Quebec’s labour tribunal has ruled that the province’s new public-well-being service requirements unjustifiably infringed childcare workers’ freedom of association in a Roberval labour dispute, making the provisions constitutionally inoperative for the parties.
The October 9, 2026 decision in Centre de la petite enfance Le Jardin de Robi inc. et Syndicat des travailleuses des centres de la petite enfance et des bureaux coordonnateurs du Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean – FSSS-CSN, dossier 1461070-71-2602, also revoked two interim orders that had required minimum childcare services during the dispute.
The Tribunal administratif du travail’s three-member panel did not remove the legislation from the statute book for everyone. Its constitutional ruling applies to the parties before it. Nor did it decide the validity of a separate ministerial power to end a strike and send a dispute to arbitration.
The labour conflict itself had already ended: the union stopped its indefinite strike on June 15, and the parties informed the tribunal on July 13 that a new collective agreement had been signed. They nevertheless agreed that the constitutional issue should be decided.
The settlement made the 30-minute meal break unpaid, with an exception for employees already working there when the agreement was signed. Their full break would remain paid if the employer achieved a specified annual budget surplus; otherwise, 15 minutes would be paid.
A dispute over a longstanding paid break
Le Jardin de Robi is a nonprofit childcare centre in Roberval with a permit for 80 children and about 20 unionized employees. Its collective agreement had expired in March 2023. National and regional bargaining had produced agreements, but a local dispute remained over the employer’s request to remove a paid 30-minute meal break that workers had enjoyed for about 40 years.
The employer cited financial difficulties. The union conditionally accepted a reduction in kitchen hours but resisted losing the paid break without compensation. An outside financial review confirmed a precarious financial position, while also finding improvement and a surplus in 2024.
Following strike days, the union began an indefinite strike on October 22, 2025. The new legislation, enacted as Law 14, took effect on November 30. It introduced a regime for services needed to protect the population’s social, economic or environmental security from disproportionate effects of a strike or lockout.
That regime is distinct from the established essential-services system aimed at preventing danger to public health or safety. A government decree permits an employer or union to seek a tribunal order requiring the new category of services; the tribunal then determines whether the parties must maintain them and whether their proposed arrangements are sufficient.
The childcare centre sought government intervention immediately after the law came into force. A decree arrived on February 6, 2026, shortly before a scheduled conciliation meeting. The tribunal found that the employer had focused on obtaining state intervention rather than finding a negotiated compromise.
Three days of services changed the strike
The union challenged the legislation’s constitutionality while the tribunal first considered the service requirements on an interim basis. A March 13 ruling subjected the parties to the regime, and a March 26 ruling determined the services to be maintained.
From April 1, childcare was to be available on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. Almost all the employees had to work those three days to meet staffing ratios. Because their normal workweek was four days, picketing was reduced to one day a week.
The tribunal had initially found that the prolonged shutdown disproportionately affected children’s social security and parents’ ability to work, particularly for families with greater needs. It did not dismiss those difficulties in the constitutional decision. But it concluded that the resulting restrictions substantially undermined the workers’ ability to bargain collectively.
The attorney general, supported by the employer, argued that the regime had not prevented meaningful bargaining: the union had negotiated, struck for about five months before the service orders, and could still strike while maintaining minimum services. They attributed the impasse to the union’s position rather than the legislation. The panel rejected that assessment of the evidence.
Under the constitutional test, the union did not have to show that striking or bargaining had become completely impossible. The question was whether the legislative restrictions substantially interfered with a meaningful collective-bargaining process.
The panel identified three connected problems: employers could initiate the process at a strategically useful moment; the prospect of government intervention encouraged an employer to hold its position rather than negotiate; and broad, unpredictable criteria could change the bargaining rules while negotiations or a strike were underway.
In this case, the panel found that the new regime had contributed to the employer’s inflexible approach and stripped the indefinite strike of much of its practical force. The workers were negotiating an important compensation issue, not a peripheral workplace preference.
A valid objective, but an excessive restriction
The tribunal rejected the union’s argument that the legislation’s purpose was to undermine unions. Protecting the public from disproportionate harm in targeted, exceptional circumstances was a pressing and substantial objective, it found. Maintaining services also had a rational connection to reducing the immediate effects of a strike.
The government nevertheless failed to justify the means it had chosen. The provisions used broad, undefined concepts, could operate across a wide range of sectors and applied throughout a bargaining phase rather than to a particular strike. The government had not provided evidence showing why this approach was a sufficiently tailored restriction.
The attorney general argued that case-by-case decisions by a neutral, independent tribunal made the regime sufficiently tailored. The panel disagreed: giving decisions to an independent tribunal did not cure every problem. The regime could affect bargaining before the tribunal became involved, supplied no independent mechanism to resolve a bargaining impasse, and required service levels to be set for future stoppages whose circumstances were not yet known.
International labour standards also informed the analysis. The panel distinguished narrowly defined essential services, acute national crises and minimum services in public services of fundamental importance from this dispute involving about 20 workers at one childcare centre. It found that the scheme’s application here did not fit those limits and had made the strike ineffective. That reasoning did not reject every form of minimum-service requirement.
The panel also found the scheme’s assessment of public harm too narrow. It focused on the immediate loss of services without allowing adequate consideration of potential longer-term benefits from improved working conditions and services. Partial reopening could relieve some hardship while reduced bargaining pressure prolonged a dispute.
Weighing those considerations, the tribunal concluded that the detrimental effects on freedom of association outweighed the benefits established in this case.
The precise result
The panel held that Labour Code articles 111.22.3 to 111.22.16 violated the bargaining-unit employees’ freedom of association under both the Canadian and Quebec charters, without adequate justification. It declared the regime constitutionally inoperative for the parties and revoked the interlocutory decisions, 2026 QCTAT 1063 and 2026 QCTAT 1250.
The ruling does not grant damages, reinstate the former paid-break provision or undo the negotiated collective agreement. Its significance is the tribunal’s finding that protecting public well-being cannot justify these restrictions without an adequately tailored scheme that respects meaningful collective bargaining.
