Readers React

I'm on a bit of a tight schedule today, so I cede to newspaper letter-writers their thoughts on Doug Ford's tactics and values before his province-wide blink yesterday.

Premier Ford’s decision to withdraw Bill 28, and go back to the bargaining table shows the kind of things that can happen when you stand up to a bully.

Joe Virio, Bowmanville, Ont.

 “I pity that man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth shall starve in the process.” This quotation, by former U.S. president Benjamin Harrison, was posted on the wall of the union office where I once worked.

It makes me wonder: how cheap does the Ford government want to make our educational system?

Trampling the rights of the lowest paid is not only deplorable, but devastating to our society.

Who wants to live, work and do business in a province that disrespects and under values its education and health care professionals?

Ontarians want and deserve better.

Paul Templin, Newmarket, Ont.

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 Nobody loves a bully.

The development lobby gets approval to build Highway 413, at a cost of $8.2 billion amid disagreement about its utility.

More than $1 billion a year in annual licence fees is given away as an election goody.

Ongoing green energy projects were scrapped mid-development at a cost of $230 million, amid a growing climate-crisis. The lowest paid education workers (70 per cent women), earning less than $40,000 a year, get offered a salary increase of 1.5 per cent, or, in some cases, 2.5 per cent..

Any trained nurse (more than 90 per cent women), with a salary capped at one per cent, could have easily and far more effectively triaged these competing priorities, so that the educational chaos spread across the Star’s recent front pages could have been avoided.

Paul Visschedyk, Burlington, Ont.

 

UPDATED: Breaking: Doug Ford's News Conference In Which His Credibility Further Erodes

I just watched Doug Ford's news conference, prompted no doubt by the fury people feel in Ontario over his government's heavy-handed use of the Notwithstanding Clause to try to break CUPE's strike. Replete with inaccuracies and lies, Ford tried to present a conciliatory tone, but hyperbole such as the province facing bankruptcy if they cede to CUPE's demands undermined that tone. One does not easily forget, for example, the surrendering of over $1 billion in licence and toll fees and other measures to deplete the treasury.

Apparently, people are starting to wake up.

Here is Sid Seixiero's take on the debacle:

WATCH:

@sid_seixeiro

shares his thoughts on Premier Ford's announcement that the province is willing to rescind Bill 28 if CUPE agrees to show similar "gesture of good faith" - by ending the walkout and getting kids back to school.

UPDATE: CUPE will end the strike upon the Ford government's written promise to rescind Bill 28.

And Theo for the win:

Upon Awakening

It would be nice to think that the slumbering masses have awakened to a new understanding of government and its relationship to the people, but I abandoned magical thinking a long time ago. Nonetheless, occasionally our overlords overplay their hand, and people do get a glimpse behind the curtain.

Such seems to be happening in Ontario, now in the midst of an education labour disruption that could have been so easily avoided, had our rulers not been consumed with their own arrogance.

A new Abacus poll reveals some interesting statistics:

... 62 per cent of respondents blame the provincial government for schools closing after thousands of education workers, including education assistants, custodians and librarians, walked off the job Friday. Meanwhile, 38 per cent point the finger at the workers.

Sixty-eight per cent of parents of school-aged children believe the Ford government bears the most responsibility, the survey found, while 71 per cent of respondents want the province to negotiate a "fair deal" with education workers, rather than continue with its current strategy.

Laura Walton, president of CUPE's Ontario School Boards' Council of Unions, said the results of the poll show Ontarians support the education workers in their job action.

"This poll confirms what we already knew: that the majority of people support education workers, that they see through the Ford government's lies about working for workers and students, that they know $39,000 isn't enough, and that they believe workers' rights to freely bargain and strike if necessary must always be protected," Walton said in a statement.

"Seven out of 10 Ontarians want the government to negotiate a fair deal. That starts with repealing Bill 28, an unjust law which Ontarians know is like giving a schoolyard bully a sledgehammer."

Meanwhile, both sides are now appearing before the Ontario Labour Relations Board, the government seeking a declaration of an illegal strike, CUPE arguing against that designation. Perhaps the desperation of the Ford cabal is reflected in the chief argument of its legal brainstrust:

Ferina Murji said strikes are prohibited in the midst of any contract, not just one that was ratified by union membership.

"A collective agreement is a collective agreement is a collective agreement," she said.

If one believed in the power of pithy sayings, one might be able to sum up the current imbroglio this way:

The Ford 'Progressive' Conservative government: not here for you. 

 

 

 

 

Finally, Some Passion!

Watching the American news this week in the leadup to their mid-terms, I was struck by the dichotomy between Democratic leaders and candidates and their Republican counterparts. On the one hand, you have people like Joe Biden and Barrack Obama trying to appeal to reason in their stumping, and on the other hand you have the Republicans blowing loudly and incessantly into their dog whistles (Crime! Immigration! Inflation!!!), appealing to the prejudices and passions of their people. 

It is two polarities appealing to two different planets. Platonic ideals are not exactly vehicles of galvanization.

Fortunately, Politics Girl has the antidote: some 'reasoned passion'. Be advised, however, that her language in this video may not be to everyone's taste.

Stop saying the Democrats are going to lose. It’s lazy, defeatist bullshit not at all based in truth.

UPDATED: Brittlestar Understands

 ... what the Ford government is either too arrogant or too stupid to get:

H/t Brittlestar

I imagine only those who favour government by a cadre of contemptible clowns are content right now.

UPDATE: Here's another expression of disdain for our diminished-capacity politicos:

"I'm angry."

@sid_seixeiro shares his thoughts as thousands of CUPE education workers prepare to walk off the job today.

Mr. Musk Unmasked

Once more, Unlearn16 reveals something important, and her observations I could not disagree with. Yesterday, she pierced the facade perpetrated by the Ford government about the soon-to-be striking school support staff in Ontario. This time, she turns her laser-focus on Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter. 

Well-worth the three-minute listen.

 

The Simple Amongst Us.

The older I get, the less satisfied I am with life. Probably because I have a lifetime of context, events bother me a lot more now than they did earlier in my life. Indeed, my bleaker moments see me almost envying the simple-minded who view the world through a bifurcated lens: black is black, and white is white.

Those with life experience and a functioning brain know that things are almost never binary. Yet, to believe the idealogues amongst us, things really are that simple, even if they have to disguise that conviction, as, for example, governments are wont to do.

Take the Doug Ford 'Progressive' Conservative government in Ontario. Quite willing to use the notwithstanding clause to abrogate education workers bargaining rights, they are prepared, as of this Friday, to impose a four-year contract that offers wage increases well below the rate of inflation and amounts to a massive slap in the face of those who dare assert their rights under our Constitution.

The Progressive Conservative government's final offer was a 2.5 per cent annual raise to workers making less than $43,000, and 1.5 per cent for those earning more, either of which would mean a raise of about $1,000 per year.

One can rightly ask why these and other essential workers (nurses come readily to mind) are being treated with such disdain. My thought, for what it's worth, is that this government consists of rabid ideologues (a form of simple-mindedness, to be sure) who see the world through a specific and very narrow lens: public sector (and its attendant costs) bad: private sector good. 

One very small example of this is the $200-$250 per child the government is giving to Ontario students for tutoring, books or computer programs to help students catch up after the learning disruptions imposed by Covid. Such a gimmicky and populist ploy does little good, but it is money, of course, that will be directed to the private sector should parents choose to use it for its stated purpose. 

One wonders how those many millions of dollars could have been better used were they directed toward schools and education workers to pay the latter a living wage. But remember: public sector bad; private sector good.

I leave you with another suggestion made by Unlearn16: deem those working in education essential workers: