Ford Government's Pay-the-Rich
Anti-Social Offensive
Province-Wide Resistance Develops
Toronto, Labour Day 2019
Across the province, teachers and education workers,
health care workers, migrant workers, injured workers, and broad
sections of the people are taking actions and stepping up resistance to
the anti-social offensive of the Doug Ford Progressive Conservative
(PC) government.
 Since coming to power on June 7, 2018,
the Ford government has carried out massive cuts to health care
spending, public education and social programs, resulting in the loss
of thousands of jobs and the services those workers provide to the
people, with more cuts to come. All of these cuts are carried out under
the pretext of being fiscally responsible and accountable to the people.
Citing the need to reduce the debt and deficit, on
November 7 the government passed into law Bill 124, the Protecting
a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, 2019, which
attacks public sector workers by imposing a one per cent cap on their
wages over the next three years.
The Ford government forecasts paying $13.3 billion in
interest for fiscal year 2019-20 alone to the financial
institutions that hold Ontario's debt. The backgrounder to Bill 124
says that this amounts to "$1.5 million of interest paid every hour of
every day" and the Ford government makes clear that the financial
oligarchs who hold Ontario's debt are the priority and must receive
their interest payments before "a single dollar can be spent on
schools, hospitals or transportation."
It is the political representatives of this financial
oligarchy who are orchestrating the cuts to social programs and public
services and legislating against the rights of public sector workers,
to "sustain" the current pay-the-rich direction for the economy. These
representatives are placed in positions of authority to decide
government policy, either as finance ministers or government-appointed
consultants. Former Liberal Finance Minister Charles Sousa, for
example, was Director of Commercial Banking at the Royal Bank of Canada
Financial Group for more than 20 years. Don Drummond, another appointee
of the McGuinty Liberal government, who advised how to restructure
public services to ensure payments on the debt and deficit were
sustained, was Senior Vice President and Chief Economist for the TD
Bank from 2000 to 2010. Much of the direction he set out in his
Commission for the Reform of Public Services is what is now being taken
up by the Ford government, especially as concerns the restructuring of
wages and benefits throughout the public service and increasing class
sizes in educational institutions.
 
Walk-ins for education were organized across Toronto and in other
locations in southern
Ontario, October 10, 2019 to demand an end to
cuts in public education.
TML Weekly reported on Bill 124 on August 31,
pointing out that the measures that the Ontario PCs were taking with
this bill "amounts in practice to a form of opting out of the
government's legal duty to be accountable to the people for its actions
and violating the rights of public sector workers with impunity. The
act uses a variation of the fraud of reasonable limits on people's
rights and the notwithstanding clause found within the Canadian
Constitution and its Charter of
Rights and Freedoms."
Public sector workers in Ontario have made it clear that
they intend to file a Charter challenge to Bill 124 at the Supreme
Court. Even bourgeois commentators acknowledge the legislation runs
counter to recent Supreme Court decisions but that has not deterred the
Ford government.
Ontario workers are not relying on the prospect of a
favourable outcome following a protracted legal proceeding. Bill 124
was passed while the teachers and education workers in Ontario, one of
the main targets of this law, are still in bargaining for a new
contract. At the moment, besides preparing to challenge Bill 124,
education unions are getting ready to take various actions, including
strike action, to fight for just wages and working conditions and to
defend the public education system.
 Elementary school teachers voted 98 per
cent in support of strike action, if necessary, and will be in a
position to take legal strike action on November 25. Starting November
26, they will stop attending staff and school meetings, participating
in any ministry-related activities, and carrying out a host of other
tasks, which is intended to target school and board administration and
the Ministry of Education.
High school teachers and education workers represented
by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation will hold
information pickets outside of work hours and also begin a limited
withdrawal of services on November 26. Teachers and occasional teachers
have backed strike action by 95.5 per cent, while 92 per cent of
education workers also support possible job action.
Teachers in the Catholic school boards likewise have
voted 97 per cent in favour of taking strike action but are not yet in
a legal strike position.
Students at three Toronto universities are also in
action to defend public education against the Ford government's
measures that affect post secondary education. They held a one-day
walk-out on November 6 to protest the Ford government cuts to public
education and student aid and the increasing cost of post-secondary
education in the province.
CUPE Ontario is also in action against the Ford
government's attack on the rights of injured workers. Under its slogan
"Communities Not Cuts," CUPE Ontario held an action at Doug Ford's
Constituency Office on November 14 to protest the Workplace Safety and
Insurance Board's (WSIB) refusal to acknowledge 93 per cent of claims
related to mental health issues. Currently 1.7 million workers in
Ontario do not have WSIB coverage and, if injured on the job, are
forced to fend for themselves. Organizations like the Ontario Network
of Injured Workers' Groups and others are actively demanding that WSIB
coverage be universal and that the Ford government stop attacking the
most vulnerable workers.
Picket, November 14, 2019 outside Doug Ford's Etobicoke
constituency office opposes Bill 124 and demands measures be taken to
guarantee safe working conditions for temp workers.
The Ontario Health Coalition is also organizing
resistance across the province against the Ford Government's cuts to
public health care. Cuts include services covered under the Ontario
Health Insurance Plan, privatizing the delivery of community care to
seniors and others, plans to privatize and reduce ambulance services
across the province, the reduction of public health units from 35
across Ontario to 10, cuts to mental health services and more. Rallies
and other actions have been held in Chatham and Toronto and others are
called for Sault Ste. Marie on November 30 and Ottawa on December 7.
Details are available on the Ontario
Health
Coalition
website.
Regional rally for public health care, organized by the Ontario Health
Coalition,
Toronto, November 9, 2019.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 28 - November 23, 2019
Article Link:
Ford Government's Pay-the-Rich
Anti-Social Offensive: Province-Wide Resistance Develops
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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