Ontario Political Forum

Ontario Political Forum condemns the Ontario Legislature for passing Bill 115, the Putting Students First Act on September 11. In the name of the well-being of Ontario's children, the McGuinty Liberal government and the Hudak Conservatives have unleashed a destructive offensive against the rights of teachers and education workers. The role of a Legislature is to uphold public right, not trample it in the mud in the name of high ideals.

On Tuesday, September 11, the bill passed third reading and promptly received Royal Assent. Eighty-two MPPs from the Liberal and Conservative parties voted in favour and 15 NDP MPPs voted against.

Despite the bill's passage and its provisions to criminalize them, teachers and education workers are not backing down. On Friday, September 14, they will hold rallies at MPPs' offices to oppose the new law. Local labour councils, unions and other supporters are being encouraged to join the rallies to show their opposition to the legislation.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is holding local information meetings in the coming weeks to review the union's strategy and answer questions in preparation for local strike votes.

Members of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) are showing their opposition and demonstrating their commitment to fight the legislation by wearing black to work. Meetings are also being held by OSSTF members after work today to discuss OSSTF's strategy going forward.

Ontario Political Forum calls on everyone to stand with teachers and education workers as they step up their opposition to Bill 115. Contact local OSSTF, ETFO or CUPE offices for more information on how to support local actions.

What Lies Behind McGuinty's Imaginary Crisis

The elementary and secondary schools throughout Ontario began on schedule the day after Labour Day, as they normally do and just as unions representing teacher and education support workers had all along said they would. This exposes as fraudulent Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's declaration that a "crisis" threatened the September school opening. It also makes a farce out of McGuinty's emergency recall of the Ontario Legislature to legislate a solution to his imaginary crisis.

Even after schools opened in the normal way, the McGuinty Liberals and their allies the Hudak Conservatives pushed ahead with Bill 115 which strips away collective bargaining rights and other rights from teachers and education workers. McGuinty claims that the legislation is necessary to force teachers to conform to his government's budget reduction targets, but this too is a fraud. Teachers' unions agreed to a two-year wage freeze at the very beginning of the talks for a new agreement.

This raises the question of what McGuinty is trying to achieve with this legislation since there is no crisis in the schools and the teachers and education workers have agreed to the government's demands.

To explain the incoherence, some commentators point to the blatant political opportunism of McGuinty, i.e., his transparent manufacturing of a fake crisis with the teachers and education workers that would not only coincide with the new school year but also the by-elections in Kitchener-Waterloo and Vaughan. They claim that McGuinty thought his hard line on teachers and education workers would show the people of Ontario he is serious about attacking the deficit and that he is quite capable of attacking public sector workers next. He is said to have thought this would put him in a good position to outdo the Hudak Conservatives in the by-elections. The by-elections were supposed to be two-way races between the Liberals and Conservatives which were to vindicate the attacks on teachers and education workers. Instead, the people of Kitchener-Waterloo soundly defeated both the Liberals and Conservatives and the turnout in Vaughan was only 26 per cent of the electorate. The Kitchener-Waterloo by-election was thus a clear rejection of the attacks on the primary and secondary public school system while the Vaughan by-election made no statement at all in support of the attacks. The by-election results provided yet another reason why McGuinty should have withdrawn the legislation.

All of it shows that the people are completely deprived of political power by an electoral system which brings political parties to power on behalf of the establishment forces and that they have no say in the decisions which affect their lives. The rich minority who hold political power have called on their political representatives to eliminate any capacity of the people to resist their neo-liberal offensive, which first and foremost means smashing up the organizations of the workers. All across the country, collective bargaining rights are being suppressed, every form of struggle for wages and working conditions is being criminalized and workers' organizations are under pressure. The organizations of the teachers and education workers are a very important target in this campaign.

The 515,000 workers in Ontario's elementary, secondary and post-secondary education sector are a significant contingent of the working people of the province. They make up eight per cent of the total workforce. Almost all of them are in unions and they make up 27 per cent of Ontario's unionized workers -- one out of every four union members is a teacher or education worker. If the rich are successful in smashing up teachers' and education workers' unions, they reckon they will have gone a long way toward realizing their neo-liberal dream of completely eliminating workers' self-defence organizations.

This union-smashing agenda was very clear to negotiators for the elementary and secondary teachers' and education workers' unions since the opening session of the provincial bargaining table meetings in January. Union negotiators walked into a room where instead of the usual Ministry of Education bean-counters they faced a battalion of notorious anti-worker legal henchmen like Judge Farley and constitutional lawyers.

The government side at the provincial table had no intention of negotiating. Even after teachers and education workers' unions agreed to the key government demand for a two-year wage freeze, the government refused to negotiate. The government negotiators and lawyers were only there to play out a "duty to consult" farce to make sure McGuinty's attack on teachers and education workers was "challenge-proof" under the Charter of Rights.

Boasts made recently by McGuinty in the Legislature reveal this strategy. "The Supreme Court of Canada has set out some basic rules that you have to follow to ensure that ultimately we can hit the pause button on public sector pay. So we started back in January to be fair, open, accountable and responsible but now we find ourselves at this point in time and we're running out of runway," McGuinty said.

A confrontation and an excuse to strip teachers and education workers of their collective bargaining rights was McGuinty's objective, not a negotiated agreement. This is why every attempt by teachers and education workers' unions to avoid the confrontation was in vain. Since January, McGuinty set a series of events in motion, each one designed to get unions to "willingly" submit to his dictate. The final step was his emergency recall of the Legislature and stripping the teachers and educational workers of their rights with Bill 115.

Teachers and education workers are fully cognizant that their right to affirm their rights is at the centre of their battle against the anti-social offensive of the McGuinty Liberals. They clearly expressed their convictions in front of the Legislature when they joined public sector workers and people from across Ontario for the April 21 Day of Action Against Cuts to oppose the government's budget and so-called austerity program. They did it again on August 28 to reject the introduction of the Putting Students First Act with their slogans, banners and speeches denouncing the McGuinty/Hudak alliance for attacking their rights, workers' rights and the rights of all.

"Education workers all around the world for some reason take a leadership role," said Ken Coran, President of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, "They educate the public to defend their civil rights and liberties, to defend the basic principles by which we live. It is the education workers who will lead the public to understand the damage these folks are doing. It's all in your hands."

Following the August 28 rally, teachers and education workers and their organizations threw their weight behind defeating the Liberal and the Conservative candidates in the Kitchener-Waterloo by-election, showing the rejection of all Ontario working people of the so-called austerity program designed to pay the rich, not balance budgets.

The successful campaign in Kitchener-Waterloo points a way forward for the workers' opposition to the anti-worker, anti-social offensive of the rich. It shows that workers' organizations can mobilize broad political support for workers' rights and the rights of all. Rally behind the call to defend the rights of all! No to attacks on teachers and education workers and on public sector workers who are McGuinty's next target.

Ontario Political Forum calls on all Ontario workers to recognize the importance of resistance and organization at this point in the life of Ontario. For McGuinty to declare that unless the teachers willingly accept his dictatorship they will be converted into criminals is unconscionable.

Teachers and Education Workers' Unions Respond to Passage of Bill 115

Immediately following the passage of the Putting Students' First Act, unions representing Ontario teachers and education workers affected by the legislation held a joint press conference outside the Legislature and issued statements to show their opposition to the legislation.

The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) said in a statement that Ontario's 76,000 public elementary teachers and education professionals are being urged to 'take a pause' on voluntary activities in response to the draconian legislation that strips them of their democratic rights.

"Given this extraordinary and unwarranted legislation, we are advising our members to "take a pause" on the voluntary activities they undertake in schools," said Sam Hammond, President of ETFO. "While they will remain focussed on teaching students and ensuring student safety, teachers and other educational professionals will need to consider very carefully what they can afford to do outside of their instructional responsibilities."

ETFO is also introducing "McGuinty Mondays" in protest of the legislation. Teachers and education professionals will be urged not to participate in school-based or system level meetings of any kind nor participate in regional Ministry meetings on Mondays for the foreseeable future.

This is the initial step in an escalating protest strategy, according to Hammond.

"We do not take this action lightly. Ontarians and the government need to know that you cannot take away the democratic rights of working people simply to fulfill a political party's agenda or ideology," said Hammond.

"Collective bargaining rights are central to ensuring that working people are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness in the workplace. If the premier can get away with abolishing our rights, we need to ask 'who's next?'

The Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) also issued a statement in response to the Bill's passage:

"The passing of Bill 115 today represents one of the darkest days in the history of workers' rights in recent memory," said OSSTF President Ken Coran. "This government has now passed a law that tramples on the rights of education workers in Ontario, and it appears that Premier McGuinty will be targeting other workers in the near future."

"The passage of this law is undemocratic and unprecedented, and was unnecessary," continued Coran. "McGuinty and Hudak have thumbed their noses at democratic rights in this province."

"This law now gives the Minister of Education sweeping powers over the negotiations process and takes away the ability of our members and the democratically elected school boards to engage in a free collective bargaining process that has been successful for many years," said Coran.

On the issue of how OSSTF will proceed with the negotiations process, Coran stated, "We will continue to follow the rules and laws that govern the collective bargaining process under the Ontario Labour Relations Act in our attempts to secure agreements with our members' employers; the school boards of Ontario. We will continue with local negotiations and urge the government to stop interfering with our legal right to collectively bargain."

"Premier McGuinty should not expect our members or the workers of Ontario to sit idly while the government strips them of their basic and fundamental labour rights," concluded Coran.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) announced today that it is beginning proceedings against the Ontario Government after the passage of Bill 115. CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn made the announcement at Queen's Park, after the Liberal bill passed its final vote this morning with the backing of the Conservatives.

"This is a truly dreadful day for democracy," said Hahn. "Instead of focusing on strengthening schools, communities and the economy, the Liberals have chosen to attack people's charter rights," said Hahn. "We are challenging Bill 115 because the rights of Ontarians are protected by the Constitution, even if the Liberals don't want them to be."

CUPE has retained Andrew Lokan from the firm Paliare Roland and has instructed him to begin legal proceedings challenging the bill's constitutionality.

"Bill 115 isn't about balancing the budget. It's not about fixing the economy. It won't benefit students or schools," said Hahn. "It is an unprecedented attack on the civil rights of hundreds of thousands of Ontarians working in the education system. And it's absolutely a cynical political ploy on the part of Liberals who think they can win votes if they appear as tough and right-wing as the Conservatives."

CUPE Ontario represents 55,000 workers in English and French, public and Catholic, elementary and secondary schools across the province. These workers include custodians, school secretaries, library technicians, educational assistants, early childhood educators, instructors, lunch room supervisors and other support staff who are the back bone of community schools.

At Queen's Park, Hahn stood alongside ETFO President Sam Hammond and OSSTF President Ken Coran, who also announced they are beginning legal proceedings against Bill 115.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) also came out clearly against the bill and committed to intervene in any legal challenge. "People's rights are not something to be trifled with. We are concerned this legislation goes too far and violates the civil liberties of all Ontarians," said CCLA Director Sukanya Pillay at a press conference earlier this month.

The legal challenge will be just one part of a broader push to strengthen schools, protect workers, and build community support, Hahn said.

"This isn't just about education workers" said Hahn. "The Liberals are using public-sector workers as a scapegoat for their mistakes. They cut revenues through tax breaks to profitable multi-national corporations and banks, thereby creating a deficit. Now, instead of asking the banks -- which turned $8 billion in profits this quarter alone -- to pay their fair share, they are going after custodians and part-time lunch room workers. Ontarians saw through McGuinty's cynical politics last week in Kitchener-Waterloo, and they will see through his cynical politics all across Ontario in the weeks and months to come."

Agenda to Further Undermine the Public Authority in Favour of Private Interests

When the Ontario Legislature adjourned for the summer on June 20, it was scheduled to resume on September 10. Instead, it resumed two weeks early on August 27 in order to table and pass the Putting Students First Act that impose wage freezes and other conditions on teachers and education workers and deprive them of their right to negotiate the terms of their employment in a meaningful way.

The tone for the fall session was set at the opening of the Legislature with opposition leader Tim Hudak calling once again on the McGuinty government to extend wage freezes to all public sector workers, not just teachers and education workers. To distance himself from the PCs, McGuinty said such a move would be unconstitutional.

"[W]ith respect to the other request being made by my honourable colleague on an ongoing basis, we can't do that, because it would be subject to attacks in the courts, which I think would be justifiable. There is an element of process here that we have to respect," he said. To show the kind of fraudulent process he has in mind, he said, "We're doing that with this particular legislation that is before the House at present, and we'll find a way to do it with respect to other public sector employees going forward."

This is an indication that no sooner the government works out some fraudulent measure to make the attacks on public sector workers "constitutional," they too will be attacked.

McGuinty is willing to implement Hudak's plan, but in his own so-called "fair" and "balanced" manner.

McGuinty repeated his argument that the specific teacher's legislation is needed at this time to protect other advances in education, namely full-day kindergarten, which is another fraudulent argument because he is taking kindergarten money out of funds needed by the already existing programs. As if this makes his actions rational in any way, he said it had to be introduced before the August 31 contract deadline for teachers and education workers to meet the government's fiscal plan.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath argued that the teacher's legislation itself would be open to a constitutional challenge and warned the McGuinty government that it would cost taxpayers lots of money. She also raised the issue that managers and executives in the Ontario Public Service should not be receiving bonuses at the same time as teachers and education workers are facing wage freezes.

Education Minister Laurel Broten, in response to doubts about the constitutionality of the legislation, lamely repeated the party line about "working with our partners":

"[A]fter six months of working with our partners in education, we feel that we need to act in the best interests of students, and we made the decision to introduce legislation," she said.

"If this bill is passed and then challenged in court, the government's position will be that it is constitutional, that we have respected the constitutionally protected right to a process of collective bargaining, and that in any event, under the Charter of Rights, the bill is both reasonable and justified in all the circumstances," Broten added.

Ms. Broten is in comtempt of the meaning of language itself. To "work with your partners" requires recognizing that a solution based on mutual benefit has to be worked out. It does not mean that you meet with people you intend to wipe out and when they do not agree to be wiped out, you wipe them out anyway. The way Ms. Broten speaks shows the government is deliberately acting in bad faith. It flaunts the fact that it has the power of the state to impose a regime in which to be legal does not mean to be just. It is despicable and rotten to the core.

The attack on teachers and education workers that opened the fall session of the Legislature forebodes further attacks ahead. The legislation against teachers and education workers reveals that the serious concerns of the people of Ontario are warranted about the undemocratic nature of what are supposed to be democratic institutions. Ontario Political Forum will continue to follow developments in the Legislature during this current fall session so that Ontario workers are not caught by surprise about the wrecking agenda of the McGuinty Liberals and the cartel party system which has usurped the people's decision-making power.

Public Servants Oppose Government's Threat to Legislate Contract

On September 5, 2,500 members of the Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario (AMAPCEO) protested at Queen's Park against the McGuinty government anti-worker agenda.

During a by-election visit to Kitchener-Waterloo, Premier Dalton McGuinty threatened to legislate the terms of a new collective agreement should AMAPCEO not submit to the government's demands for savings at the bargaining table.

As has been the case in other bargaining units AMAPCEO had agreed to a two-year wage freeze. AMAPCEO has also put forward other proposals that reduce the cost of administering the collective agreement, including proposals to modernize and find efficiencies within the Ontario Public Service. They say they did this as an attempt to recognize the financial pressures facing Ontario. Even though they tabled proposals that would meet the Government of Ontario's core fiscal objectives, the threats continued.

A letter to the members by Gary Gannage, President of AMAPCEO says that the government's negotiating team "continues to escalate its aggression toward AMAPCEO. Now, the Employer has piled the table high with a long list of demands for concessions. A wage freeze is no longer good enough; the Employer wants a cut of at least 2-3% in this collective agreement.

"This is proving to be the most difficult round of bargaining in our history. For months leading up to bargaining, the signs were everywhere: while the government has said that 'respect will be the watchword' in labour relations, it has moved quickly to provoke conflicts with teachers and doctors. The government has signalled its intention to legislate a wage freeze, including incremental or merit pay, if freezes can't be reached voluntarily. While this will make constitutional lawyers happy, it is an attack on collective bargaining ..."

The Government of Ontario decreed September 9 as a deadline for reaching a new collective agreement with AMAPCEO. The Labour Board Mediator William Kaplan released a statement the weekend of September 8 and 9 that "the parties are unable to make further progress without an opportunity to consider their positions. I intend to stay in contact with both parties to monitor the situation and, in consultation with the parties, will resume the mediation when appropriate."

Completion of a long overdue job evaluation process has been in the making for more than eight years and the union is demanding a resolution to this issue which will improve the job security and wages of many members. Their contract expired on March 31, 2012.

Town Hall planning discussions are being organized for members September 11 and 13.

AMAPCEO is a bargaining agent representing 12,000 professional and supervisory public servants, most of whom work in the Ontario Public Service, i.e., directly for the Government of Ontario, in every ministry and in a number of agencies, boards and commissions; in over 130 communities across the province and in ten cities outside Canada.

- The Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario;

- Waypoint Centre for Mental Health (formerly Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre);

- Public Health Ontario (formerly the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion), an independent crown agency;

- The Medical Advisory Secretariat at Health Quality Ontario (formerly the Ontario Health Quality Council), an independent crown agency;

Members include: senior policy advisors and policy analysts, financial analysts, education officers, program supervisors, auditors, scientists, public health laboratory coordinators, mediators, arbitrators, veterinarians, pharmacists, racing judges and stewards, psychiatric patient advocates, chaplains, clinical coordinators, media relations and communications officers, children and youth advocates, administrative coordinators, information technology managers and specialists, inspectors and investigators, labour market specialists, senior economic officers, economists, transportation enforcement supervisors, intergovernmental affairs specialists, epidemiologists, arts granting officers and many others.

College Faculty Ratify Agreement

A ratification vote was held on September 10 on the tentative agreement reached on August 29 between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the College Employer Council. Of the 10,683 college faculty eligible to vote, only 4,084 or 45 per cent did so. The vote was 89 per cent for approval of the tentative agreement. What does this vote signify and what can college faculty conclude based on this latest round of "negotiations"?

First of all, the low voter turnout shows that the process has excluded a majority of the faculty. In particular, concern must once again be raised about the ability of partial load faculty, a group of part-time faculty who belong to the full-time bargaining unit, to have their concerns heard. Although they belong to the bargaining unit, many partial-load faculty feel the same isolation and precarious work conditions that face part-time faculty. The faculty demands in negotiations for more full-time positions and for preference to be given to partial load faculty for these new full-time positions were negated and this may have contributed to partial load faculty not voting. Many faculty members have not recognized the necessity to vote for a collective bargaining agreement and one that lacks improvements for them or for quality education.

The negotiations indicated once again that the employer refuses to negotiate and although the contract is not officially rendered an imposed one, for all intents and purposes it is. The bargaining team was bullied into tentatively accepting the contract in the midst of government dictate against teachers and education workers and the College Employer Council indicated that college faculty could be next. Through these threats they hope to create conditions for these concessions to be the status quo in future negotiations. It is part of the agenda to undermine the defence organizations of workers.

In the environment of the deliberate deterioration of the collective bargaining process by the employer to make faculty accept concessions, the space for faculty to have their voice heard has become limited. Even if college faculty voted no to the ratification vote, a principled stand given its lack of improvements for faculty work conditions and for quality education, it would still fall back into the confines of the negotiating process where fear mongering by the employer has made it impossible to move.

College faculty and all college workers should stand with teachers and education workers to demand the rights of all. It is the neo-liberal anti-social offensive of the rich that is at the root of all this dictate in order to keep all interests of society at their disposal. To do so, they must smash everyone's rights and their abilities to resist. Only in uniting their efforts in an organized way to defeat all representatives and manifestations of the neo-liberal agenda in the legislature, will their voices be heard because it is they themselves who will be speaking.

Support Our Cultural Workers!

More than 250,000 Ontario workers are employed in all branches of the cultural sector by private sector enterprises and by public cultural institutions. Along with all sections of the working people, cultural workers' livelihoods are under pressure from the neo-liberal offensive, as is their right to conscience. The role they play in nation-building is second to none, so it is not accidental that they are under pressure to defend so-called individual right as if by pitting it against collective rights this will affirm the quality of being human. On the contrary, unless cultural workers fight for their individual rights within the context of upholding the rights of all, they are sunk. This can be seen in the manner in which they are picked on one at a time to eliminate funding or have them fend for themselves.

The Harper government has been making cuts to cultural funding as part of its neo-liberal agenda and partisan ideological stance. It has used reduced funding to censor productions that don't align with the Harperite version of the neo-liberal world view. This is similar to the situation faced by scientific and technical personnel employed or funded by the federal government who are forbidden to speak out on scientific matters of public interest and who have their funding cut if the science they produce does not fit the Harper agenda.

All of it confirms that what is required is a concerted response, which at the end of the day means a political movement to remove those who have usurped power by force.

Ontario Political Forum is printing below a report from a cultural worker on resistance by actors employed by the Stratford Festival against austerity measures and bullying of management. The Stratford Festival is an important national cultural institution located in the City of Stratford in southwestern Ontario. One thousand actors, other artists, production crews and support workers create performances of plays by William Shakespeare and other important playwrights. In 2011, almost 30,000 people saw performances at Stratford including thousands of children and young people on school trips.

Stratford Festival Actors Asked to Take Pay Cut

In July, this year, Des MacAnuff, the out-going Artistic Director of The Stratford Shakespeare Festival theatre asked the actors to take a cut in pay to film the current production of Henry V.

In 2011 the Festival had more than 1,000 employees and an annual budget of $60 million. The new Artistic Director, Antoni Cimolino, was instrumental in establishing the Festival's Endowment Foundation, which has raised more than $50 million to date.

The actors are all members of the Canadian Actors' Equity Association representing 5,500 members in Canada. The union negotiates contracts with theatre producers who are members of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT) under the Canadian Theatre Agreement (CTA). The Stratford Shakespeare Festival Addendum to the CTA relates solely to engagements at the Festival.

In 2011, the Festival filmed the production of Twelfth Night and the actors did the work for less than the minimum pay rate set out in the Addendum to the CTA. Des McAnuff called a meeting of the acting company and made his pitch saying to the actors 'the Festival couldn't afford to make the film without these cuts.' He also said if the actors didn't agree 'he would be very disappointed in them.' He phoned actors individually at home and contacted them via email urging them to take the cuts.

July is the month at the Festival where actors are asked to audition for roles in the upcoming season. Under pressure -- the pressure that if they went against the head of the theatre they wouldn't be re-hired -- the actors agreed to the pay cut and the filming was completed. The actor's union said, 'If the actors agree then it's ok to have the cuts.'

All wage and working condition issues are settled through negotiations between the union, CAEA, and the producer, Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Any grievances actors have, go through the Equity Deputy, to the union and then to arbitration. There is no precedent of Artistic Directors making new arrangements on their own through individual contact.

This season, the same Artistic Director followed the same plan; first by calling a meeting, as he said, "Not that it's needed but because I can call it." At the meeting he said if the actors agreed to the cuts he would congratulate them at his upcoming wedding "by opening a bottle of Veuve Clicquot" -- champagne valued at $189 a bottle. Then he called and emailed individual actors asking for the cuts. Many felt as one company member who told this writer, "I'm uncomfortable with this kind of thing and it just can't go on."

No other group of Festival workers has been approached to take a pay cut -- neither the dressers, wardrobe department, technicians represented by IATSE, nor any other department. At the second meeting an actor said, "The actors are being asked because our union is easily chipped away at."

At a second meeting called by Dave Auster, Producer, half the acting company attended and heard Auster's appeal: "Stratford is in debt and filming this production will help publicize the theatre. If the actors don't take the cuts then the filming won't happen. In three years the Festival could close."

No one wants a thriving theatre more than the actors. To suggest otherwise is an insult to the actors. The actors would be more than willing to be part of the discussion about how to run a modern theatre under current conditions but the actors in the Festival's sixty year history have never been part of that discussion.

Equity has stated, through the company Deputy, that filming will only be done if minimum wage rates per the current collective agreement are met.

On Friday, September 7, an email went out to the company from Dave Auster: "I'm sorry to let you know that the Festival and the prospective producers of the film of HENRY V have found it impossible to raise sufficient funds to increase the film budget to accommodate the filming fees set out in the CTA. So unfortunately I must confirm that the filming will not proceed."

One company member said "...there is a tone in the air of division and confusion...It doesn't feel like a victory. We want to do the film."

Women's Security Lies in the Fight for the Rights of All

Join women in Toronto on Saturday, September 15, and in towns and cities across Canada in September and October as they "Take Back the Night." Through these marches women boldly declare they will exercise control over their lives and not be intimidated by those who tell them what they can or cannot do, what they can and cannot wear and where and when they may walk, under threat of violence.

In the present conditions, life is increasingly insecure and brutal for large sections of the workers and people and women are the first to bear the brunt of a social framework which is dismantled brick by brick as private interests seek to impose their will no matter the consequence in the wrecking of the social fabric and the economy. Women also stand in the front ranks of changing the situation and the fight for the rights of all.

Toronto
Saturday, September 15
Community Fair -- 4:00 pm
Rally -- 6:00 pm
March -- 8:00 pm
Masaryk Cowan Community Recreation Centre
220 Cowan Ave. (south of Queen West, west of Dufferin)
Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/MWAR: email: tbtn30@gmail.com

Peterborough
Thursday, September 20 -- 7:00 pm
Victoria Park
Refreshments and open stage to follow at St. Paul's Church

Oshawa
Thursday, September 20 -- 6:00 pm
YWCA, 1 McGrigor Street, Oshawa, ON
(between Simcoe St. S. and Centre St. S.)

Barrie
Thursday, September 27 -- 6:00 pm
Barrie City Hall Rotunda
Huronia Transition Homes: www.huroniatransitionhomes.ca

Hamilton
Thursday, September 20
Gather -- 6:30 pm
Rally -- 7:30 pm
March -- 8:00 pm
Hamilton City Hall, 771 Main Street Hamilton, ON

London
Thursday, September 20 -- 6:30 pm
Victoria Park
Women's Community House:www.facebook.com/womenseventscommittee

Waterloo
Saturday, September 29 -- 5:00 pm
Waterloo Town Square, King Street

Guelph
Thursday September 27 -- 6:30 pm
Marianne's Park

Sudbury
Thursday September 27 -- 5:30 pm
Sudbury Secondary School

Windsor and Essex County
Saturday September 29 -- 7:00 pm
Dieppe Park, Windsor

Ottawa
Thursday October 4
Parliament Hill vigil and march -- 6:15 pm
March -- 7:15 pm
Information Fair Ottawa City Hall -- 8:00 pm
communityevents@wiseottawa.ca
familiesofsistersinspirit@gmail.com

Rally Behind the Call to Defend the Rights of All!