Sunday August 17, 2025 | OTTAWA, ON [Reporting from VICTORIA, BC] [Posted at 10:20 am PT – Updated 8:48 pm]
News analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Air Canada flight attendants are back on the picket line today, despite an instruction from the Jobs and Families Minister that both employer and the CUPE union should get back to the negotiating table and that binding arbitration be pursued while workers get back to their jobs.
Picket lines are being seen today at major Canadian airports including in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.
Over 10,000 Air Canada unionized workers are on strike.
Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu announced yesterday that flight attendants are essentially ‘essential workers’ but without using that wording. She said the broader reason for blocking a strike was to “secure industrial peace” and secure the economy.
The strike has already been having an immediate impact on Canadians – most specifically travellers but also the broader economy. The shipping of essential cargo, such as pharmaceuticals and organs for surgical care, was already being interrupted. Those impacts are real and immediate.
Section 107 of the Canadian Labour Code was used to justify the, after she heard from mediators last night that the two sides — employer and employees — are too far apart to see things resolved in any reasonable time frame.
At 2 pm ET today another 200+ Air Canada flights were cancelled, some for which tickets had already been issued by the airline, according to news reports out of Toronto.
That comes on the heels of the airline already having cancelled hundreds of flights in preparation for the full strike of flight attendant workers. A full stoppage of flights was scheduled for Saturday morning August 16 at 1 am ET.
===== RELATED:
- Jobs minister orders Air Canada flight attendants back to work (August 16, 2025)
- Air Canada continues pre-strike wind-down (August 15, 2025)
- NEWS SECTIONS: BUSINESS & ECONOMY | TRAVEL & TRANSPORTATION