## Facts

- Ontario excluded agricultural workers from the Labour Relations Act, 1995 (LRA), but enacted the Agricultural Employees Protection Act, 2002 (AEPA) to govern their associational activity.
- The AEPA permits agricultural employees to form and join an employees’ association and to make collective representations to employers about workplace terms and conditions.
- The AEPA requires employers to receive and consider those representations, but it does not implement an LRA-style, majoritarian collective bargaining and certification regime.
- Agricultural workers and a union challenged the AEPA and the LRA exclusion, alleging the scheme failed to provide effective protection for collective bargaining.
- The Ontario Court of Appeal held the scheme unconstitutional under Charter s. 2(d) based largely on Health Services.
- Ontario appealed; a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal and dismissed the constitutional challenge.

## Issues

1. Whether the AEPA regime and continued exclusion from the LRA substantially interfered with freedom of association under Charter s. 2(d) by failing to provide effective protection for organizing and collective bargaining.
2. Whether the different statutory treatment of agricultural workers violated Charter s. 15 equality rights by imposing discriminatory disadvantage.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal and dismissed the action, upholding the AEPA’s constitutionality.
- A majority held the AEPA did not breach s. 2(d) because, interpreted in a Charter-consistent manner, it provides a meaningful process for collective workplace representations and good-faith consideration by employers.
- The majority held the AEPA did not breach s. 15 because the statutory distinction, without proof of discriminatory disadvantage, did not establish unconstitutional inequality.
- Concurring judges agreed the AEPA was constitutional but differed on the scope of s. 2(d), with one set of reasons urging a much narrower approach.
- A dissent would have found the AEPA insufficient to protect meaningful collective bargaining for a vulnerable workforce and therefore unconstitutional under s. 2(d).

## Legal Principles

- Freedom of association protects a procedural capacity for individuals to act collectively to pursue workplace goals; it does not constitutionalize any single labour-relations model or guarantee bargaining outcomes.
- Government violates s. 2(d) when it substantially interferes with collective action, including by making good-faith collective bargaining effectively impossible.
- The constitutional minimum recognized in the collective bargaining context is a meaningful opportunity for employees to make collective representations and for those representations to be considered in good faith.
- A weaker statutory scheme is not unconstitutional solely because it differs from, or offers fewer tools than, an LRA-style Wagner model; failure to achieve organizing success does not by itself prove substantial interference.
- Different statutory treatment of a worker group does not establish a s. 15 breach absent proof that the distinction imposes discriminatory disadvantage.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Ontario’s AEPA, holding that freedom of association requires a meaningful process for collective representations and good-faith consideration, but does not require the legislature to provide agricultural workers with an LRA-style collective bargaining regime, and the differential statutory scheme was not shown to be discriminatory under equality rights.


Ontario (Att’y Gen.) v. Fraser, 2011 SCC 20 (Can.)