With the stall of trade talks between Canada and the US, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) said workers needed more investment and fewer cuts from the 2025 federal budget.
It has been more than two weeks since the U.S. president, Donald Trump, called off trade negotiations over a TV ad campaign.
Canadian goods going south of the border are facing a 35 per cent tariff with the exception of energy, energy resources, and potash.
Vice-president of the CLC, Siobhan Vipond, said that while a good trade deal could have helped workers, the focus should never be on making the deal itself. Rather, supporting workers should be the main priority.
“If the talks were not going to result in an agreement that was going to shore up what we need to see moving forward – an end to the over reliance on the US – then the talks needed to stall,” Vipond said in an interview with rabble.ca. “But what can’t stop is supporting Canadian workers.”
The 2025 federal budget, tabled on Tuesday last week, includes some investments that the CLC regarded as positive. The budget included more than $25 billion in support for agriculture, fishing and forestry. As well, the government committed $75 million to the Union Training and Innovation Program and has created a new $1,100 tax credit for personal support workers.
“These investments show that when government listens to working people, we can make real progress together,” said CLC president Bea Bruske. “These measures signal a shift toward putting workers at the heart of Canada’s economic strategy. Canada’s unions will work with the government to ensure we can build on this momentum by investing in good union jobs, expanding public services, and ensuring every worker shares in the prosperity they help create.”
Despite the progress, however, the labour congress has been critical of the funding cuts to public services in a time when more Canadians may need timely access to them. The trade dispute with the U.S. has led to thousands of jobs lost.
READ MORE: Federal budget cuts to public sector will weaken services, unions warn
Canada’s unemployment rate fell for the first time in months in October, after it hit the highest it has been since May 2016. Still, the unemployment rate in October 2025 remains higher than it was this time last year.
Vipond shared concerns about how public service cuts may affect Employment Insurance (EI) as people face the possibility of layoffs.
“Best case scenario is investing so that people don’t lose their jobs, right?” Vipond said. “But when things happen and people lose their jobs, EI should be there for them. That’s not the reality in our system, when we only have two out of five people who can access it.”
Budget 2025 does include temporary measures to provide EI benefits to workers who agree to work reduced hours due to a decrease in business activity beyond their employer’s control. The government wrote in the budget that this helps employers and employees avoid layoffs while supplementing reduced income with EI benefits.
Vipond and the CLC, however, want to see EI permanently modernized to meet the current needs of workers.
“There’s implications to not being there for people,” Vipond said. “It was really evident that we need improvement to our EI system when we saw this initial shock happen after the tariff announcements. Because our EI has not kept up with needs, it could not immediately respond and it was leaving people behind.”
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