The SCOC makes a partially bad decision

The Supreme Court today decided that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right to collective bargaining, and that governments should not be able to change the rules for union contracts arbitrarily.

In one respect, I agree. Contracts are contracts and should not be easily violated by a legislature looking for an easy way out of a problem that in all truth the legislatures created in the first place.

However, the more fundamentally significant problem with the decision is that the Supreme Court's ruling says that collective bargaining is protected under the freedom of association. The problem with this is that the freedom not to associate was not clarified. This decision has reinforced the problem of closed-shops in Canada which does not bode well for business or government activities.

The only way governments will be able to reduce union contract costs for public services now will be to reduce public services, or get out of particular services altogether.

We need a case to go to the Supreme Court challenging the closed shop to force a decision on the freedom to not associate, or to associate with others rather than be forced to join unions.