Canada’s labour movement dodged a bullet in April’s federal election. The bullet from the right was deflected slightly off course by the collective decision of Canadian voters to consolidate the centre-left vote behind Marc Carney’s Liberals. But it was a very close call after surging and ebbing political waves saw a late shift of working class voters back towards the Conservatives—the presumptive winners until the new American imperialism threatened Canadian sovereignty and fundamentally shifted the dynamic and direction of federal politics.

Canadian unions welcomed the result with relief and are now searching for points of influence and collaboration with the Carney government to hold the line on past gains and defend worker interests in the ongoing trade war and the coming program of “nation-building” projects. There are a few seats for labour at several of the new government’s tables, but unions are one of many interest groups in the ever-widening ‘Team Canada’ camp. Moreover, Canadian labour is stumbling into a new political era with a substantial list of political problems. Foremost is the gaping reality that its 2025 campaign had only a modest impact on Canadian workers and its lack of a cohesive, uniting political strategy left the labour movement up for grabs.

Neither the labour movement nor the NDP was able to slow or reverse the global “dealignment” trend (about which I recently wrote in CD), which has seen working class voters around the world abandon traditional parties of the working class and move towards right-wing populism. When the votes were counted, it was clear that working class dealignment in Canada was even more pronounced. If the election had been determined by working class votes alone, Poilievre’s right-wing populism and fake “working class conservatism” may well have prevailed. According to a post-election analysis by EKOS Politics, the Conservative surge was “driven in large part by right-wing populists… younger, overwhelmingly male, centred on college educated, stronger in working class, not middle class, Canada.”

As the Carney government approaches 100 days in office, it enjoys majority approval ratings and the Conservative tide in the late days of the election campaign has subsided. But the deep divisions in the working class that have grown over a decade remain. The 2025 election results were a powerful message that a non-partisan dialogue with millions of workers cannot be further delayed.

And while some unions are waiting to jump into the election review and leadership renewal process in the NDP that will commence in September, so far there is no sign yet that the labour movement itself will undertake a review of its own political performance and strategies.

There is no point in glossing over the growing conservatism in a large section of the working class, including among union memberships. In 2025, several high union density constituencies saw large swings to the Conservative Party, flipping crucial ridings such as Windsor West with a 23 percent increase in the Tory vote.

Conservative flips in other ridings including Brampton West, London—Fanshawe, and Kichener South in Ontario’s manufacturing belt, and former NDP ridings in BC like Skeena—Bulkley Valley, Nanaimo—Ladysmith and Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, garnered most media attention. However, measured against 2015 when union votes played a decisive role in defeating the Harper government by driving down union member support for Conservatives to 24 percent, there has been a steady increase in the Conservative vote across most “working class” constituencies. In 50 selected heavily working class ridings in English Canada defined by waged income, manual labour, manufacturing and service sector employment and education, average support for the Conservatives increased incrementally in each election—a six percent increase from 2015 to 2025 across these ridings.

Since 2015, growing Conservative support had been partly masked by a decade of Liberal governments that repealed anti-labour legislation, expanded social programs, and openly endorsed union rights and collective bargaining. Public attitudes toward unions became more favourable, and post-COVID labour market conditions created openings for strong bargaining outcomes, including a historic surge in strike activity. Yet beneath the surface, political and cultural unrest was taking shape, alongside a continued decline in private sector union density. By 2025, this dealignment broke through long-standing barriers, emerging as a visible and potent force within the labour movement.

It was only a handful of unions breaking tradition and endorsing Conservative candidates in 2025, but they stood out in an election in which there were even fewer formal endorsements for the NDP or Liberals. In addition to police unions, the Conservatives were formally endorsed by the Boilermakers International Union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters in New Brunswick, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 67 in Hamilton, IBEW Local Unions in Windsor, Regina and Québec, and the Steelworkers Local 2251 in Sault Ste. Marie. The Labourers International Union did not officially endorse the Conservatives, but it endorsed the party’s “Boots Not Suits” campaign aimed at building trades workers. It also hosted one of Pierre Poilievre’s major rallies at the end of the campaign.

Those endorsements followed the Ontario provincial election where eight building trades organizations endorsed the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, as did a Unifor telephone worker local union and a Unifor autoworker local union.

Three national unions—CUPE, USW and the Amalgmated Transit Union—formally endorsed the NDP in the election, and the Ontario Operating Engineers and Ontario Carpenters endorsed the Liberal Party. However, the great majority of Canadian unions refrained from any formal endorsements and instead focused on issues and get-out-the-vote campaigns.

Labour campaigns in 2025 responded to Conservative populism with a worker-centred populism and warnings of the anti-labour record of Poilievre and the Conservatives. The Canadian Labour Congress reported on May 1 that more than 40,000 individuals had signed on to its “Workers Together” campaign. The campaign was launched early in the year with a political action conference. It produced an extensive policy platform, a social media campaign with videos, memes and text messaging, and in April it organized door-to-door canvases.

Canada’s largest unions also organized separate information and voter mobilization campaigns directed at their members. The most significant was Unifor Votes, which had 78 member organizers across the country and ran election day operations in 25 “battleground” ridings. USW Votes also used member organizers in phone banks and canvassing in four constituencies: Toronto Beaches—East York, Toronto Parkdale—High Park, Hamilton Mountain and Edmonton Griesbach. The CUPE Votes campaign included election information materials and some canvassing. UFCW Votes organized focus groups of members and group discussions with members.

Despite these campaigns, fewer Canadian union bodies registered to directly participate in the 2025 election than in past contests. These included 13 national unions (Canada’s Building Trades, CAPE, CFNU, Canadian Teachers Federation, CUPW, CUPE, FTQ, NUPGE, PSAC, UFCW, PIPSC, USW and Unifor), four provincial unions (BCGEU, HEU, EFTO, and ONA) two local unions (CUPE 4400, Vancouver IFF) and the Toronto and York Labour Council (total union third-party spending data will not be available until September).

Overall labour movement campaigns in 2025 had a modest impact and did not nearly match the urgency felt by voters across the nation—urgency that propelled the coalescence of an anti-Conservative vote and the highest voter turnout since 1993.

Labour’s political strategies underwent a stress test in 2025, and did not fare well. For the majority of the unions with the primary goal of preventing a hostile government, the election was much too close for comfort. For those unions that see the NDP as the political arm of labour, 2025 was devastating. Neither camp can be satisfied with the results or the state of trade union politics.

The New Democrats’ stunning losses have pushed the party to the margins of federal politics, triggering a year-long post-mortem and leadership renewal process. The election undeniably left the labour movement with far fewer allies in Parliament. While much commentary has attributed the NDP’s defeat to strategic voting, there was no significant, organized effort to promote it. Focusing solely on that explanation overlooks deeper shifts in working class political opinion—shifts that fractured partisan loyalties and split working class votes between Liberals and Conservatives. Abacus Research found that 21 percent of 2021 NDP voters backed the Conservatives in 2025, and of the 17 NDP seats lost, 10 went to the Conservatives. These results came despite major unions mobilizing to protect NDP incumbents.

A significant portion of the labour movement remains loyal to the NDP and will prioritize the party’s renewal in the year ahead. A revitalized NDP that reclaims its labour roots could reinvigorate working class politics. Yet without broad backing from the labour movement and a clear determination to transform the party, its decades-long drift from those roots is unlikely to be reversed.

Meanwhile, other unions will pursue their own paths, forging institutional relationships at various levels of government wherever possible. But this approach, too, lacks the momentum needed to place working class politics at the heart of Canada’s political agenda.

Employment and income security have been emphasized in labour’s demands on the Carney government. “We need more than band-aid solutions,” wrote CLC President Bea Bruske just two weeks after the election. “We need a comprehensive strategy that ensures no worker is left behind. The government must take decisive action, including imposing export taxes on Canadian energy, to demonstrate that Canada will stand firm in defending its industries and workforce.”

Unifor went further and called for an immediate national economic program, including penalties on companies that move jobs to the United States; an expansion of Canada’s national railway system to move oil, gas and energy products on an east-west grid; a defence pact with Europe; stronger Canadian procurement to underpin domestic aerospace and other industries; a ban on foreign ownership of critical minerals, and; leveraging a national housing program to protect and expand forest industry employment.

Yet with few exceptions, the labour movement was largely looking on as the Carney government passed its signature legislation, Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act. The act dramatically deregulates approval processes for major projects that are expected to come largely from private sector proponents. The government will not take a “top down approach… saying we want this, we want that,” Carney said in early July.

The business lobby, including the Business Council, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce, and the right-wing think tanks from the Fraser Institute to C.D. Howe, in turn have flooded the government with demands, calling for sweeping corporate tax cuts and credits, government austerity measures across all ministries and unconditional support for oil and gas pipelines, among many others. Both the Fraser Institute and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute have also been at the forefront of calls to dismantle supply management in Canadian agriculture.

As with the election campaign, labour’s political presence and actions will need to be dramatically scaled up if there is any hope of influencing the Carney government’s choices and direction. More than a nation-building industrial policy is required. Political protest, direct action, and even strikes will be necessary to show decision-makers that workers will not wait passively for private sector investment to deliver job security and protect their rights in the face of trade wars and US aggression against Canadian workers.

It has been done before. During the Second World War, Canadian unions linked workers’ demands to the national interest. Between 1941 and 1943, strikes in key wartime industries—though technically illegal under wartime regulations—won public backing and led to Privy Council Order 1003 in 1944, which established union recognition and certification. The 1945 Ford strike in Windsor then secured the Rand Formula on union security—a major breakthrough that fuelled union growth. Just two years later, in the immediate post-war period, coordinated strikes by west coast forest workers, Great Lakes seamen, and Québec textile workers consolidated the Rand Formula and won a nationwide 40-hour workweek.

As Charles Lipton wrote in his authoritative The Trade Union Movement of Canada:

It was necessary for the trade union movement to conduct the kind of fight for conditions and organization which would consolidate the workers and combine their elemental economic needs with the general cause of victory over fascism. The strengthening of the movement became decisive. That is what happened: for the unions these were years of progress unprecedented with giant strides in membership, unity and consciousness.

Nothing will resonate more with the broader working class, both unionized and non-unionized, than widespread political and economic action. Equally urgent, however, is the need to confront working class conservatism, both in society at large and within unions, through dialogue and education. Meaningful engagement will require large-scale sectoral and community outreach, along with stronger ties to social movements rooted in working class communities. At present, these aims are neither central priorities of trade union organizing and political action nor common topics of discussion among labour leaders and strategists.

There are clear starting points for a renewed working class dialogue. Union education programs must be better resourced, with updated content and methods designed to address the generational challenge of working class conservatism. Organizers and educators will also need to move beyond their traditional focus on wages and workplace issues. Affordability was not the sole or even dominant factor driving working class voters to the Conservatives in 2025. The EKOS analysis of polarization revealed sharp divides within specific segments of the working class: young men showed high levels of institutional distrust and were heavily exposed to disinformation, while social and health issues, such as vaccination, proved strong predictors of voting behaviour. An unprecedented gender gap—with women showing strong resistance to Conservative appeals—underscores the need for an integrated approach that addresses both economic and cultural concerns.

The nub of working class conservatism is also close at hand for Canadian unions. Skilled trades are a key constituency in the working class, and they have led the move towards conservatism and populism. In 25 federal working class constituencies in English Canada with the highest concentration of skilled trades, the Conservatives have won 23 in each of the four elections since 2015. Other regional factors explain those outcomes as well, but the correlation of the trades with Conservative political strategies and voting make skilled workers the front line in the struggle for working class consciousness.

There are encouraging trends in the Canadian working class that can and should be leveraged. Generally, low-income workers did not buy into Conservative populism. In the 50 English Canadian federal constituencies with the lowest median incomes, only 16 elected Conservatives and fewer than 10 showed substantial growth in support for the Conservatives between 2015 and 2025. In 12 cases Conservative support declined.

Dealignment may be global, but it is not universal. There are demographic majorities and resilient, struggling communities that can be counted on to respond positively to a broad, class-based appeal from Canada’s unions. But if labour’s low-intensity politics and patchwork strategies are unchanged and a further working class shift to right-wing populism is left unchecked, it may not be possible to dodge the next bullet. To elevate employment security and worker rights to the level of central, determining issues in Canadian affairs will require an overhaul of labour’s political program and strategies.

Fred Wilson writes on labour and social issues. He is retired from Unifor and is the author of A New Kind of Union (Lorimer, 2019). He also volunteers as an advisor to the Mexico Worker Rights Action (CALIS) project. Follow his posts on Bluesky and Medium.