses, healthcare, agriculture, and communities from coast to coast to coast. We’re proud of the work we do, and we will never stop fighting for good union jobs here in Canada. Folks, the time has come. Let’s go hit the street.
Avi Lewis at the CLC convention
Bélanger: One of the featured speakers at the CLC convention was the newly elected leader of the federal NDP, Avi Lewis.
Lewis: It’s fantastic to be back in Winnipeg, standing together again with workers from coast to coast to coast. Just six weeks ago, I was right here in Winnipeg with thousands of New Democrats working together to renew our party and reignite our movement. Woven through the crowd, as always, at an NDP convention were hundreds of folks from labour — regional reps, shop stewards, workers, fresh from organizing their workplaces and fighting for their rights. That kind of solidarity is always inspiring to see. To look out into a room and see what our party can be at its best: the party of workers and labour.
After the results were announced, after I stopped fibrillating and I came back on stage, I was joined by a big crowd of supporters and members, including union leaders and rank-and-file members, standing together to recommit to the NDP’s fundamental purpose: to make life better for working people, shoulder to shoulder with the labour movement, as always.
Now, of course, I don’t know if you also felt this, but it all seemed pretty poignant just a couple of weeks later when another convention was held for another federal party. I’m sure you all saw how different that one looked, when a minister of the federal government of that other party asked if anyone from labour was in the hall. And from a distant corner came one lone voice, one sad little “woo-hoo.” It was a bit cringeful, of course — a perfect moment to share snarkily on social media. But I don’t bring this up for laughs or for partisan potshots. I bring it up because it’s a disturbing sign of the state of politics in this country.
At the helm of this nation, we have a government that talks a lot about building — build, build, build — major projects, fast-tracking major investments, one-stop shopping for accelerated approvals. But what’s missing from all this big talk, who is missing in the messaging, is you. They keep forgetting to mention that all this work can only happen in partnership with labour. The same way workers and labour are missing from the economic updates and budgets, from the projections that inform the government about what’s happening in our economy.
I was on CBC television on the day of the spring economic update, and I happened to mention to David Cochrane the notable lack of trade union economists at the front of that document of the spring economic update, where the private sector forecasters, otherwise known as bankers, are listed. And he said, are you saying trade unions should be involved in the economic forecast? And I’m like, yeah, you’re damn right they should. Some of the best economists in this country are trade union economists.
This government clearly has a hard time remembering workers and unions. When Mark Carney created his first cabinet, he forgot to appoint a Minister of Labour. This government did a 30-day consultation on artificial intelligence. They called it a sprint, in the words of the tech bros with whom they are so enamoured. And they forgot to consult with trade unions. Luckily, some of the visionary leaders in this room on this stage crashed the AI party last week and the concerns of workers in front of the minister responsible. And they demanded — we demanded — that employers in this country stop and talk to workers and unions before deploying AI in the workplace.
The truth is that this government can only deliver major projects if labour is at the table. Just like they can only address the critical shortages of our shattered public services by investing in workers, in people — not by contracting out and privatizing hospitals and airports, but by putting real dollars into the systems that millions of us rely on, into the economy of care that holds this country together.
In fact, if this government truly wants to chart a path forward for our country, it must do so hand-in-hand with Canadian workers. I’m here to tell you that the NDP is fighting for this. Every day on the Hill, although our mighty caucus is only five strong, our MPs are hard at work. I want to give you a little forecast of the next few weeks when we will be sprinting to the end of this session of Parliament, battling to secure badly needed wins for workers.
Number one, we need to permanently delete Section 107 from the Canada Labour Code. It’s got to go. They’re opening it up and we are taking it out. Leah Gazan, as you know, the great MP from right here in Winnipeg — the centre of the universe, as she will never stop saying — has a bill that plants that flag firmly in the ground. No worker should be forced back to work when they’re standing up for their rights on a picket line. That’s got to end in this country.
Our House Leader, Heather McPherson, who you’ve seen on the floor this week, will be advancing a bill to put an end to company unions like the CLAC, and put power back in the hands of workers and our real unions. Our parliamentary leader and labour critic — you know him well, Don Davies — who worked tirelessly with you on the fight for anti-scab legislation, is now working to slam shut shameful loopholes in that legislation that allow companies like Rogers to fly in scabs. No scabs means no scabs. And as the new kid at school, not even enrolled yet in the House of Commons, I will be right there with them, reminding the government and the media who built this country and who this country ought to be serving. Because Canada is only as strong as its workers.
Of course, we don’t stop at legislation. That’s the work in the House. It is not the work of changing society. We have been standing up for Canada’s place in the world, fighting for an independent economy and a foreign policy that is independent from that of the United States. A Canada that stands up against genocide in Gaza. A Canada that stands up against the chaotic, illegal, immoral, and senseless war with Iran started unilaterally by the U.S. and Israel. I was proud to be invited by Labour for Palestine and to speak at their side event yesterday. And I salute that work of Labour for Palestine in this house. We need a Canada that stands up for fundamental human rights for every precious human being on this planet. That’s the bigger fight. And it’s never been more urgent in our country.
That’s why we have been relentless in pointing out the everyday emergency that Canadians face today — the grinding unfairness of the cost of living and a system that makes life harder and harder for working people. The NDP is laser-focused these days on solutions that attack the cost-of-living crisis head-on. As soon as I got to Ottawa after being elected here in Winnipeg, I called on the federal government to ban a new practice that is already widely in use in the U.S. and is threatening to take hold here in Canada. Surveillance pricing.
Surveillance pricing. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Big grocers and other retailers are teaming up with big tech — the broligarchs who stand astride our global economy — to jack up the prices you are paying for food, for diapers, for whatever essentials you need to get by. And when I say “you” here, I mean you personally — using your personal data like your search history, your loyalty points card, or even AI reading through your emails. They use anything they can to maximize the profits they extract from your shopping cart. It’s happening across the retail landscape, especially on websites where you shop, but even in brick-and-mortar stores, thanks to those new little digital price tags that are popping up on shelves everywhere you go. It means that two people can be shown two completely different prices for the same item on the same website or in the same store at the same time. It is unfair. It’s un-Canadian. It is downright creepy.
And that’s why Premier Wab Kinew, who’s NDP — government here in Manitoba — is already banning this predatory practice, leading as NDP governments always do. And that’s why NDP premiers-in-waiting across the country, from Marit Stiles in Ontario to Carla Beck in Saskatchewan, are pushing for the same in their own provinces and territories.
On the national stage, the NDP, as you can imagine, is not stopping at the grocery store. We’re going after all the tiny clubs of big corporations that dominate every sector of our economy. We are calling out monopoly control, price gouging, collusion, and the hoarding of mega-profits in sector after sector. The cost-of-living crisis is nothing less than an attack on the day-to-day lives of the working class of this country. Today, the market is failing to provide the essentials — the housing, food, communications, transportation, and healthcare that we need to survive — at a price we can afford on the wages we make. It is called market failure. And providing solutions for Canadians in a time of market failure is literally what government is for.
So we’re calling for a public option for groceries. It is time for a Canadian federal government that steps up and goddamn governs in the midst of a crisis for working people.
That’s what we fight for day after day. Groceries that could lower the cost of food by 30 to 45 percent. A public option for smartphones and internet access to finally break up the telecom monopoly that charges Canadians the highest prices in the world for an essential 21st-century service and doesn’t pay their workers enough at the same time. And we are fighting to make real what our brothers and sisters and siblings from CUPW have been demanding for years — a public postal bank.
I know what we read from our friends at the National Post in the mouths of corporate pundits, but these are not radical ideas. B.C. and Manitoba still have public auto insurance. Saskatchewan has a public telecom company. Let’s hear it for SaskTel — may we revive it to its days of glory as it has been enshittified by the current Saskatchewan government. Hell, Alberta has a public bank, and the U.S. Armed Forces Commissary already sells public groceries to eight million service members and their families. Folks, this is not a radical set of proposals. It is time for a Canadian federal government that steps up and goddamn governs in the midst of a crisis for working people.
Friends, I’m not going to lie to you, our party is in a pivotal moment. Our electoral high-water mark was 15 years ago now, with Jack and the Orange Wave. Despite a smaller caucus, we’ve made big wins in recent years under Jagmeet Singh: dental care for nine million Canadians, that breakthrough anti-scab legislation, the beginning — the beachhead — of a real pharmacare plan here in Canada, which we are fighting for day after day to extend that promise the Carney government made and is clearly backing off on, to make those pharmacare deals with all provinces.
But over the years, the NDP has lost touch with too much of the working class of this country. Now we need to show the humility, the self-reflection, and the honesty to rebuild a lot of critical relationships. That means hearing directly from union leaders, from people working on shop floors, on the front lines of healthcare and the care economy, and the countless jobs that keep our country running. That means engaging — re-engaging — with racialized workers, with immigrant communities, with queer and trans workers, with all the communities that are systemically marginalized and oppressed in our society. It means deepening relationships with the disability justice community, with so many Canadians who can’t work or need accommodations to work, and who have so much wisdom and creativity to offer our collective struggle.
So I want to hear from you. All right, don’t be shy. It’s my job and it’s my privilege to have the hard conversations. I welcome them. So that together we can rebuild a party that serves the hopes and aspirations of millions of workers once again in this country. These are the spaces where labour organizers gather and strengthen our cause. It’s in these spaces, in your spaces, where our party can find its way again, shoulder to shoulder with workers.
Canada needs this party. A party that shows up on every picket line. A party that fights like hell against the grinding unfairness that’s forcing parents to skip meals so their kids can eat. And a party that understands that the greatest gift we can pass on from one generation to the next is a union card. A ticket to prosperity, to dignity, to a better life for all.
Thank you to the world. Merci.
Closing
Bélanger: And that’s it. Labour news you can use. I’m Marc Bélanger. Thank you for listening, and remember: it’s all about solidarity.
(The original episode continues with a LabourStart report from Derek Blackadder on global union news and a closing musical performance by Larry Rousseau — omitted here as outside the transition-relevant scope.)