The Ontario government doesn’t need to slash spending on public services and freeze teachers’ pay to balance the budget, labour leaders say.
The Ontario Common Front, a loose coalition of labour representatives, poverty activists and environmentalists met all day Saturday in Toronto to discuss how to highlight their message.
A discussion paper released by the group in August, Falling Behind, argues that hiking corporate taxes could bring in billions in revenue annually for the government.
“Why do we keep cutting corporate taxes?” Patti Dalton, president of the London and District Labour Council, said during a break in the meeting at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor St. W.
“The Liberal government got itself into this crisis of revenue and they should not be taking it out on the most vulnerable in the province.”
The group is planning “a huge rally” at the Liberal leadership convention in Toronto in late January, Dalton said.
“We’d like to change the tune to tax revenue generation,” she said. “We don’t have to have cuts to social services and other public services and we definitely should not be having the draconian Bill 115 (affecting teachers).”
The teachers bill is an attack on basic collective bargaining rights, said John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.
“Not only does it strip away the right of free collective bargaining, it gives the power to cabinet to intervene in collective agreements and take unilateral action that in the past has always rested with the legislature as a whole. So it’s quite extraordinary, the centralization of power.”
Opponents of the province’s fiscal decisions can be more effective by getting together, said Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
In addition to labour groups, the Ontario Common Front includes health, environment and social service agencies and organizations representing seniors and students.
“We need to pull people together so we can amplify our voice, get active in elections and influence the budget process,” Ryan said in an interview.
“It makes a lot of sense for the labour movement to reach out beyond unions and start talking to everybody else who’s impacted.”
“We’re going to be coming up with a people’s budget in the next week or two and use that to try and influence the leaders. There’s a lot of people hurting out there.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Paul Moloney
The Ontario Common Front, a loose coalition of labour representatives, poverty activists and environmentalists met all day Saturday in Toronto to discuss how to highlight their message.
A discussion paper released by the group in August, Falling Behind, argues that hiking corporate taxes could bring in billions in revenue annually for the government.
“Why do we keep cutting corporate taxes?” Patti Dalton, president of the London and District Labour Council, said during a break in the meeting at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on Bloor St. W.
“The Liberal government got itself into this crisis of revenue and they should not be taking it out on the most vulnerable in the province.”
The group is planning “a huge rally” at the Liberal leadership convention in Toronto in late January, Dalton said.
“We’d like to change the tune to tax revenue generation,” she said. “We don’t have to have cuts to social services and other public services and we definitely should not be having the draconian Bill 115 (affecting teachers).”
The teachers bill is an attack on basic collective bargaining rights, said John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council.
“Not only does it strip away the right of free collective bargaining, it gives the power to cabinet to intervene in collective agreements and take unilateral action that in the past has always rested with the legislature as a whole. So it’s quite extraordinary, the centralization of power.”
Opponents of the province’s fiscal decisions can be more effective by getting together, said Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
In addition to labour groups, the Ontario Common Front includes health, environment and social service agencies and organizations representing seniors and students.
“We need to pull people together so we can amplify our voice, get active in elections and influence the budget process,” Ryan said in an interview.
“It makes a lot of sense for the labour movement to reach out beyond unions and start talking to everybody else who’s impacted.”
“We’re going to be coming up with a people’s budget in the next week or two and use that to try and influence the leaders. There’s a lot of people hurting out there.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Paul Moloney
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