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Ontario Workers and Youth Oppose Ford Government's Offensive Anti-Worker Bill 66 at Second ReadingThe Ford government's Bill 66, the Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act, 2019, is now at second reading in the Legislature. Following this, the bill will go to committee for article-by-article study and possible amendments. Bill 66 is an omnibus bill that amends 18 pieces of legislation concerning labour, environment, child care, agriculture, education and more. Its stated aim is to eliminate red tape for businesses to allegedly restore Ontario's competitiveness.[1] Clearly these MPPs did not read the 14,000 word omnibus bill but were given a sales pitch designed to suppress any discussion, especially on the human cost of the "job-killing red tape" campaign of the Ford government. One aspect of the sales pitch endlessly repeated is that the manufacturing sector in Ontario has shrunk by 300,000 jobs since 2002, allegedly because Ontario-based businesses are caught up doing paper work instead of growing their enterprises. Also repeated is that Ontario has 380,000 regulations, said to be the highest number in the country, which roughly equates to the number of manufacturing jobs lost. Facts do not matter in this trite way of speaking devoid of analysis and scientific argument. Several major plant closures and plant downsizings in Ontario have occurred in recent years and none has been attributed to red tape and paperwork by those who own and control those facilities: not Heinz, Kellogg, Caterpillar, U.S. Steel or GM's announcement regarding the closure of its Oshawa plant. The destruction of manufacturing in Ontario can be broadly attributed to the inherent contradiction between the socialized economy and its ownership and control by competing private interests. Those competing private interests block the socialized economy from fulfilling its economic potential for extended reproduction to guarantee the rights and well-being of Canadians. Foreign control, mainly from the U.S., exacerbates this unresolved contradiction in the Ontario economy. The competing oligarchs in control possess economic and political power to do whatever they want regardless of harm to the human factor and economy. The well-being of the oligarchs and their global operations are all that matter and all that is discussed as important. The nonsense of the red tape of 380,000 regulations causing the loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs is thrown around as hyperbole in the Legislature to eliminate discussion and the development of public opinion as to what are the real problems facing the Ontario economy and the dangerous measures included in Bill 66. To give an example, Conservative MPPs spoke about the provisions in Bill 66 to abrogate the Toxics Reduction Act by the end of 2021. One Conservative MPP said: "I want to turn to Schedule 5 of the bill, which is the government's intent to wind down the Toxics Reduction Act by the end of 2021. As it currently stands, the Toxics Reduction Act requires companies to report usage and identify ways of reducing their use. It's one of the biggest paper tigers in government and it takes a lot of paper, Mr. Speaker. People knowledgeable of the Ontario Toxics Reduction Act say that it does not cover the same range of issues as the federal program. The claim of the Ford government is raised as a diversion so that it appears the elimination of the Toxics Reduction Act would be of no significance and matter little that companies would not have to report their use of toxic materials to an Ontario public authority. People dispute this assertion saying it amounts to company self-regulation in an area of great concern. The Ford government uses a convenient self-serving argument that the Act might as well be scrapped because detachment of the previous Liberal governments left the Act as a matter of reporting or red tape. Ontario has known devastating tragedies such as the mass mercury poisoning of Grassy Narrows First Nation that dates back to the 1960s and still continues. To reduce the issue of toxic use for private gain by taking it out of the hands of a public authority and reducing it to ridding companies of paper work and red tape is nothing short of criminal. It reveals once again how powerful private interests have seized control of governments at all levels. Amendments to the Clean Water Act by Bill 66 would see the conditions created for another tragedy like the one that took place in Walkerton in 2000. Schedule 10 may be the most controversial schedule of Bill 66. The opposition was so swift and massive the government says it will be withdrawn yet at this point still remains in the bill. The Ford cabinet says schedule 10 will be withdrawn at committee level. This means that it could actually be amended instead of being withdrawn, or moved to other parts of the bill. Schedule 10 allows municipalities to pass an "open-for-business planning bylaw." They would have to prove that such a bylaw would lead to the creation of a number of jobs, based on an arithmetic formula that takes into account how many people live in a municipality. If a municipality's project is approved by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, provisions from nine environmental laws would cease to apply to the area governed by the bylaw. Municipalities and residents oppose this schedule on principle as a denial of the social responsibility of government and demand its complete abrogation. Second reading of Bill 66 further convinces Ontario workers that the entire legislation should be withdrawn. Prescriptive measures and regulations that provide a measure of protection to the people must not be abrogated. The Lac-Mégantic tragedy in Quebec was in large measure caused by the elimination of protective regulations under the hoax that it was preventing the rail companies from growing their businesses.
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
During
second reading, MPPs of the ruling Progressive Conservative Party
are
repeating in unison the neo-liberal mantra of the Ford government
in
denial of the experience of working people in Ontario. They argue
that
red tape has "business owners filling out paper work instead of
growing
their businesses."
"The
sole accomplishment of the Act over its nine years as a statute
has
been to generate more paper and more people who process that
paper. All
this work is already being done through the federal Chemicals
Management Plan. The only difference is that the federal
government's
plan actually requires companies to do something about the
usage of harmful chemicals. The federal plan is robust, it's
science-based, and every other province but Ontario relies on it.
Creating unnecessary duplication does nothing to protect
Ontario's
health or safety, or the economy."
Second reading also
dealt
with other aspects of the bill such as Schedule 9 which amends
the Labour
Relations
Act,
1995
so
as to deem municipalities and certain local boards, school
boards,
hospitals, colleges, universities and public bodies to be
non-construction employers. This means the trade unions currently
representing employees
of those agencies and institutions, who are now or may be
employed in
the construction industry, no longer represent them once the bill
is
passed. Any collective agreement binding the employer and the
trade
union ceases to apply in so far as it applies to the construction
industry. This is clearly meant to de-unionize the construction
work
that is
done in these public bodies and to obstruct and deprive workers
of
their right to bargain collectively for wages and working
conditions
agreeable to themselves. Construction work by definition is
limited in
time and moves from project to project. Construction workers have
always had a difficult time defending themselves collectively and
this
abrogation of their right under schedule 9 will make it even more
difficult. At second reading, MPPs of the Ford government said
this
part of the bill is meant to divert money away from construction
workers by finding ways around collective agreements that
guarantee
wages and working conditions. This comes at a time when the rates
of
fatalities
and injuries in Ontario's construction sector continue to rise
and
workers are fighting against this devastating trend.