Only if the union itself is a party to the waiver — a clause signed only by the buyer and the seller binds nobody, and Ontario has no equivalent route at any price.
Short answer
Quebec’s Labour Code art. 45.2 lets the parties waive successorship, but only where “a special agreement on the transfer includes a clause to the effect that the parties waive” certification continuity — and the same subparagraph adds that such a clause “binds the Tribunal but does not affect the effect…of the certification of the association of employees having signed the agreement.” The closing words presuppose the certified association signed the special agreement; a two-party clause between buyer and seller has nothing to bind the Tribunal with.
Where a valid waiver is not in place and the transfer is of part of an undertaking, art. 45.2’s first subparagraph deems a collective agreement that has not expired “to expire on the day the transfer becomes effective” — the certification survives, but the term does not, so scheduled wage increases stop being a contractual entitlement and the buyer inherits an immediate bargaining table instead. That is not relief; it converts a budgeted, fixed cost into an open negotiation.
Article 46 lets an interested party apply within 30 days of the transfer where it was carried out mainly to hinder unionisation or undermine a certified association, and the Tribunal can set aside the partial-transfer exclusion or the deemed expiry as a result. It does not reach a properly signed waiver under art. 45.2, which by its own words already binds the Tribunal. Ontario has no equivalent clause to reach for at all: LRA s.69(2) binds the purchaser “until the Board otherwise declares,” with no waiver mechanism in the Act — porting an Ontario precedent into a Quebec carve-out, or the reverse, is how the signature gets missed.
The full mechanic, including the renegotiated outcome, decided a Quebec carve-out and a waiver the union signed.
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