Collective Bargaining in the Public Service of Canada: Bold Experiment or Act of Folly?

This brief background sketch of the Canadian labor relations scene suffices to indicate that several important impediments to the introduction of a full-fledged system of public service collective bargaining which exist in the United States have no counterpart north of the border. Particularly at the practical level, there were no insuperable hurdles to the enactment of the 1967 Canadian federal law. To understand how and why the new federal statute came to be enacted within this reasonably hospitable environment, it is important to trace the course of employment relations in the Canadian Public Service