May 10, 2012 - No. 35

McGuinty Government's Stepped Up Anti-Social Offensive

Reform of Public Services Must Serve
the Public Interest!

Toronto, May Day 2012

McGuinty Government's Stepped Up Anti-Social Offensive!
• Reform of Public Services Must Serve the Public Interest!
• Government Refuses to Negotiate with Teachers
• Procedures Covered by Health Care Seriously Eroded
• Province-Wide Town Hall Forums Oppose Degradation of Health Care - Rob Woodhouse
• Government Must Meet Public Sector Pension Obligations - Pritilata Waddedar

Opposition to Deregulation and Privatization
• Workers Resist Monopoly Dictate in Energy Sector - Jim Nugent

Continued Interference with College Workers Right to Unionize
• Count the Votes Now! - Christine Nugent

Coming Events
• Province-Wide Tour of 15 Communities Warning of Budget Cutbacks to Health Care
• Parliamentary Committee Reviews Elizabeth Witmer's Appointment as Chair of Workplace Safety Insurance Board
• May 17, International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia
• June 1, Demonstration for Injured Workers

McGuinty Government's Stepped Up Anti-Social Offensive

Reform of Public Services Must Serve
the Public Interest!

The McGuinty government's austerity budget is said to be aimed at making a "radical transformation of the broad public sector." Who this benefits is kept in the shade.

People support reforms which eliminate what is blocking society from moving forward and strengthen the positive things society has given rise to. However, to make radical changes which subordinate the public interest to the private interests of the monopolies is an entirely different thing.

The McGuinty government uses phrases such as "finding efficiencies," "eliminating waste" and getting "value for the dollar," to give his reforms a positive spin. This is what Mike Harris did when he referred to his government's anti-social wrecking as a "common sense revolution." But for all the high sounding phrases, there is no hiding that the McGuinty Liberals' purpose is to cut $17 billion from social programs and appropriate another $4 billion in user fees so as to redirect it all to the financiers in the name of debt servicing and other pay-the-rich schemes. Lowering the standard of living in Ontario and transferring more of the wealth of society to pay the rich is not in the public interest! Nor does it have public support. No one voted for this!

Even before the austerity measures in the 2012 budget, the security of livelihoods and standard of life of workers in Ontario have been under downward pressure as a result of the overall direction of the economy. Corporate profits have recovered from the 2008 financial collapse and the 2009 recession. But for the workers this has been another jobless recovery with high unemployment continuing. We are told this high unemployment is likely to continue for several more years. International monopolies are continuing their wrecking of the goods producing sector they control and are arrogantly dictating a lowering of standard Canadian wages and working conditions. Sound public services and social programs that serve the public interest are more necessary now than ever but McGuinty is turning everything over to the control of the monopolies.

Oppose the McGuinty government's anti-social offensive! No amount of finding "efficiencies" that will "reduce costs" is going to alleviate the crisis or open a path to progress, because that is not their aim.

Stop Paying the Rich!
Increase Funding for Social Programs!

Government Refuses to Negotiate with Teachers

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) recently tabled a proposal in an attempt to arrive at parameters for negotiating new collective agreements that would be mutually agreeable to both the government and the OSSTF. The teachers' federation was shocked that their willingness to put concessions on the table and negotiate was dismissed out of hand. They were told it was not enough! The OSSTF packed up and left the meeting and expressed "disappointment that its efforts to avoid needless conflict in education have been rejected."

The OSSTF described their proposals as unprecedented and went a long way towards meeting the cuts in education funding the McGuinty government is aiming to achieve. The OSSTF proposed to accept a two-year wage freeze, followed in years 3 and 4 by a cost of living adjustment only. Their proposal included a plan to encourage retirement of more senior teachers, a 15 per cent reduction of high-cost central administrative positions; a moratorium on Ministry of Education initiatives for the next four years; and the creation of an employee run benefits plan that would allow school boards to remove unfunded liabilities from their books.

But the McGuinty government is not interested in negotiating anything less than complete submission to its contract agenda. McGuinty is aiming to cut more than $2 billion out of public education in this round of contract negotiations and redirect it to paying down the debt and deficit. In addition to a zero annual salary freeze the government is demanding as a freeze for all teachers at their current pay level on the qualification and experience grid, changes to sick day benefits and concessions on pension and other benefits.

The government's response to the teachers federation offer shows it does not intend to be bound by its legal obligation to bargain in good faith. The refusal to even acknowledge the unprecedented nature of the OSSTF's offer was also intended to humiliate the teachers, in the same way that McGuinty appointed bankruptcy expert former-Justice James Farley, a man who knows nothing about public education, to head the government negotiating team.

The McGuinty government is insisting the teachers and education support workers voluntarily submit to deep cuts to funding of public education, or have it legislatively imposed upon them.

All Ontario working people must stand with the teachers and education workers to resist the attack they are under. Their fight to defend their working and living conditions is in the front line of the fight to defend the public education from being wrecked in order to divert more and more precious public resources to pay the rich.

Procedures Covered by Health Care Seriously Eroded

On May 7 the Ontario government unilaterally revised the fee schedule doctors receive for medical procedures covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP). The fee schedule serves as the contract negotiated between the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) and the provincial government. The previous fee schedule expired on March 31. The new unilaterally imposed fee schedule is retroactive to April 1 and cuts $338 million out of funding provided for medical procedures covered by OHIP.

Negotiations between the OMA and the provincial government had just broken off due to government intransigence. The OMA had requested some form of third party arbitration, which the government rejected. The government also rejected an earlier proposal of the OMA for a two-year freeze in the schedule. The government wants to freeze the total provincial spending on doctor compensation, not just the fee schedule.

The Ministry of Health has been waging a campaign to disinform the public. For example, the Ministry's website really disparages Ontario doctors for being over-paid and says "a real wage freeze for doctors will allow the province to invest in the community care and to protect recent gains in health care." Utter rubbish. Every penny in cuts from the OHIP fee schedule paid to doctors is going to pay the rich under the hoax of paying down the debt and deficit -- not to improve any aspect of public health care.

Many will not protest the imposed fee schedule because they think doctors are already over-paid and make substantially more than a "typical Ontarian." This is precisely what the government hopes for. It uses the prejudice against doctors to impose its dictate, whereupon it then makes it that much easier to do the same in the next case and the case after that. Taking funding allocated for medical procedures out of the OHIP envelope and using it in the name of debt servicing is not acceptable. It is the number of publicly available medical procedures and quality of public health care that is going to suffer. These cuts are a formula for further wrecking of the publicly funded, publicly delivered health care system and set the stage for expanded privatized, for profit health care delivery.

The medical system is in need of renewal. It takes a substantial investment to educate and train a medical doctor. Society should make those investments to provide itself with a sufficient numbers of doctors required to meet the needs of all its members and in exchange for the cost of their training and education, doctors should be salaried professionals, remunerated according to their level of training and expertise. There is no justification for society to be paying exorbitant procedure fees which lend themselves to abuse.

But the Ontario government is not interested in providing solutions to the problems of our public health care system. Instead, the Ministry of Health publishes a scandal sheet on how over-paid doctors are, citing for example that over 400 doctors in Ontario bill OHIP in excess of $1 million annually. And who is responsible for that abuse if not the government of Ontario itself! It is very self-serving, dishonest and socially irresponsible to incite people to go after doctors as the problem with public health care, when the entire aim of the government is to take more money out of funding for health care and use it to pay the rich in the name of eliminating debts that we, the people, did not incur!

Province-Wide Town Hall Forums Oppose
Degradation of Health Care

- Rob Woodhouse -

The Ontario Health Coalition (OHC) has announced it is organizing a series of town hall forums across Ontario during May and June to engage people in a discussion on the negative impact the Ontario 2012 Budget will have on health services in Ontario. The OHC is an association of health care worker unions and of other unions and community organizations.

The budget lowered the cap on provincial funds allocated to health care by 4 per cent. For the next three years the increase on health care spending is limited to 2.1 per cent increases. Even at the previous level of 6.1 per cent increases, health services were unable to keep up with the increase in the needs of patients. Between the budget and the recently announced "Action Plan" of the Ministry of Health, a wholesale degradation of the health care system is underway.

As well as underfunding, the health care system is also confronted by increased privatization. Privatization undermines health care as a universal public program, turning more and more of the health care system into a business profiting from peoples' health needs and into insurance scams.

Ontario workers, who produce sufficient wealth for a modern health care system, broadly support a public health care system with the funding required to meet people's needs. But the political arrangements in Ontario do not ensure the public will becomes the law of the land. The discussion of health care in Ontario has to include not only discussion on how to resist the latest attacks of the McGuinty government on health care but also a discussion on how to bring about the reforms of the health care system to make sure it guarantees the right to health care for all.

See the Coming Events below for the dates and locations of the town hall forums on health care.

Government Must Meet Public Sector
Pension Obligations

- Pritilata Waddedar -

The government's austerity agenda has set its sights on pensions of workers in the broad public sector and is preparing legislative changes that could affect the 1,286,000 workers in this sector. This initiative has to be considered in the context of the all-out attack of the rich on the rights of seniors and on the overall standard of living of the people.

This is important because the government understands that the rights of seniors have wide support among the electorate. It is making every effort to portray the 20 per cent of the workforce in the broad public sector as a "privileged minority" because many of them have pensions. In his speech on the 2012 Budget, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan did this in the most vulgar terms. "We do not think it is fair to ask a single mother who earns $14 an hour and who has no pension plan, to pay even more of her hard-earned tax dollars into the pension funds of others," Duncan said.

This is fake concern from the man blocking funding for the housing, child care and other social programs "a single mother who earns $14 an hour" desperately needs. It was the preamble to announcing that the government was preparing legislation relieving government of contracted pension obligations and limiting future contributions to pensions. The proposed legislation will apply not only to the direct Government of Ontario employee pensions but also to other public sector pensions, including particular measures affecting university and the electricity sector pension plans.

Immediately after the budget was passed, the Ministry of Finance announced the launching of what it called "consultations on a new legislative framework for jointly sponsored public sector pension plans."

While calling it a "consultation," the announcement contained the pre-ordained conclusions that will be reached: pension deficits will be funded by benefit reductions not increased contributions; in plans where employees pay less than 50 per cent of the contributions, only the employee contributions can be raised to cover deficits. The government's plan is to quickly discharge its legal "duty to consult" on its jointly sponsored plans over the summer to clear the way for imposing new public sector pension legislation in the fall.

The government is anticipating resistance from public sector workers and their unions and has made provisions for dispensing with any collective bargaining rights during the "consultation" process:

"Where plan sponsors cannot agree on benefit reductions through negotiation, a new, third-party dispute resolution process would be used." This new dispute resolution process would be defined by the government and there is no indication what it intends to impose.

The government is preparing to renege on contracted pension obligations to its employees, just as was done by GM and other large monopolies in the goods producing sector. By putting caps on contributions and reducing benefits, the government is in effect stealthily converting defined benefit plans into much inferior defined contribution plans.

All workers should support the resistance of the public sector workers to this scheme and reject any attempt to isolate public sector workers as a "privileged minority." The vision of the working class is that all people have the right to live in security, dignity and good health in old age. The fight to realize this vision starts with resistance to the attacks on the existing pensions of workers but doesn't end until retirement in dignity is ensured as a right of all.

Opposition to Deregulation and Privatization

Workers Resist Monopoly Dictate in Energy Sector

- Jim Nugent -

Striking Direct Energy workers in Barrie.

During the past month, 850 workers at two natural gas utility services companies were forced to go on strike to block owners from unilaterally imposing lower wages and conditions. As well, 900 scientific, engineering and technical staff in Ontario's nuclear industry have voted 94 per cent to strike to prevent owners from gutting their collective agreement. The utility workers taking strike action are employed by Direct Energy (550 workers) and Reliance Home Comfort (295 workers). The nuclear staff voting to strike are employed by SNC Lavalin's subsidiary Candu Energy (formerly Atomic Energy Canada Limited -- AECL).

This outbreak of confrontation and instability in Ontario's energy sector is being created by powerful monopolies attempting to aggressively dictate a lowering of wages and working conditions of workers and threatening workers' livelihoods. This situation is the consequence of the chickens coming home to roost from many years of deregulation and privatization of the energy sector by federal and provincial government. This trend is being intensified by recent action of the Ontario government to throw open the doors to the energy sector even wider to international monopolies and bankers scrambling for big scores.

The Ontario government is just completing the shutting down of coal-fired thermal power plants and converting them to natural gas. This conversion process was used to hand the entire thermal generation capacity over to the private sector, to the natural gas monopolies and other financial groups. The McGuinty government's wind and solar green energy fraud was also a privatization initiative, based on outrageous sweetheart deals with private investors. In the past year alone there have been $16 billion in private sector investment in Ontario electricity, investments that guarantee cash for life profits to owners. As these projects are being completed, the government is in the process of rolling out another round of deregulation and privatization in the energy sector to create a fresh batch of pay the rich schemes.

One of these projects is set out in the Ontario 2012 Budget. The government plans to eliminate barriers to consolidation of publicly owned local electrical distribution companies (LDCs), opening the way to privatization, including mergers of LDCs with the privately owned natural gas distribution companies. Another is a pilot project for creating private sector investment opportunity in the electricity transmission system, which is currently 90 per cent owned and operated by the public company Hydro One. Hearings are underway at the Ontario Energy Board to pick a contractor for the pilot project, a $600 million electricity transmission expansion project in North West Ontario known as the East-West Tie. The biggest project is a $30 billion expansion and refurbishment of nuclear power plants. This project got underway in March when the government awarded SNC Lavalin and Aecon Construction a $6 billion contract for refurbishment of the Darlington nuclear power reactors, a contract that included some murky hybrid P3 arrangements.

This latest round of deregulation and privatization initiatives is resulting in financial vultures from all over the world flocking to Ontario in anticipation of big scores. Monopolies already operating in Ontario are trying to improve their competitive advantage in the expanding market by reorganizing themselves as low-cost operators. This is their strategy for either fighting it out with the other financial groups entering the market or being attractive take-over targets. This is the strategy behind the brutal and aggressive tactics these monopolies are using in negotiations against workers in this sector.

Direct Energy Workers' Strike

Workers at Direct Energy went on strike on April 17 after the company announced that it was unilaterally imposing new wages and terms that included a 25 percent wage reduction, scheduling changes and changes in work qualifications affecting job placement and layoffs. The workers are members of Chemical, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP) Local 975, clerical and operational workers who provide Direct Energy customers with plumbing, water heater, heating, ventilation and air conditioning services, including water heater and furnace installations and maintenance. A tentative agreement was reached and accepted during a ratification vote that ended on May 2.

Direct Energy is a deregulated utility services company spun off from Enbridge/Consumers Gas following the de-regulation of the natural gas industry. Direct Energy workers are located in the Greater Toronto Area, Niagara, Ottawa and other Ontario localities. The company is currently owned by Centrica, an international monopoly group based in Britain and aggressively expanding in North American markets. As well as dictating to workers, Direct Energy has repeatedly faced charges of abusing customers with forged contracts and other illegal business practices.

Direct Energy workers' picket line at the company's offices in Woodbridge.

Reliance Home Comfort Workers' Strike

Workers at Reliance Home Comfort were forced to go on strike on May 2 after the company imposed working terms and conditions during collective bargaining. Reliance had been demanding unacceptable concessions all through the negotiations, including a two-tier wage system for new hires. When the workers voted to reject these concessions, the company announced the new conditions would be unilaterally imposed.

The workers who went on strike against Reliance are members of CEP Local 1999. They are clerical and operational workers who install and repair natural gas and electrical heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment in homes throughout Ontario from facilities in Windsor, Sarnia, London, Brantford, Cambridge Burlington, Kingston and Thunder Bay.

Reliance is the deregulated utility services company spun off from Union Gas following the deregulation of the gas industry by the Mulroney government in the mid 1980s and a series of takeovers involving Union Gas. Reliance also includes home services business, mostly hot water rentals, it bought from Ontario Hydro after Ontario Hydro was broken up as part of the Harris government's electricity privatization scheme.

Reliance is currently owned by Alinda Capital Partners, a group of NY investment bankers with investments in infrastructure all over the world. It bought Reliance for $1.7 billion, a 45 per cent premium over the going stock price in order to get into the lucrative Ontario market. This is similar to the situation at Direct Energy. When Centrica bought Direct Energy to establish a base in Ontario, it paid Enbridge $200 million over the market value. This kind of rivalry and deal making among monopoly groups result in the new monopoly owners squeezing workers to recoup the premiums in addition to the extracting the going rate of return.

Candu Energy Negotiations

Candu Energy is the name that SNC Lavalin gave the federal crown corporation AECL after the Harper government handed it over to Lavalin virtually for free. AECL contains Canada's entire nuclear scientific, engineering and technical knowledge base, built up through 75 years of public investment. This knowledge base is used to operate Ontario's fleet of nuclear power plants, both the privately operated Bruce power plants and the publicly owned Darlington/Pickering plants.

Since AECL was privatized and set up as Candu Energy by Lavalin, management has waged a campaign to drive down the wages and working conditions of the professional and technical staff. The staff are represented by the Society of Professional Engineers and Associates (SPEA) in negotiating wages and terms of work with Candu Energy. A spokesperson for SPEA says, "The quest to maximize short-term profits at the expense of employees is placing a major Ontario-based industry in jeopardy." The membership of SPEA voted 94 per cent for strike action in a meeting on May 3.

SNC Lavalin is Canada's largest engineering monopoly, specializing in government infrastructure projects across Canada and around the globe. It is currently under investigation for criminal activities related to bribery and corruption of government officials in a number of countries, including Libya and Bangladesh.

Members of the Society of Professional Engineers and Associates hold a press conference in Ottawa, May 11, 2010, prior to testifying in front of the Finance Standing Commitee to oppose the privatization of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

A New Direction for the Economy

The operation of gas and electricity generation, transmission and distribution utilities has a social character and involves many important public interests. This is one of the reasons why most of the electricity capacity in Ontario was publicly owned and why the gas monopolies were restricted by regulations in the first place. Private ownership of this sector and letting the moneybags do as they please is in sharp conflict with its social character and the public interest. Increased private ownership and decreased restrictions on the monopolies is definitely the wrong direction, both for the workers creating the wealth in this sector and for the interests of the public.

The situation of the utility service workers as well as that of the professional/technical workers in the nuclear industry calls for resistance and the resistance of these workers has full support from other workers across the country who are also standing up to monopoly dictate. This includes material support; industrial unions have donated $1 million to the SPEA strike fund. The situation developing in Ontario's energy sector also calls out for workers to establish a new direction for this sector and for the whole economy. A new direction is needed so workers' rights are respected and so the livelihoods of energy sector workers and the services they provide are assured.

For over a hundred years gas and electrical utility workers, along with professional and technical workers, have been doing their jobs -- building and operating supply and distribution infrastructure, maintaining public safely, providing energy services to homes and industry. They have done this within a regime of continuous ownership change and governments allowing layer after layer of private ownership claims to be laid over the sector. These private owners suck wealth out of this highly socialized sector. Their scramble for big scores creates chaos and instability that threatens workers' livelihoods, the services they provide and the public interest.

(Photos: CEP Local 975, SPEA)

Continued Interference with College Workers Right to Unionize

Count the Votes Now!

- Christine Nugent -

Ontario college workers demonstrate in downtown Toronto, April 7, 2011. (OPSEU)

Governments at all levels in Canada are failing to meet their treaty obligations regarding workers rights according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations organization responsible for drawing up and overseeing conventions on labour rights and standards. Governments across Canada have been cited more often in over 20 recent ILO cases for refusing to change laws found to have been in violation of Convention No. 87 -- the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize. Convention No.87 was established in 1950 and signed by Canada in 1972.

Among the violations the ILO cites are the following cases where workers are continuing to be denied the fundamental right to join a union:

- Agricultural workers in Alberta and Ontario;
- Domestic workers, in Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, PEI and Saskatchewan;
- Architects, dentists, land surveyors, engineers and lawyers in Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and Saskatchewan;
- Nurse practitioners in Alberta;
- University faculty in Alberta; and
- Part-time employees of community colleges in Ontario.

This is the third time in seven years that the ILO's Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations(CEACR), has cited the McGuinty government for its continued denial of the rights to a union for thousands of Ontario part-time college support staff and faculty. The initial complaint by college workers was made to the ILO in 2005. Three strikes on McGuinty since then!

Strike One November 2006: The ILO Committee requested the McGuinty Government rapidly take legislative measures, in consultation with the social partners, to ensure that academic and part-time support staff in colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario fully enjoy the rights to organize and to bargain collectively, as any other workers. It wasn't until the fall of 2008, (McGuinty's idea of rapid is 2 years!), that the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act (CCBA) was modernized to allow for these rights which had been denied by all political parties for over 30 years!

Strike Two November 2011: The ILO committee reviewed the case for the second time and requested the OLRB resolve the dispute over the voting without delay. Their inquiry revealed that the required 35% card signing had been completed and two supervised votes ordered by the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) in 2009 had taken place. Since then until now the ballot boxes have been sealed.

The OLRB has worked in cahoots with the College Employer Council, the bargaining agent for the 24 Ontario colleges, entertaining the legal ruses of the Employer Council and refusing to count the votes, thus allowing the employer to interfere with the college workers rights to join a union of their choice.

Strike Three April 2012: An ILO report looked at the charges of the union that the College Employer Council challenged the number of union cards signed for the purpose of stonewalling certification. The ILO report says: "In this regard, the Committee notes the indication that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union had filed certification applications to represent both the part-time academic staff and part-time support staff units. In both cases, representation votes have been held and the ballot boxes have been sealed pending a decision by the [OLRB] concerning issues that remain in dispute between the parties. Ultimately, the complainant's allegations that mediation and costly litigation at the OLRB can take months or even years had not been answered by the Government. Recalling the importance that part-time academic and support staff in colleges of applied arts and technology in Ontario fully enjoy without delay the right to organize, as enjoyed by other workers, and the need to lift any obstacle in law and practice which would hinder these rights as provided in the Convention, the Committee requests the Government to indicate in its next report any decision taken by the OLRB on the matters currently pending before it."

The McGuinty government has disregarded the ILO reprimands. It is continuing to stubbornly deny collective bargaining rights to college workers, farm workers, caregivers and others and is attacking the rights of even more workers. The recent Ontario budget wipes out the bargaining rights of over a million workers in the broad public sector, with a threat to impose legislated contracts on any workers who will not knuckle under to austerity in negotiations.

College workers join the teachers, education workers, public service workers and all those in the private sector to oppose the Ontario austerity budget. We see the importance of defending the rights of all against this government as it unleashes attacks on collective bargaining rights and the education system as a whole in order to cover the costs of bailouts, corporate tax cuts and interest payments to financial institutions.

Coming Events

Province-Wide Tour of 15 Communities
Warning of Budget Cutbacks to Health Care

Parliamentary Committee Reviews Elizabeth Witmer's Appointment as Chair of Workplace
Safety Insurance Board

Elizabeth Witmer will appear in front of a parliamentary committee at Queen's Park to review her appointment as Chair of the Workplace Safety Insurance Board. It will take place Tuesday, May 15 at 9:00 am, Committee Room 1 at Queen's Park. This hearing is open to the public.

May 17, International Day Against Homophobia,
Biphobia and Transphobia

May 17 is celebrated world wide as International Day Against Homophobia, a day to bring to the fore the struggles of gay, lesbian and transgender people to affirm their rights by virtue of being human. May 17 was chosen as the International Day Against Homophobia because on that day, 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the international classification of diseases.

Ontario Political Forum hails this day and salutes especially the gay, lesbian and transgender people who have taken their stand in the front ranks of the struggle for a modern society that affirms the rights of all.

Discrimination is a daily reality for Lesbian Gay Bi Transgender and Queer communities, and it continues to be important to speak out against transphobia, biphobia and homophobia. On this day, let us together affirm the human rights of all, including LGBTQ community members, their loved ones and allies. Let us take a stand against heterosexism, discrimination and narrow views about gender that negatively impact LGBTQ community members and their loved ones.

Often, the very existence of gay, lesbian and transgender people is made invisible by assumptions about what partnership, family and gender are. To come out often means being subjected to a subtle or overt negative treatment. Many experience outright violence and exclusion.

Without the sacrifice and courage of generations of LGBTQ community members and allies, the International Day Against Homophobia would not have come into existence. Let May 17 be a day to celebrate what has been achieved thus far and to continue to fight to end homophobia and for a society that recognizes the rights of all!

Events to mark May 17 are taking place across Canada -- details for events in Halifax, New Brunswick, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere can be found here: www.dayagainsthomophobia.org.

In Hamilton, The Well, (LGBTQ Wellness Centre of Hamilton) is holding an Open Mic Coffee Night. Visit the centre's website for details: www.thewellhamilton.ca.

Members of the LGBTQ community rally as part of the actions to oppose the G20, Toronto, June 22, 2010.
(Activestills)

June 1, Demonstration for Injured Workers

(Click to download flyer -- PDF)

The Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups (ONIWG) is calling a demonstration on Injured Workers' Day at Queen's Park for June 1, 2012 at 11 a.m. They are protesting the latest attacks against the injured workers with the latest KPMG study and with the appointment of Elizabeth Witmer as Chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

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