December 5, 2011 - No. 16

Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!

McGuinty's Sell-Out Definition of Ontario
as a "Free-Trading Jurisdiction"

Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!
• McGuinty's Sell-Out Definition of Ontario as a "Free-Trading Jurisdiction"

First Nations Hereditary Rights Are Not Negotiable!
• Attawapiskat First Nation's Just Demand for Housing and Dignity
• Government Must Be Held Responsible for Illegal Mineral Exploration on Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation Lands! - Philip Fernandez

Necessity to Oppose Privatization Agenda
• Concocted Hudak-McGuinty Drama Covers Up Joint Aim to Attack the Workers - Christine Nugent

Toronto
• City Workers' Fight for Job Security Blocks Privatization - Steve Rutchinski
• City to Eliminate 2,338 Jobs
• Proposed 2012 Budget - David Greig
• Ford/McGuinty Public Transit Privatization Agenda Becomes Clearer - Jim Nugent
• Public Transit Cuts Coming in January
• Toronto Needs More Child Care Centres - Pritilata Waddedar

Manufacturing Yes! Nation-Wrecking No!

McGuinty's Sell-Out Definition of Ontario
as a "Free-Trading Jurisdiction"

On November 30, Premier McGuinty was asked in the Ontario legislature whether he would give U.S. mining giant Cliff Natural Resources an exemption from the Mining Act to allow it to ship chromite concentrate mined in the Ring of Fire to Asia for processing. He answered that they will "work as hard as we can" to "maximize the benefits for the people of Ontario" but that "We are part of the global economy. We are a free-trading jurisdiction." He goes on to suggest that "there are thousands and thousands of jobs that are associated with us receiving from other provinces, other countries, indeed other continents, minerals that are coming in for us to process here."

What McGuinty is telling the people of Ontario is that the McGuinty government will decide whether or not processing of Ontario minerals is to take place here based on what favours the monopolies and their globalized economy. He refuses to consider how to have a self-reliant economy in Ontario, nor how to uphold the sovereignty of aboriginal nations on whose territories these resources are found.

As the producers who transform Mother Nature's bounty into the wealth on which the Ontario economy is built, the workers reject this definition of our economy as a "free-trading jurisdiction." It is our economy and the workers as well as the aboriginal nations from whose territories the chromite is being pillaged demand a say as to whether and how these resources are to be mined and processed. We demand that "Our Resources Stay Here!"

Far from protecting the jobs in the manufacturing sector in Ontario the McGuinty government has been responsible for their destruction based on his failed policy that Ontario is "open for business." The closing of Xtrata in Timmins putting 700 people out of work is just one example.

McGuinty's claim that "thousands and thousands of jobs" in Ontario are dependent on minerals from elsewhere coming here for processing, is wildly exaggerated at best. It is to justify the nation-wrecking of the McGuinty government and the monopolies which it serves.

Whether it is the forestry and mining workers of northern Ontario or the steelworkers or farmers, the question which workers are increasingly grappling with is how to set a new direction for the economy that will open a path for society's progress. A government of Ontario worthy of the name would consider itself duty-bound to represent this striving.

First Nations Hereditary Rights Are Not Negotiable!

Attawapiskat First Nation's Just Demand
for Housing and Dignity

The Attawapiskat First Nation declared a housing emergency at the end of October. The Cree First Nation is situated on the James Bay coast in northern Ontario. The housing crisis has been ongoing for many years.  The Harper government and the McGuinty government -- which stated in its recent Throne Speech that it wants to address the issue of poverty in the Aboriginal community -- have continued to deny the hereditary rights of the First Nations and the treaty obligations of the federal government. Given the fact Canada occupied all First Nations lands and is greatly enriched in myriad ways as a result of this, both the federal and provincial governments have definite social responsibilities in law. Instead, both federal and Ontario governments continue the historic colonial and genocidal practices towards First Nations. The more time passes, the more criminally negligent they become.

More than 2,000 people live in Attawapiskat of whom more than 250 people are currently living in makeshift dwellings such as insulated tents, temporary shelters and converted garages. Many homes are deteriorating and contaminated with black mould -- a toxic fungus. In the face of the lack of basic sanitation, running water and warmth, the Chief and Council report that infectious diseases are spreading.

With winter fast approaching, the entire community is endangered. Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence has called on the Harper government for emergency aid including an emergency evacuation of her people to ensure their health and safety.

Government Must Be Held Responsible
for Illegal Mineral Exploration on
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation Lands!

- Philip Fernandez -

On November 14, the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation, located nearly 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, broke off talks with the Ontario government on the use of its traditional lands. The talks broke off after the government repeatedly refused to stop provocative and illegal mineral exploration on KI traditional lands by exploration company God's Lake Resources (GLR). The KI had been in ongoing negotiations with the government since before 2008 regarding the illegal activities of various mine exploration companies in their territory.

Not only is GLR brazenly carrying out its activities despite the people's objections, as expressed by Chief Donny Morris, and the KI Band Council, it is doing so on land that holds the sacred burial grounds of the community. These activities are in direct violation of the KI's well-publicized moratorium on mining exploration to protect their land and hereditary and treaty rights.

The KI First Nation is demanding that the government take immediate action to force GLR to stop its activities as a condition of returning to talks.

Protest in support of the KI First Nation, Thunder Bay, March 20, 2008.

This is not the first time that the KI First Nation has demanded that the McGuinty government intervene in illegal mining activity on their territory. In 2008, the KI opposed the mining company Platinex Inc. which had been doing exploration work on their lands without the consent of the KI. Far from doing its duty to prevent this illegal activity and to assist by finding a political solution to the problem of mining monopolies operating on KI traditional territory, the government oversaw the arrest and jailing of six members of the Band Council, including Chief Morris, for their just resistance. Because the Chief and Band Council members and the entire community of more than 1,000 people stood up for their rights, the government was forced to pay Platinex $5 million from the public treasury in order to settle a lawsuit with the company stemming from the government's failure to properly negotiate with the KI. This was similar to the First Nations' land reclamation in Caledonia, in which the Ontario government paid more than $12.3 million to Henco Industries in 2006 to buy out their "investment" in aboriginal lands.

It would seem that nothing has changed. Speaking before the recent Ontario Federation of Labour Convention, where he called on the workers to support the KI's just struggle, Chief Morris pointed out:

"In 2008, just before we were jailed, Ontario promised us a joint panel to resolve our outstanding issues with mining companies. We are still waiting for them to honour that promise, yet Ontario continues to permit mining companies to desecrate our ancestors' graves. If First Nations don't have the right to say 'no' to the desecration of a sacred area, then we have no rights at all."

The McGuinty government's refusal to act in good faith with the KI First Nation gives a green light for mining monopolies to encroach on their lands and shows once again that its claims to seek a new relationship with First Nations are fraudulent. It is another example that shows the McGuinty government to be the defender of the "right" of mining monopolies to do as they please in Ontario, at the expense of the interests of the First Nations and their hereditary and treaty rights, and those of the workers and people as well.

The well-being and future of the First Nations of Ontario are bound up with that of the working class and people of Ontario. The brutal nineteenth century colonial outlook of the McGuinty government which is the outlook of the racist Canadian state, must be ended. The Ontario working class and its allies must continue to intervene and stand with the KI and other First Nations who are fighting to defend their rights, and together fight for new political arrangements in Ontario and Canada which establish modern relations between First Nations and the rest of Canada based on recognizing their hereditary and treaty rights as a starting point.

Necessity to Oppose Privatization Agenda

Concocted Hudak-McGuinty Drama
Covers Up Joint Aim to Attack the Workers

- Christine Nugent -

Protests across Ontario against wage freezes for public sector workers, December 3, 2010. (OPSEU)

In order to interfere with the workers discussing a new direction for the economy, PC Leader Tim Hudak and Premier Dalton McGuinty are engaging in an elaborate drama in the media. To defuse the united resistance of the Ontario workers to the anti-social offensive, Mr. Hudak and the Ontario PC Caucus are calling for a mandatory wage freeze that will hold the line on pay increases for all government employees. Mr. Hudak fails to inform that the McGuinty government has already imposed a two-year wage freeze on 350,000 non-union and management public sector workers through the Public Sector Compensation Restraint to Protect Public Services Act since its announcement in the Ontario Budget in the spring of 2010.

Attacking the right to a livelihood that keeps up with the rate of inflation, ensuring benefits and pensions for workers and the middle strata, both the Leader of the Opposition and the Premier say will help solve the economic crisis in our province.

For his part, Mr McGuinty proclaims his loyalty to the Ontario way -- imposing austerity measures through consultation with the unions, as he attempted with marginal success in the fall of 2010. He retorts that he has a seven-year plan that includes public expenditure restraints.

These restraints include lay-off notices recently issued to 231 public service employees. This third major wave of layoff notices, brings the total close to 650 that have been handed out in 2011. By March 2014, the McGuinty government plans to cut a minimum of 5,000 public service jobs. Recent interviews with Dwight Duncan, Minister of Finance, suggest that cuts to various ministries may be as high as 33 per cent.

According to the Ministry of Labour, as of October 25, 2010, there were 3,893 collective agreements covering 844,796 workers represented by some 79 unions. Among the largest sectors are: primary and secondary teachers (180,604 in five unions), school support workers (74,672 in nine unions), Ontario Public Service (50,893 in five unions), hospital nurses (53,264 in two unions), hospital support workers (85,507 in 16 unions), nursing home workers (48,466 in 20 unions), community services workers (34,337 in 26 unions) and municipal workers (70,289 in 11 unions).

Like Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, McGuinty responds to the Opposition Leader's attacks with the claim to be standing up for the "tax payer." "I want to encourage my honourable colleague to take a look at, more specifically, what we have done to date. We have not funded wage increases for the public sector. My honourable colleague will know that when it comes to negotiated settlements by broader public sector employers, we have made it clear to them that should they negotiate something beyond zero; we will not in fact be funding that. They'll have to find those monies from within. So we have, in fact, stood up for taxpayers in that regard," McGuinty said, as if attacking public service workers is not an attack on the public services themselves.

Since the spring of 2010, any negotiated settlements in provincial sectors that have resulted in wage increases beyond zero, have not been backed by any funding from the McGuinty government.

The Ontario Opposition Leader also does not mention the other anti-worker activities in which the McGuinty government has already engaged. The McGuinty government has denied the rights of thousands of part-time college workers, while claiming to recognize their rights to unionization and collective bargaining. With the assistance of College administrators and the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the Liberal government has ensured that unionization does not happen by refusing to count the votes and has managed to include these workers in the two-year wage freeze. This government has revamped the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act in order to provide arrangements for the college employer to impose their offer rather than bargain in good faith.

Instead, Mr Hudak lectures Mr. McGuinty on how he can further attack the public workers. Now that the 2010 consultations with unionized workers have taken place Mr. Hudak is declaring all-out war on the those who provide the public services. He advises the Premier that recent court rulings indicate that the he can intervene with legislation and apply the Public Sector Compensation Restraint to Protect Public Services Act, 2002 (Bill 29) to unionized public sector workers.

PC Deputy Leader Christine Elliot (MPP, Whitby-Oshawa) also pointed out that there are a couple of court rulings that will facilitate Mr McGuinty in imposing drastic measures for the public sector workers. She is alluding to two recent Supreme Court rulings that strike down the movement towards recognizing collective bargaining rights under the Charter of Rights, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Charter, specifically Section 2(d), does not impose duties on others, such as the duty for employers to bargain in good faith. MPP Elliott also noted that under the rulings a case could be made to override that section of the Charter if there is a pressing and substantial fiscal emergency. The Ontario Government, washing its hands of any responsibility to the working class, is using these Supreme Court decisions to justify an all-out assault on collective bargaining rights.

There are those who state that the McGuinty way during the election was a soft shoe that wooed his liberal constituents amongst the unionized workers, but this spin creates the illusion that there is a way out of the crisis outside of the workers themselves deciding the way forward for the economy based on their demands for manufacturing not nation-wrecking, increased funding for social programs, to stop paying the rich and resisting monopoly right.

A new direction for the economy needs to be set. The ongoing performance of Hudak and McGuinty is to make sure the workers and people of Ontario never take up the defence of their right to decide their living and working conditions.

The organization of public services, how they are delivered, and how the value they create or require is distributed and priced is a political issue. A socially responsible human-centred view would be that all economic activity must be organized without bailing out the rich and lining the financiers' pockets at everyone's expense.

Toronto

City Workers' Fight for Job Security Blocks Privatization

- Steve Rutchinski -

As the labour contracts of more than 20,000 municipal workers in Toronto are about to expire on December 31, the Rob Ford regime is determined to smash the job security provisions municipal workers have in their current contract. The monopoly media, the Ford brothers and their allies on Council are characterizing it as a "showdown."

These workers are attacked for having working conditions that enable them to ensure society's well-being through the provision of public services and provide them some measure of job security. In the most brutal and uncouth way municipal workers are being described as fat-cat public sector employees, out of touch with reality, with cushy jobs and the unrealistic expectation of "jobs for life". Any worker with any job security provisions in their contract should be very concerned. The base-line the Ford administration is out to impose is one where workers are unorganized, fending for themselves with low wages, no benefits and no job security whatsoever.

Municipal workers provide extremely valuable service and infrastructure vital to the functioning of the economy. The economy of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) could not operate without the work they do: from public transit to garbage removal to cleaning the streets and all the other socially necessary work they perform. Municipal workers are an integral and necessary part of our modern socialized economy.

Furthermore, discrediting the demand of municipal workers for their job security is to accelerate the privatization of public services along with outright elimination of programs, services and the jobs of the public sector workers providing them.

The workers' fight to maintain the job security provisions of the current contract is thus a block to the agenda of the rich minority that Ford represents to privatize municipal services. The current contract language limits the ability of the municipal government to contract out and privatize delivery of services because it requires the employer to relocate workers displaced by contracting out to another job. This is why the Ford administration is so keen on a "showdown."

Municipal governments around the province are closely following what is happening in Toronto because it is in Toronto that the stage is being set to move full-steam ahead with the privatization of public services.

City to Eliminate 2,338 Jobs

On November 30, Toronto city council moved to eliminate 2,338 jobs from its operations, as called for in the city's proposed budget released November 28. Of these positions, 1,148 are presently vacant while the other 1,190 are employees who will be laid off. Of the latter, 666 are unionized workers and 48 are supervisors in city divisions. Another 476 employees at the city's agencies, boards and commissions will lose their jobs -- 152 workers at the public libraries and 324 at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) -- and 411 unfilled jobs are being eliminated. The full weight of these measures will fall upon some of the many city workers who are temporary and have little job security protection.

As can be seen, the degrading and wrecking of public services and programs goes hand in hand with discarding the workers who provide them and the destruction of their livelihoods. The big media and Ford regime hype about fiscal crisis, lack of money, and claims of "respect for taxpayers" continues as the pretext for all the anti-social measures being implemented, including this job elimination. Over the course of the Ford regime's first year and now with the appearance of its second budget, these pretexts have been exposed as frauds and not very sophisticated ones. For their part at the cutting edge of the neo-liberal offensive led in Canada by Stephen Harper's government, the project of those in power in Toronto is to put at the disposal of monopoly interest what wealth yet remains in the public sphere as property, social programs and services, and remuneration of workers.

There are those who say this budget is not so bad, that it could have been much worse and that these layoffs only affect several hundred of some 50,000 city employees. Such a stand conciliates with this anti-social agenda, recognizing only monopoly right. On the contrary:

1. These cuts are taking place when the task facing society is to expand social services and programs to meet the needs and fulfill the rights of all, employing workers to achieve this pro-social agenda. It is not just a matter of saving part or even all of the previous status quo.

2. For the people of Toronto who are the actual targets of the Ford regime's measures, an injury to one is indeed an injury to all. Whether the job loss is of one worker in a thousand or each one of the tens of thousands of workers the Ford regime considers superfluous, the impact will be devastating. It is by uniting and resisting the city-wrecking agenda, whether its target at the moment is hundreds or tens of thousands of city workers, that it can be defeated.

3. The elimination of 1,148 empty positions is not such a small matter either. A temporary failure to employ workers to provide programs and services is being made permanent, resulting in many more workers being deprived of a livelihood than under previous arrangements, and society is deprived of the product of their labour.

4. These are still initial steps for a regime that thinks "everything that's not nailed down" should be sold off, cut or privatized, that many thousands of city workers should be eliminated and that employee pay and benefits should not exceed 20 per cent of the budget. These initial steps cannot be separated from what lies ahead in the grand anti-social designs of the Ford regime's agenda.

The Ford regime again stands condemned, in this case for destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of workers and degrading or destroying the services and programs they provide. Let this shameful deed be an impulse to the people of Toronto's resistance, to develop it and persist until this anti-social agenda is defeated.

Proposed 2012 Budget

- David Greig -

On November 28, the City of Toronto's proposed capital and operating budgets for 2012 were presented to city council. After various hearings and other meetings, city council will consider final approval on January 17 to 19. The separate budgets for Toronto Water and Solid Waste were presented November 10 and approved on November 28.

The 2012 operating budget which, unlike the capital budget, must be balanced without borrowing, has been the focus of the Ford regime's assertions of a $774 million fiscal crisis requiring cuts, sell offs, layoffs and privatization.

In the less than transparent budget papers made public on November 28, $355 million of the monies calculated to eliminate the purported $774 million budget shortfall are labelled: "Base Budget Adjustments and Efficiencies" and "Service Adjustments." This sum is pointedly identified as the result of the 10 per cent budget cut targets imposed on all departments, except the police. Elsewhere, these budget reductions are cited as eliminating 2,338 city jobs.

The $88 million of this sum labelled "Service Adjustments" includes the cuts to a variety of services, among them: the TTC, which is reducing service on 62 routes; the public library system, which is cutting hours, acquisitions and jobs; shelter and housing, with three homeless shelters being closed; Parks and Recreation, with cuts to sports and recreation facilities and programs; the ambulance service, where the hiring of 36 paramedics has been deferred; the fire department, where the hiring of 68 fire fighters has been deferred; $2.5 million less will go to the "social services" category; long term care homes will receive $1.05 million less; three day care facilities will close; and school breakfasts for poor children are being eliminated.

Balancing this proposed operating budget also includes raising funds through increased user fees, in particular an increase to TTC fares, and a 2.5 per cent property tax increase.

In spite of the regime's constant fear mongering about a fiscal crisis, it turns out 2011 has produced an operating budget surplus of $139 million and probably much more. This sum, which could have been used to avoid the listed cuts, has instead been in part set aside in a "tax stabilization fund" and in part used to pay back the city's debt.

The monopoly media has in most cases praised this budget, calling it "good medicine," "hardly Armageddon," "a necessary first step" and "restraint without crushing cuts." The Toronto Star, occasionally critical of Ford, gave him "due credit" for producing a budget with a slight spending reduction. It went on to criticize the cuts but in the end merely called for resistance to "the worst of his service cuts" and only on the part of councillors "who don't share Ford's delusion that this is 'exactly what the taxpayers demanded.'"

As retrograde as this budget is with respect to cuts to jobs, programs and services, the most important issue about it is the principle it reveals as its basis. It utterly rejects the duty governments, in this case the municipal government, have to uphold the rights and well-being of the people. The underlying aim here is implementation of the anti-social austerity agenda of the monopolies, thinly disguised by the "respect for taxpayers" mantra. Social services and programs may be cut or to some extent survive for the moment, but the aim of the administration behind the budget is something other than meeting society's needs and upholding the rights and well-being of the people.

That "something else" is the priorities of private monopoly interests, put forth through such mechanisms as the G8/G20, the IMF and "free" trade agreements and adopted by the various levels of Canadian government in the name of being "open for business," "competitive" or "fiscally responsible," etc.The Toronto Sun editorial reference to this budget as "a good first step" should serve as a warning if someone feels relieved that its provisions are not as bad as they could have been. There is nothing whatsoever in it that indicates an end to this regime's wrecking agenda. Far from it. The main assault on the workers providing the public programs and services is fast approaching as their contract is set to expire. The aim of this assault is to clear the way to further advance the regime's anti-social agenda.

Ford/McGuinty Public Transit Privatization Agenda Becomes Clearer

- Jim Nugent -

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) announced last week a series of broad service reductions. This degradation of public transit service is a result of funding cuts by Mayor Rob Ford's administration and provincial underfunding by the Ontario McGuinty government. The TTC has also cut 350 staff positions as a result of the lack of city and provincial funding. This is the latest in a series of attacks over the last two years by the monopoly media and city and provincial politicians on the TTC workers and on the entire TTC as a public service. These attacks have been stepped up since Ford became mayor just over a year ago but it is not just conservative politicians who are involved.

Transit workers have borne the brunt of this orchestrated campaign. It includes the most offensive kinds of personal slander of individual TTC workers in the media aimed at criminalizing TTC workers collectively as well as their union. In one incident pictures of a worker on light duty recovering after a heart attack were splashed on front pages of newspapers as alleged proof that TTC workers "sleep on the job." Many such stories were circulated to prepare conditions for stripping away TTC workers' right to strike. As soon as Ford was elected, in the midst of this anti-worker media hysteria, McGuinty and Ford collaborated to proclaim the TTC an essential service and declared TTC workers' struggles illegal.

This campaign has also targeted the entire TTC as a public service. One aspect of this was asserting provincial control over this municipal service by withholding and manipulating provincial funding transfers to the TTC. The McGuinty government used this control to force the city administration and TTC to include the Ontario Crown corporation Metrolinx in Transit City, the TTC's long range transit expansion plan. After being elected, Mayor Ford with Premier McGuinty worked out a deal to smash Transit City and replace it with an $8.2 billion cross-town subway plan under Metrolinx control and a plan to extend the Sheppard subway under the control of Ford and a group of land speculation gangsters.

In recent days, what lies behind all of these attacks on the TTC workers and the public service they operate has become clearer. On November 9, McGuinty and Ford staged a joint press conference at a site on the cross-town subway line to raise the media profile of the new subway. Since then officials in the McGuinty government have been issuing statements suggesting that the cross-town subway line will be built and possibly operated as a public-private-partnership project, what they call Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP). Ford and his appointed chair on the TTC board Karen Stintz have come right out with a call for the cross-town line to be privatized. Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig spoke out for the cross-town line being built as an AFP, as did the Minister of Infrastructure Bob Chiarelli (who was also just appointed Minister of Transportation).

For 60 years, the TTC has designed, built and operated subways and has over 100 years experience in streetcar systems. It has been a key city-building institution. Until it started being degraded in the Harris years, Toronto's system was widely considered one of the best in the world. Now, under the hoax that the private sector has superior "expertise" and "efficiency," the TTC is being swept out of the subway/light rail transit expansion project to make room for international financial, engineering and construction monopolies whose aim is to make a big score.

The reason for the urgency of the McGuinty and Ford administrations to criminalize transit workers and to tie their hands by outlawing strikes is also now plain to see. They want transit workers in a position where they cannot resist any of the schemes being cooked up with the infrastructure and privatized services monopolies. Ford and McGuinty want the transit workers' struggle for their livelihood and rights sidelined so they cannot play their role at the centre of the struggle to oppose privatization and to defend public services.

Public Transit Cuts Coming in January

At a time when improvement of Toronto's public transit is needed to ease crowding and reduce waits, the board of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has decided to reduce service on 62 routes effective January 8. Many of these reductions affect rush hour service on the busiest routes. The information initially became public through a leaked memo on November 24 and was then confirmed by the TTC. As well as degrading the service, the measures will lead to further job losses. A fare increase is also expected in the near future.

The TTC board's decision is presented as a response to the city administration's demand that all departments reduce their budgets by 10 per cent because of a supposed fiscal crisis and the false assertion that there is no money, no alternative. A board decision earlier this fall to eliminate several routes for the same reasons was withdrawn in the face of public anger. But when these anti-social warriors in power suffer a setback, they look for other means to achieve the same aims, hence, these service cuts.

Good public transit available to all is an essential part of the well-being and rights of the people in modern society, especially in a city as large as Toronto and its surrounding urban region. In addition, it provides a significant service to businesses by delivering many employees to their places of work, transportation paid for through public funds and fares. The TTC currently provides about 500 million rides per year and a large number of its users have no practical alternative -- they do not own cars and cannot afford taxis. For society, the economy and the natural environment, increased use of good public transit also counteracts the already dire consequences of mass dependence on motor cars; traffic congestion, air pollution and other environmental damage.

Similar to other social services, a pro-social agenda for public transit would require considerable expansion of the service, employment of workers for that purpose, and freezing and then reducing fares toward a nominal amount, so that transportation needs are fully provided to all by right and the natural environment is protected. It would necessarily reject the anti-social spin of the monopoly interests that "there is no money," and move to appropriate the necessary wealth on the basis that the claims of the workers who produce it and the claims of society for social services and programs and the well-being of all come before the claims of the monopolies and owners of capital.

The monopoly interests, their think tanks, media and the various levels of government at their service are headed in the opposite direction, as this TTC decision shows. Depriving social services like public transit of funding is part of the agenda to advance monopoly interest at the expense of society, to hand over to it what has remained public, to "pay the rich." This involves more than diverting funds from public transit to pay the rich in the name of deficit reduction and via lower taxes on the rich and their monopolies. Public transit in York Region is already in the hands of private monopolies. The course set by international bodies like the G8/G20 and through "free" trade agreements and adopted by the various levels of government favours privatization of the TTC and other public services.

In the case of privatized "public" transit, not only must the service and workers' remuneration be funded, but private monopoly profit as well. This will come from degrading the service (less frequent buses, crowding, elimination of less profitable routes, failing to expand sufficiently to meet need), increasing fares and lower pay and benefits (i.e. more fare income in relation to lower labour remuneration) and from what will still come from governments. These TTC decisions degrading the service, planning fare increases, eliminating jobs, contracting out work short of privatization and the violation of TTC workers' rights are all in line with the threat of privatization. What is being done to Toronto's public transit is an issue for the growing resistance to the anti-social agenda of Mayor Ford's regime.

Toronto Needs More Child Care Centres!

- Pritilata Waddedar -

Mayor Rob Ford's plan to close City of Toronto child care centres in 2012 is outrageous and totally unacceptable to Toronto's working people. The city budget presented on November 28 calls for closing three centres, with a loss of 100 child care spaces. Toronto needs thousands more child care spaces, not less. There are only enough spaces now for one out of every five children. Closing child care centres when the need of Toronto's workers for child care services is so great shows that this administration is completely irresponsible regarding people's needs and is unfit to govern a modern city.

Governments at all levels have a duty to put in place measures for ensuring people's rights and well-being. This includes providing high quality child care and early learning services so men and women can earn a living, regardless of their status as a parent. Federal and provincial governments as well as municipal governments have shirked this responsibility. The Harper government has declared that women "should stay home and take care of their own kids" and diverted $9 billion from provincial child care transfers into its politically motivated baby bonus. Ontario legislation provides for child care centre subsidies and child care fee subsidies for low-income families but the McGuinty government stubbornly refuses to fund these subsidies.

All three proposed child care centre closings show a shameful disregard for the needs of the working people who rely on them, but one stands out in particular for its irresponsibility, the closing of Greenholme-Albion Child Care Centre. This child care centre is located in the St. Jamestown neighbourhood, where most residents are workers earning low wages. This neighbourhood is one of the poorest in the city and faces many challenges. There is an acute need for programs for children, youth and families and other social programs. But instead of providing resources to solve problems, the city instead provides Toronto Police Services with millions of dollars every year to terrorize the many national minority youth living there. In an infamous raid in 2006, a force of 600 police occupied and carried out a house-to-house search of the entire neighbourhood. At a cost of $600,000 the police payroll for this one raid would be enough to run three day-care centres for a year.

The Ford administration claims that the centres that are being closed are not "viable" because they have empty spaces as a result of the transfer of four-year olds to the new full-day kindergarten programs. Lots of problems were caused by McGuinty rushing full-day kindergarten through to suit his re-election schedule. But the city could easily solve the problem of empty spaces by converting these into toddler and infant spaces. Toronto is desperately short of toddler and infant spaces and there is a long waiting list for them. Ford doesn't want to place younger children in the spots though, because this would mean hiring more day care workers to meet child/staff ratio requirements. Ford only wants to slash jobs not solve the problems people face.

Empty spaces could also be filled by providing low-income child care subsidies. There are 20,000 eligible families on the city's child care subsidy waiting list. In Toronto half of the families with children are lower income families. A child care system that excludes most Toronto families because of a lack of subsidies is not sustainable. But rather than meeting this need, the city has scheduled cuts to child care subsidies starting in 2012. The provincial government shares the blame for the scheduled cuts because of underfunding.

It is becoming obvious that Toronto's child care services are being deliberately and systematically degraded. This degradation serves the agenda of opening investment space for the rich in the public sector.

A standard pattern is for governments to degrade a public service until there is a crisis and then to call in the private sector to "fix it." As governments degrade the system, international monopolies involved in privatized child care are preparing for expansion in Ontario.

One of these is Edleun Inc. which as been aggressively gobbling up child care centres in Alberta and BC. Edleun has been provided with a huge capital fund by Canadian and international bankers for expansion in Ontario. John Snobelen was appointed as a director of Edleun to facilitate this. Snobelen was Minister of Education in the Harris government and is currently running for President of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Many studies have shown that the profits of private child care monopolies come from reduced quality of care, reduced accessibility and reduced wages for child care workers.

Throughout the city budget process, thousands of Toronto's working women and men have spoken out for increased access to child care services, against child care cuts and privatization. This includes participating in the massive rallies and marches organized by Toronto's public sector workers, whose struggle in defence of their livelihoods is central to the defence of public services. During the recent Ontario election, access for all to child care was raised as an issue by workers, especially by women workers, in communities across the province. The Ford administration and the McGuinty government are exposing their political bankruptcy by refusing to meet these demands and persisting in their course of cuts to public services and expanding privatization.

The task for working women and men is to build a powerful Workers' Opposition which can set a new direction for the city and for Ontario, which can hold the governments to account for ensuring people's rights.

PREVIOUS ISSUES | HOME

Read Ontario Political Forum
Website:  www.cpcml.ca   Email:  ontario@cpcml.ca