As Friend and Foe, a National Film Board short film from 1980, is a brief look at the Canadian federal government’s relationship to workers: “as friend and foe” in shaping the architecture of Canada’s labour relations from 1900 to 1980.
The film ends by observing that after 1975, the federal and provincial governments have ordered striking workers back-to-work on numerous occasions, concluding that “what the government gives, it can also take away.”