Archive for June, 2009
School Might Be Out – But Summer Camp Isn’t In
The second week of the City of Toronto strike has added a further element of stress to the lives of many of Toronto’s families. The 3000 children receiving child care in City run daycares have been without a program since the beginning of the strike over a week ago, forcing their parents, many of whom are low income to make other arrangements for their children – without the assistance of their municipal childcare subsidy.
This week thousands more children and parents have been affected as the City’s summer camps have not opened due to the strike. This leaves parents scrambling to find a private summer camp placement for their child, either paying more or going without adequate child care for this portion of the summer.
This is an unsafe situation, as many parents are forced to choose between going to work and keeping their job and ensuring their child has adequate, safe and affordable childcare.
It is my hope the City recognizes that workers have been clear, and have a mandate not to negotiate on the sick leave issue. If the City insists on pushing this right now, instead of pulling this off the table for further negotiation between the this collective agreement and the next, they are very unlikely to win at arbitration anyways. Should the City lose at arbitration, it will demonstrate the strike was unnecessary, the City will lose the ability to get anywhere on this issue, and parents and children will have been inconvenienced and possibly put at risk over this.
It is my hope that the City will recognize it is in it’s best interest to reach a negotiated settlement on the sick pay issue, and that the risk to them is very high, particularly after finding $400 million in their budget in less than 24 hours, after saying it’d be impossible to find the money necessary to fund this.
Before folks pile up on me and tell me about the private sector – I’m going to say this – I don’t disagree this is a unique benefit, but the City’s position has been so compromised they have no reason to expect to be able to negotiate the outcome they’d like, and what’s more finding $400 million in 24 hours has effectively ended their ‘we can’t afford it’ argument to an arbitrator.
Torontonians want workers back to work, workers want to be back at work – the City of Toronto needs to let them get back and use the next three years to resolve the controversial issues in advance of the next collective agreement.
1 Comment »More Coverage of Liberal Staff Bizarre Attacks at PC Leadership Convention
I promised I would show the attack buttons the Liberal Caucus Services Bureau (a publicly funded, partisan arm of the Premier’s Office that is used entirely for partisan purposes). Unfortunately, after my first video, Liberal staffers steered clear and no buttons, press releases or other liberal attacks were dropped off.
I did get my hands on a couple of the ‘Frank Klees Leadership Kits’ I had seen Liberal Caucus Services Bureau and Minister’s Office staff handing out earlier in the day. That’s what you’ll see in the video below. It’s another bizarre attack and a total waste of taxpayer resources by Dalton McGuinty to advance his partisan interests. This has nothing to do with policy, or even Queen’s Park for that matter – it’s taxpayer money doing the bidding of the Ontario Liberal Party. It is also literally a ’skin deep’ attack on a man who had the courage to seek to lead his party.
For a guy whose running the largest deficit Ontario has ever seen, I have a really good idea – cut crap like this right out. Stop using public tax dollars for partisan purposes, stop sending taxpayer funded staff to your opponents events and conventions in hopes of slamming them right out of the gate and respect the fact that using public resources to cling to power is both highly improper and totally undemocratic. Sure you probably wouldn’t win without it, but that doesn’t make it right, and frankly it makes this crutch all the more pathetic.
I recognize me speaking out on this likely makes the threat of Liberal Caucus Services Bureau’s highly improper use of public resources against me, should I seek public office, all the more likely – and my simple response is this – I’ve exposed LCSB’s actions this weekend on principle in my role as accredited media. If I was the victim of a campaign using public resources highly improperly, I would seek a legal recourse, and publicly expose and condemn it as well. That would be both principled and personal.
It is my hope that both the Ontario NDP and Ontario PC parties will help ensure this cat is routinely let out of the bag, so that the people of Ontario know what the Premier and his staff are up to. It not only levels the playing field, but also ensures elections in Ontario are both free and fair – something they are not if one party has a massive publicly funded arm that would make it so even if the NDP and PCs played the same game in response – their resources would not compare.
Update: Big City Lib finds humour in this bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-does-he-keep-his-crucifix.html
I don’t seek martyrdom, or the political equivalent. I don’t own a crucifix, and have no intention of ‘one day getting them all’ – whatever that means. But I do believe in fairness, and free and fair elections. Elections without fear, intimidation, cheating etc.
I think that’s important. It should be a pre-condition to accepting a victory, because a victory without a free and fair election is not a victory at all, its a seizure of power. Some folks are so focused on winning they lose a sense of what’s right. I’d rather lose an honest fight, than win an unfair one. My point in this post and others over the weekend, is that some folks have lost sight of that – the good thing is Ontarians are good at sniffing out tired governments and have a tendency of not electing them.
8 Comments »Reflections on Tim Hudak’s Victory
I think the thing I found most interesting about the PC Party race was that it was an actual race. There were divergences of opinion, fundamental policy differences and a demonstration of a wide spectrum even within the PC Party. Normally leadership debates are fairly dry things where everyone basically agrees on policy and is simply left arguing that they personally are the best person to lead their party.
That was not the case here.
Tim Hudak’s victory does undeniably signal a shift to the right for the PC Party. How far right or what that right is like is still unknown. I don’t buy the ‘he’s a younger Mike Harris’ simply because I believe Hudak is wise enough to understand that the Harris and Eves governments did make mistakes, some policies were not popular and in some cases caused a lot of hurt to folks. I don’t believe anyone would want to re-fight the divisive battles of the mid to late nineties and I believe Tim Hudak as leader recognizes that as well.
Unlike Andrea Horwath’s victory as NDP leader where many recognized that the baggage that came with the 1990-1995 experience in government had to be left behind because she was clearly not associated with that, and had a very different vision, Hudak will need to work on his image to ensure that voters in Ontario see him as his own man and are comfortable enough with who he is and what he is about to consider electing him Premier.
I was asked immediately after Hudak won and in the couple of hours that followed by some folks what my thoughts were on the outcome and more pointedly his ability to win. What I said was this, ‘If the party wanted to win a majority very easily, than Christine Elliott was the candidate to elect. However, what became clear during my time covering the race, and speaking with Conservatives is the party is farther to the right than she is, and more comfortable with a guy like Hudak’. Hudak could well win a majority government in 2011, but he’ll need to convince folks that the stuff on the front page of the Toronto Star today isn’t true first.
I completely understand why Mike Harris is so well liked by PC members, but PC members need to also try to understand why many issues based, and ’swing voters’ defeated them in 2003, if they are intent to form government in 2011.
Speaking with him both on and off camera on a range of issues I got a real sense that he is genuine and firmly believes what he stands for and speaks out for.
His task now is presenting himself to Ontario voters in a way that folks in the 416 and 905 can be as comfortable with him as folks in the 519, 705 and 613. I think he’s up to the task, it’s now just a question of how willing and able he and the people around him, and more importantly his caucus is prepared to work on that.
Personally, I am an undecided voter with no party affiliation who would love to see both the NDP and the PCs get to the point of being able to each offer Ontarians the kinds of policies that would allow either to form government in advance of the 2011 election.
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