"From the Left"The 1997 Guelph Tribune columns"From the Left" opinion columns which appear every second Wednesday in The Guelph Tribune, a weekly newspaper published by Fairway Press (a division of Southam Inc.) These columns appeared in 1997. Table of Contents
December 17, 1997 The numbers are in, and municipal politicians across the province are licking their wounds. Downloading services from the provincial to local governments has proven to be anything but revenue neutral. Only the most shameless apologists for Mike Harris and his band of reformatories ever predicted otherwise. The rest of us could see it coming, and now it’s here. The provincial government has dumped almost half a billion dollars of new costs onto municipalities. This is the end result of the "trade" in which the province took control of education funding, and cities were given responsibility for welfare costs, social housing, highway snow clearing, public transit, policing and other programs. Needless to say, it wasn’t an even trade, despite what Ernie Eves says. The net loss to Guelph is going to be in the millions of dollars. City council will now face the choice of either raising taxes, cutting services or bringing in new user fees. It’s either that, or experience for themselves what thousands of welfare mothers have been living through for two years. Try to do more with less when you can’t even do the same with less. User fees are just another, more insidious, way of raising taxes. Unlike traditional taxation, they put the full burden onto those people who use a service. For example, instead of the cost of public library services being more or less evenly spread across the community, library patrons will have to shell out more in annual fees. This will discourage some families who find they can’t afford this added cost, and the fees will have to be borne by an ever dwindling number of users until, eventually, another valuable institution becomes financially unfeasible. It is the same vicious circle that undermined public transportation. As government grants go down, fares go up, passenger numbers drop, fares go up again, and around and around it goes. The right wing "tax fighters" who like to define us all as taxpayers, rather than citizens, and as consumers of services, rather than community members, favour user fees because they are the first step on the slippery slope towards privatization. Eves, the provincial treasurer, is one of them. He wants municipalities to survive these downloads by cutting their own spending. Eves set "efficiency targets" which he hopes cities will achieve rather than hiking tax rates. For a city the size of Guelph, with less than 100,000 population, he wants to see a 1.7 per cent cut. There will be some serious infighting at City Hall over this. Dan Schnurr, a man who said that social housing is "a cancer" has taken over as chair of Council’s Finance and Administration Committee. Also on this committee are Councillors Farrelly, Cumming, and Prior. That is a frightening mix of people to make important recommendations about the direction Council decisions should take. With the exception of Farrelly, there isn’t strong support for social programs on this committee. Schnurr, Cumming, Prior and the other Tory clones on City Council will now be tempted to make one further download - directly onto the shoulders of individuals. My guess is that they will bring forward recommendations to charge new, or higher, user fees to those who use city facilities. Let’s hope the rest of Council has the wisdom to find other solutions, and the courage to defend their constituents. go back to the table of contents December 03, 1997 The Guelph police made some serious errors of judgment on November 18. Now they are upset, but not because of the terrible consequences of their decisions. They are angry because they have been thrust into the public spotlight, and they are being held accountable for their action. They have no one to blame but themselves. This unfortunate chain of events unfurled around a $100 a plate fund raising dinner held by the local Tories. The guest speaker was Dave Johnson, the Minister of Education. About 2,000 parents, teachers and students gathered outside the Holiday Inn to exercise their legal right to peacefully demonstrate their displeasure with Johnson and local MPP Brenda Elliot over Bill 160. The demonstration was not unruly, nor was it in danger of becoming so. When I arrived, it was a cold evening, but people stayed warm by moving around, beating drums, blowing whistles, shouting slogans and jeering the Tories who drove up to the event. Nothing that would harm anyone on either side of the event, or the police who were in the middle with a large number of volunteer marshals. I recall asking a marshal why the cars were being allowed through without any of the delays that always occur on an information picket line. I was told an agreement had been made with the police that all cars were to be ushered through, with the exception of those carrying Johnson and Elliot. Their vehicles could be held up while the protests were made, and then they would be let in. When people started getting arrested, I was told they were to be brought down town, written up and released. The speed with which the police were arresting men and women who did nothing wrong was alarming. I was not present when these agreements were made, but both police and parade marshals acted as though they had been. At least until Elliot and Johnson were rushed through. Then we learned the people who were arrested didn’t get out until around midnight. In fact, it was almost one in the morning when my sister-in-law sat down in my car for a ride home from the Wellington Detention Centre. While in there, she and other women protesters were strip searched by female guards. None of this should have happened. The police should have abided by the agreement they made to release the protesters immediately. There was no reason to hold the demonstrators for six or seven hours. Arrangements made with protest organizers, once broken, are difficult to make again. Failing that, when they sent the women to the detention centre, it should have been with instructions to treat them in the same way as those held at the police station, where no strip searches were made. The whole episode was a panic stricken suppression of our right to peaceful protest. Now the police are saying they will be even harsher next time, if the criticisms and demands for an inquiry don’t stop. They are following one outrage with another. This is an attempt to intimidate law abiding protesters, and it is a violation of the community’s democratic rights. It is time for them to settle down and apologize to the seven women they humiliated. Then, they should go back to crowd control school and learn how to properly handle a protest. Threats are not the way to do it. go back to the table of contents November 19, 1997 Green ribbons have thrown Ontario’s education minister into a panic. He thinks it is awful that students will be exposed to the sight of them in the classroom. They can see red ribbons, and think about the inadequate funding of AIDS research. They can see white ribbons, and think about the inadequate funding of programs to prevent violence against women. But they shouldn’t see green ribbons and think about the inadequate funding of public education. That’s too political for young minds. This is exactly what students ought to be thinking about these days, now that the teachers’ political protest has moved off the picket line and into the wider community. If support for public education can’t be expressed inside our schools and classrooms, then where can it be? The teachers are not introducing politics into the classroom, as David Johnson charges. The politics of education was brought there years ago when students began wandering door to door, selling chocolate bars to raise funds for school projects. The only change over the years is that the stakes are higher, and the issues are sharper. Politics was introduced to the classroom when John Snobelen mused out loud about forcing change by manufacturing a crisis in the system. It was further introduced when Mike Harris decided to cut more than $667 million from education to finance his tax cut. It was introduced again when the government used students as pawns in an attempt to ram through a law that will seriously damage our public education system. The government provoked this ongoing political protest. To their credit, the teachers did not back away from it. They are continuing to use their democratic right to free expression to raise public awareness. In doing so, they are teaching all of us an important lesson. The next time we see a teacher, we should say thank you. The first phase of their protest, the work stoppage, was an inspiration to all of us. We learned more about civic responsibility, and the value of standing up for your beliefs, in those two weeks than could ever be learned in a classroom. Mahatma Gandhi took a peaceful, but unlawful, protest against unjust laws into the streets of India and changed the British Empire. Martin Luther King Jr. took a similarly peaceful, but unlawful, protest into the streets of the United States and changed that country. Both men are justifiably portrayed as heroes in our classrooms. The teachers’ unions are acting from the same convictions, and for the same purpose. The fight against Bill 160 is a fight for democracy, and a fight for access to quality education. It is a fight which will, ultimately, bring down this profoundly anti-democratic government. Those who are fighting it should also be seen as heroes in our classrooms. The teachers picket line protest is unprecedented in Canada. Never before have five unions taken all their members off the job in such a concerted and focused opposition to government legislation. Twenty years ago, unions stopped work for one day against wage and price controls. Different communities were targeted for one day protests over the past two years. Never has it been sustained for two weeks. During that time, support for the unions rose steadily. The biggest lesson from it all is that fighting back does make a difference. go back to the table of contents November 05, 1997 Next Monday, we will elect the men and women who will manage our city through the dying years of the Harris government. There is no shortage of candidates. The mayoralty campaign has been a bit of a ho-hummer, but there are some good choices in the Wards. I live in Ward 4 where, three years ago, our two councillors, Gloria Kovach and Jim Sinclair, were acclaimed. Because no one ran against them, they didn’t need to talk to voters during the campaign. Their silence continued throughout their term. Not once did they consult with us or send us any communication. They said nothing publicly when a manufacturing plant in their Ward poisoned Guelph’s water. These simply add to many other reasons why I would caution people against voting for either of them. This year, Ward 4 has swung from famine to feast. There are eight people running for two seats. The seven new candidates should be judged, in my opinion, on their vision not just for our Ward, but how it fits with the overall health of our city. A major yardstick should be their attitudes towards the downtown arena, and the decision to keep big box stores out of Guelph. Both are issues directly related to the health of our city core. Only one of the candidates, Rob McAleer, strongly stated his support for a healthy downtown on these questions. He recognizes that the main arena should be in the city centre, and a community recreational facility should be placed in the west end. Two others, Ed Cuncins and Wayne Vokey, are split. All the others turn a blind eye to the downtown. Vokey is weak on the big box decision, but supports the arena and a west end community centre. Cuncins is clear on the big boxes, but opposes the downtown arena. McAleer should be one of the Ward 4 councillors. Kovach shouldn’t be the other one. Sinclair is not seeking re-election to his old council seat. Rather than lose a Ward election, he set his sights higher, choosing instead to lose a city-wide election. Both he and John Pate are challenging Joe Young for mayor. Pate is lining himself up for a run at the Conservative provincial nomination. Brenda Elliott is unlikely to be nominated for a second term and Pate is hungry to feast from the blood on the local Tory floor. Young has led city council competently for three years, despite the presence of some unruly, grandstanding councillors. I don’t like his campaign comments about cutting costs by using volunteers to deliver some services. We don’t need more politicians who fight their way through hard times on the backs of the people who work for them. As far as the rest of the council goes, I would like to see Karen Farbridge, Sean Farrelly and Cathy Downer back. There are three candidates looking for election who will bring valuable contributions to council debates. Bill Zebedee, in Ward 2, has been a consistent and vocal critic of provincial funding cuts and will represent his constituents effectively. Rita Boulding has strong ties to the local labour movement and will give them a much needed voice from Ward 3. In the same Ward, Maggie Laidlaw has been an outspoken school trustee, and will quickly make her mark on council. We could have a very good city council ahead of us, if we all get out to vote. go back to the table of contents October 22, 1997 The imminent crisis within our school system overshadowed a different series of events last week. We just passed through Co-op Week. This is the time when those of us involved in the co-operative movement exercise our bragging rights. Co-operative organizations are a way for working people to protect themselves from the effects of capitalist economies. Modern co-operatives began 154 years ago in the industrial town of Rochdale, in northern England. A group of people, now known as the Rochdale Pioneers, started a movement that survived and grew across the world. The co-operative sector is a dynamic part of our local economy, one which brings a measure of democracy into workplaces, financial institutions, housing and other parts of our lives. Co-operatives are autonomous associations of people who voluntarily unite to meet common economic, social and cultural needs through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise. They are collective self-help organizations, and there are many operating in our city. The Guelph Co-op Council is an umbrella organization covering four worker co-ops, six housing co-ops, nine co-operative pre-schools, the Guelph Campus Co-op, Gay Lea Dairy, the Guelph & Wellington Credit Union, the Waterloo-Oxford Co-operative and the Co-operators Insurance Company. All have one thing in common with each other and with the original Rochdale Pioneers. They were organized so that working men and women could pool their resources to provide themselves with jobs, homes, financial security and access to goods and services. There is a local connection which gives Guelph an important place in the history of these organizations. A former mayor is included on the International Co-operative Alliance’s honour roll. The Alliance, based in Geneva, compiled a list of 140 "famous co-op people through the ages." It contains the names of 19 Canadians, mostly from Cape Breton, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Among these people is Samuel Carter, who arrived in Guelph when he was 21 years old. According to the Alliance’s brief biography of him, he was born in England in 1859. His family was active in the co-operative movement there. Ten years after arriving in Guelph, Carter was the owner of the Royal Knitting Mills Co. He was elected mayor in 1914. During the early years of this century, he was active in many community causes, including the Workingman's Co-operative Association of Guelph. He served at least one term as president of this group. In 1909, he attended the founding congress of the Co-operative Union of Canada and was elected president. He was re-elected to subsequent terms, finally resigning in 1921. The biography does not indicate when Carter died, or how many terms he served as mayor. It would be interesting to hear from some of our higher seniority citizens who have either first or second hand knowledge of either him, or the Royal Knitting Mills Co., or the Workingman’s Co-operative Association of Guelph. The future of the co-operative movement depends upon an appreciation of its past and an understanding of its present. Government support for this economic sector has been declining over the past couple of decades. One of the Harris government’s first decisions was to stop new development of housing co-ops in Ontario. The current municipal election campaign is focusing on downloading, including the transfer of responsibility for social housing to cities. The future of co-op housing very much lies in the balance. Co-operatives have always been part of Guelph’s tradition. We should make sure they stay healthy, and keep growing. go back to the table of contents October 8, 1997 Under-funding and under-staffing our schools can only result in under-educating our children. High school students realize this. Last Friday, a huge number of them left their classrooms and walked downtown to a rally outside Brenda Elliott’s constituency office. Parents understand it. Public opinion polls sow a huge drop in support for the provincial government’s slash and burn policies. People are telling the government they don’t want to see any more cuts to education spending. Teachers understand it. They have spent the past couple of months on an extensive campaign to educate us about the real issues lying behind Bill 160. This legislation, introduced by the uneducated Minister of Education John Snobelen, is deceptively called The Education Quality Improvement Act, 1997. Last Friday, the students expressed support for their teachers and their education. They are to be commended for this spirited civic minded activity. I was pleased that my two school aged kids were part of it. Although the teachers themselves did not encourage the walk out, they should also be proud of the initiative shown by their students. Bill 160 is really about the impoverishment and ultimate destruction of the public school system. The Tories want to carve a billion dollars from the education budget and toss about 10,000 teachers into unemployment. This will help achieve their promised tax cut. The people who benefit most from the tax break are wealthy enough to send their kids to private schools. They probably will, after the public education system in Ontario has its heart cut out and its soul destroyed. Under the new law, many issues which were previously decided through local collective bargaining will now be arbitrarily imposed by the government. The Minister of Education will be empowered to make regulations dealing with the school year, school terms, school holidays, instructional days, examination days, professional activity days, class size, teaching and non-teaching time and other issues. These are all matters which any sensible system would leave to be settled by the parties involved -- the teachers and our democratically elected local school board. They ought to know best what is appropriate for our community. The school board does now, while it is still made up of local trustees we can call up and talk to. After November, this will be gone. In his mad rush to centralize his power, Snobelen took no chances. He is attacking our teachers and their unions after he already destroyed our school boards. Candidates for both the public and separate boards are staying away in droves. They can see that amalgamation devalued the system and rendered this public office all but useless. On top of his other changes, Snobelen would bring unqualified individuals into the classroom as guidance counselors, sports coaches, or to instruct areas such as technology, music and the like. Guidance counselors are very influential people in a young person’s life. They serve as education, career and personal advisors. Technology and music instruction must be delivered as competently, clearly and carefully as any other subject. Coaching sports teams after class is an important way for teachers to connect with their students and shape their attitudes and values. To create a two-tier system that reduces the qualifications of these people is irresponsible. Only our teachers and their collective agreements stand between this government and further cuts to Ontario schools. When the teachers fight back, they are fighting for the future of our children. In this, they deserve our unqualified support. go back to the table of contents September 24, 1997 It would be easy to gloat over the retreat by Mike Harris and Elizabeth Witmer on Bill 136. The labour movement upset the apple cart when it forced them to back away from their threat to remove the right to strike from many public sector workers. This was, however, just one skirmish in a long series of fights that has bruised working people, and the unemployed, throughout the province. We should remember that the government plans that lay behind Bill 136 are still in place. The amalgamations of school boards and municipalities, and the hospital closures and mergers, are being pushed through. In giving up on this fight, the government merely set aside a weapon it did not need. They are still moving forward with a single-minded determination to cut spending and give a tax break to their wealthy friends. In these days of Tory bullying, though, a partial win is still a victory. It is no coincidence that it came during a climate of positive protests by working people, and within a week of a planned mass rally and work stoppage in Harris’ home town. The on-going days of action arrive in North Bay this week, and thousands of workers in that City will be taking part. Among his various reasons for acquiescing to the labour movement’s demands was, no doubt, a desire to blunt the force of the North Bay demonstrations. Protests against the government have been growing. They are not always as high profile as were the London, Hamilton, Kitchener and Toronto days of action, but they have been gradually chipping away at Harris’ intransigence. He knows the unions have been mad at him ever since he overturned the Labour Law amendments. That didn’t stop him from eroding the Employment Standards Act, or attacking the workplace health and safety system, or taking benefits away from injured workers. Lately, other segments of society have joined in the anger, and the Tories have been in a public opinion free fall. Bill 136 was a vehicle which united all the groups who are being hurt by this government. Harris knew that when the labour movement escalated its protests into a series of public sector strikes, it would have more people on its side than would the government. He judiciously gave up on a fight he didn’t need and couldn’t win. Recently, the unions had another galvanizing experience which also caught the government’s attention. A small Toronto computer company, PC World, has been on strike since last January. They hired scabs to do the work, and got court injunctions limiting the union’s picketers. Then they refused to sit down and negotiate with the Canadian Auto Workers, which represented the striking workers. The repeal of the anti-scab law put this company into a position where it thought it could arrogantly hold the union at bay. A couple of weeks ago, about 50 workers occupied the plant and threw the scabs out. They held the building for almost two days, and about 300 others threw up an effective picket line for the rest of the week. The company then went back to the bargaining table. The thought of this militancy spreading into the public sector chilled the decision makers in Queen’s Park. If this momentum continues over the next few months, we should be able to rid ourselves of this government and start putting our province back together. go back to the table of contents September 10, 1997 An industrial plant in the City’s north-west corner somehow put 3,000 litres of a toxic chemical into the water supply, and we still don’t know who it was. For two days, half the city couldn’t wash, cook, or otherwise consume the water that came out of their taps. Now, over a week later, the honest and upstanding citizens who run Guelph’s industry still won’t accept responsibility for their actions. On Friday, August 29, the Toronto Star reported that the culprit was Autocom, a Linamar subsidiary on Massey Road. Ever since then, the company has been vigorously denying that it did anything wrong. In fact, they would have us all believe they were the real heroes in the caper. They say that they turned on a water faucet in the plant and noticed that the water was blue, so they called the city to let them know. This high degree of civic mindedness would be much easier to swallow if the company had not tried to hold our city council hostage a little over a month ago. At the end of July, Linamar threatened to move a proposed auto parts plant out of the city if they were not exempted from a $200,000 development charge. They said they would move the plant to the United States. There was also a veiled threat to set up other facilities down south because, as one of their vice-presidents said, Linamar likes to cluster their plants. A couple of weeks later, when it became clear that city councillors were not giving in to this corporate blackmail, Linamar decided to stay. The new plant on Silvercreek Parkway will become the 15th Linamar plant in Guelph. Most are clustered in the north-west corner, the source of the water problem. Just because Autocom is heading the list of probable suspects does not make them guilty. Maybe they didn’t do it. But somebody did. The tens of thousands of us who had to live without our water are entitled to know who it was. We should also be told how it happened, and what steps will be put in place to make sure it is not repeated. There is a plant manager somewhere in Guelph who should practice one of the important lessons we all preach to our children - accept the consequences of your actions. Two people who ought to be demanding answers are the city councillors for the ward in which the contamination took place. One of them, after all, wants to be mayor. The other one just wants to run the city. They have been silent. Where were Jim Sinclair and Gloria Kovach during this whole crisis? They were not representing the interests of their constituents. Sinclair, of course, is well known for his silences, but Kovach has a reputation for making noise. Whether it is her fights with the police chief, her battles on the city’s finance committee, or her campaign to get a new stadium built in her ward, Kovach has a way of getting up her opponents’ noses. It certainly was not shyness that kept her out of the spotlight during the water crisis. This public indifference in the face of corporate irresponsibility should not be forgotten when elections roll round again in November. go back to the table of contents August 20, 1997 As the fall out from Ontario Hydro’s nuclear meltdown settles on our political landscape, one thing is becoming clear. We desperately need a public inquiry into the management and operation of this utility. Only through a vigorous investigation will we find out what went wrong, and why no government - from Bill Davis to David Peterson to Bob Rae to Mike Harris - has been able to tame the beasts who run North America’s largest generator and distributor of electrical power. As things stand, we are in a mess. Seven of Hydro’s 19 nuclear generators will shut down in the next year, and others are to be repaired over the next three years. That is going to cost $8 billion. To make up for these closures, production will increase at the coal fired plants in Nanticoke and Lambton and at an oil fired plant near Kingston. This is going to have disastrous environmental effects. The increase in gas emissions is estimated by some environmentalists to be the equivalent of that produced by seven million cars. Our attempts to reduce acid rain and global warming has been dealt a severe setback. This all comes hard on the heels of a study which found that Ontario is the third worst polluter in North America. Only Texas and Tennessee are worse. At the moment, 60 per cent of Ontario’s electricity is produced by nuclear reactors. The Hydro report suggests this equipment is still safe, but the utility suffers under poor management. If this is the case, why are the reactors being shut down at such an extremely high financial and environmental cost? A year and a half ago, the Atomic Energy Control Board found safety problems with one of the reactors in Pickering. It was shut down and repaired. Why didn’t the control board find the problems that led to shutting down one-third of Hydro’s nuclear capacity? Why has so much emphasis been placed on expensive, and potentially disastrous, nuclear power plants? Why haven’t they been looking into natural gas powered generators, such as exist in Alberta? Why weren’t they exploring the possibilities of solar power? There are a ton of other questions that need answers, and only a public inquiry will be able to get to the bottom of them. Above all, we need to find out extent to which the provincial government has manufactured this crisis in order to carry out their plans to sell Ontario Hydro. Representatives of private industry are already calling for the separation of the power generation and distribution functions of Hydro. For years now, they have wanted in on the lucrative distribution system, but no one was standing in line to buy the costly nuclear plants, or the dirty coal fired plants. In one swift move, the value of the generation system has plummeted. Is Ontario Hydro to be dismantled and sold off, piece by piece, at bargain basement prices? Has Mike Harris finally found the lever to move popular opinion against this pillar of public ownership? In 1946, at the dawn of the nuclear age, Albert Einstein said: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Fifty years later, we still have not changed our way of thinking. We need a public debate about the ways in which we electrify our lives. go back to the table of contents July 30, 1997 In about a week and a half, on August 10, it will be 40 years since I arrived in Canada. One of four boys brought here by our mother to join our father, who had come to work in the aircraft industry south of Montreal. Our ship, a creaking old tub, left us at Quebec City on a cloudless, hot day. Not long afterwards, it breathed its last and sank in the Indian Ocean. Our family was part of a wave of British immigrants who came to Canada in the late fifties, escaping a country where adults could see little in the future for their children. At that time, the possibilities for Canada seemed boundless. It was an enormous country, with wide spaces and straight, wide roads. Everything was completely different from our experiences growing up in England. The entire British Isles, we were fascinated to learn, could fit several times into our new province of Quebec. When we looked at a globe, we could see that it was almost as far from our home to the western edge of Canada as it was to the crowded island we left. I have never regretted this move. I have spent some time studying the history of my adopted country, reading our literature and listening to our music. I intend, soon, to make the short trip to Hamilton to see the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, where a lot of the art and culture of Canadian working people has been gathered. Although it is generally overshadowed by the vast wasteland to our south, we do have a rich culture and a deep history. To a large degree, the story of Canada is the story of a constant battle between those who believed in the creation of an equitable society, where all have equal opportunities, and those who admired the cut throat, frontier style of individualism that prevailed in the United States. Immigrants to Canada managed to hold on to their cultures, and gradually they came together to form a Canadian mosaic. We are all richer as a result. This diversity helped build the social programs we now take for granted. But all is not perfect. We have had our failures. Not least among these is the fact that the same immigrants who fought to retain their own history and culture tried to destroy that of our aboriginal peoples. Also, while we were building our country, we left half our population, working women, far behind in terms of economic and social rights. According to a Statistics Canada report released on July 15, women are still only earning 57.5 per cent as much as men. Pay equity programs, designed to correct this enormous imbalance, are constantly attacked by the champions of individual rights. Sadly, the enemies of fairness and equity continue to commit acts of violence against people who are quietly and peacefully living their lives. In a recent assault, a beer bottle thrown from a moving vehicle struck an Amish woman in the face. There is a lot of work still to be done if our country is to live up to the promises it held out forty years ago. We can’t wait another forty years to do it, though. Too many people are hurting while we quarrel about solutions. go back to the table of contents July 02, 1997 During the past couple of weeks, groups of injured workers have been rallying at Queen’s Park, and sometimes even disrupting proceedings, to protest changes being made to Ontario’s Workers’ Compensation Board. The government is in the middle of public hearings into Bill 99 which contains the most sweeping amendments to workers’ compensation since the system was first set up more than 80 years ago. It changes the name of the Workers’ Compensation Board to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, cuts benefits from 90% of net pay to 85%, and reduces cost-of-living protection for almost all injured workers. In a departure from their usual standards of deception, the Tories introduced at least one piece of candour into their amendments. The bill removes the word "fair" from the phrase "fair compensation." The government gave only four days to hearings in Toronto, with the committee sitting for two and a half hours each day. People who wished to present briefs were given ten minutes to make their case, followed by ten minutes for the politicians to ask them questions. A Conservative member of the committee explained why so little time is being given to hearing from the people who will be affected by the Bill. "Once you have heard testimony from one," said MPP John O’Toole, "you have heard them all." This refusal to consult seriously with the public about major legislative changes has become a hallmark of the Harris regime. It reflects their arrogant contempt for established democratic practices. Considering all the other changes included in Bill 99, it is shameful that it is being rammed through so quickly and so secretively. The Bill is not just a step backwards for those workers who rely on the Board for income maintenance while they recover from injuries. It also contains very bad social policy initiatives. Among the worst of these is the scrapping of the Occupational Disease Panel. This Panel has done solid research into the connections between workplaces and diseases. It established a direct connection between certain cancers and fire fighting, for example. It also recently completed a major study into the effects of metal working fluids, and found a connection between these coolants and cancer of the larynx. They developed a computer program to track the occupational histories of cancer patients that is being piloted in Windsor and Sudbury. There are many other examples which show why this Panel has earned a solid reputation around the world. Now the Minister of Labour is abolishing it. While all these changes are taking place in the legislature, the Workers’ Compensation Board itself has gone on a $10 million witch hunt to uncover alleged fraud and abuse by injured workers. Last year, they carried out 350 investigations, and laid only 15 charges. Injured workers are not the crooks in this system. The real abuses are perpetrated by employers. Many refuse to register or pay premiums. Others pressure injured workers into returning to work before they are properly healed, in order to avoid the costs associated with claims. They are constantly finding new and imaginative ways to get around the law and to evade their responsibilities. But is Elizabeth Witmer doing anything to investigate them? Not on your life. She is rewarding them with a five per cent reduction in premiums and relative immunity from injury and illness claims. go back to the table of contents June 11, 1997 If there were ever any doubts about the provincial government’s intention to weaken unions, they have recently been laid to rest. In his second anniversary press conference, Mike Harris said that his proudest achievement was scrapping the NDP’s labour law amendments. When Labour Minister Elizabeth Witmer, came to Guelph recently to speak at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, she was also bursting with enthusiasm for these changes. In fact, she pointed out that during the past two years there has been a 110 per cent increase in union decertifications, and a 40 per cent decrease in new certifications. When the two of them launched the changes soon after the election, they stoutly denied accusations that they wanted to remove unions from the province’s workplaces. Their story was that they intended to introduce "fairness" into labour relations. This is Orwellian doublespeak. Unions are the vehicle through which fairness takes root in a workplace. They protect workers from arbitrary, often unjust, employer actions. They make workplaces safer. Unionized workers receive better training, and compliance with health and safety laws is higher in unionized workplaces. In the name of "fairness" Harris and Witmer gave private enterprise a license to run roughshod over workers’ rights. Now they are about to do it all over again for employers in the public sector. And they are still doing it in the name of "fairness." Last week, Witmer introduced an outrage called The Public Sector Transition Stability Act. This Bill effectively removes the right to strike from tens of thousands of men and women employed by municipalities, school boards and other public utilities and commissions. Hospital workers, police and fire fighters, already denied the right to strike, will have their ability to negotiate wages and conditions of work severely restricted. John Snobelen, the Minister of Education, once said that the government would have to manufacture a crisis in order to introduce some of the legislation it wants. Harris repudiated the comments at the time. He is now showing that the deception Snobelen revealed is, in fact, Tory policy. Earlier this year the government set the stage for this attack on unions by passing legislation forcing the mergers of school boards and municipalities. It now says it needs this "stability" act to limit any disruptions caused by its forced mergers. The law sets up a Labour Relations Transition Commission whose members are appointed by the Premier. A Ministry of Labour fact sheet says the Commission will "focus exclusively on the high volume of labour relations issues arising from the restructuring of the public sector." Any public sector employer will be able to apply to this Commission to settle labour negotiations. Once they do so, the unions will be denied the right to strike, and the Commission will have the power to impose a contract settlement on the employer’s terms. This new law is a draconian and wide reaching piece of work. None of the unions affected by it were consulted prior to its introduction in the legislature. Now that they have seen it, the union leaders have called an emergency convention of the Ontario Federation of Labour for July 28. Never before in its history has the Federation gone to this length to respond to an action of government. Ontario politics is about to heat up again. go back to the table of contents May 21, 1997 It should be no big surprise to anyone that national unity is dominating this election. There have been no other substantial issues raised by the Liberals, Conservatives or Reform. The NDP is focusing attention on employment, but the others want to avoid it. No wonder. It is their biggest weakness. Manning and Charest both want to cut government spending and give tax relief to their wealthy friends. We have already seen the hardship this is causing in Ontario where Harris’ tax breaks have done nothing to stimulate job creation. When Chretien was elected in 1993, there were one and a half million unemployed Canadians. There still are. We obviously can’t count on the Liberals to reduce unemployment. The odds of any of those three Party leaders solving the national unity problem are just as remote. Manning’s 20 point plan, as outlined during the televised debate, is a guarantee of failure. Charest and Chretien can’t solve a problem they so obviously do not understand. During the last referendum campaign, the best argument these federalists could come up with is that separation would upset the bond market and ruin credit ratings. This did not convince a lot of people in Quebec. Canadians need political leaders who can articulate a vision of Canada as a community of people with a shared history and a common future. Part of this is a recognition of Quebec as the focal point of the French language and culture in North America. Quebec’s strong cultural identity can give support to Francophone communities on the east coast of Newfoundland, the Evangeline region of PEI, the Acadian region of New Brunswick, the western edge of Cape Breton Island, northern Ontario and a large part of south-eastern Manitoba. We need leaders who understand the history, literature and music of the people who came from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean to populate and build this great country. We need leaders who are committed to the survival of the cultural heritage of the native people who were here before any of the rest of us arrived. These diverse cultural threads can hold our country together and nourish our people. At the very least, we need leaders who support, encourage and finance the institutions that do understand all this, and can communicate it from coast to coast to coast. The National Film Board, the CBC, the Canada Council, book publishers, theatres, music festivals and other cultural bodies are not frills to be abandoned in hard economic times. They are the oxygen we breathe, the medicine that keeps our country healthy. Liberals and Conservatives have consistently under funded and cut back the CBC and other arts organizations. Reform will, if given the chance, end public support for them completely. Even if they don’t form the next government, a strong contingent of New Democrats in opposition can keep the idea of community alive in Parliament. They can guide Canada into a future where Canadians understand each other and appreciate the richness of our heritage and the diversity of our population. By protecting and building our culture, we can protect and build a country where people care about their neighbours’ welfare and where we can all feel at home. That is the job of good government, and it seems that only New Democrats understand it these days. go back to the table of contents April 30, 1997 A week before the federal election was called, Brenda Elliott attended the Reform Party’s nomination meeting. She said the Conservatives and Reform are very close, philosophically speaking. This followed, by a week or so, the resignation of Reform’s British Columbia organizer after he made racist comments about Sikhs. Their candidate in Mississauga, at about the same time, made equally repugnant comments about customers having the right to be served by white heterosexuals, if they so choose. Preston Manning wants to shake his Party’s image as a home for bigots, but his own people keep soiling his shorts. Also a week before the election call, Dalton Camp almost endorsed the NDP in his Toronto Star column. He said "the party represents ideas about politics and government that have been absent since the electoral aberrations of 1993 and have been sorely missed." David MacDonald is running as an NDP candidate in the Toronto riding he once held as a Conservative cabinet minister. For the past few months, political pundits predicted a dull campaign, a cakewalk for the Liberals. Now it looks as though it will be anything but. Yves Duhaime, a popular Bloc Quebecois candidate, could very well defeat Chretien in his St. Maurice riding. The only thing certain in this election is that there are major surprises in store. The Conservatives are making a valiant effort to pull themselves up. With a few high profile candidates like Lewis Mackenzie and Jan Brown they will make some gains, possibly even getting back official Party status. They won’t get much more than that, though. Their problem is that they can’t stop bleeding. Right wing Tories are flirting with Reform, and so-called "Red Tories" such as Camp and MacDonald, are moving towards the NDP. Reform hit its peak in 1993, and has been dropping in public opinion polls ever since. They don’t have much credibility east of the Alberta border. There is nowhere in the country where they can grow, and they are likely to lose some of their seats in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. They will hang on for a while, in the way Real Caouette’s Creditistes did thirty years ago, but they are destined for a future as one of Canada’s several fringe parties. There are no signs that the Bloc is losing any of its support in Quebec. In fact, the inability of the Liberals to develop an inspiring vision for Canada has probably strengthened the Bloc’s support. They will not drop in numbers, and may increase their caucus by a seat or two. The New Democrats are in the best position to make substantial gains in this election. They will pick up at least two seats in Atlantic Canada, with a good chance at as many as six. Traditional Ontario seats in the north, in Toronto and in industrial cities such as Windsor and Hamilton should come back, and they will take a few seats away from vulnerable Liberal back benchers such as Guelph-Wellington’s Brenda Chamberlain. They will gain seats in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. My prediction? Alexa MacDonough is going to impress the country with her quick mind and sharp debating skills. In Guelph, this will result in a good contest between Brenda Chamberlain and Elaine Rogala. The voters will choose substance over platitudes, and buy Rogala a ticket to Ottawa. go back to the table of contents April 05, 1997 Guelph has made its way back into the national news. This time, it's not the usual cast of suspects that brought us there. Gwen Jacobs’ fight for equality has moved over to the municipal swimming pools in Cambridge. Wally Tucker took his Sixties spirituality into the obscurity of an abandoned foundry. Living near Imico was enough of a gamble for area residents without this alleged church starting a casino there. And of course, Gordon Domm continues to tilt at various windmills and salacious demons. They have all had their fifteen minutes of fame. Now Guelph has the smart card. Macro cash in a micro chip. The Mondex Revolution, as it likes to be called, threatens to put an end to money as we know it. Many of us can be excused for thinking that happened a while ago. Between the never ending recession, a jobless recovery and the usurious interest rates charged by credit card companies, it's a wonder any of us have any cash in our pockets at all. Mondex wants to make sure we don't. City administrator David Creech loves Mondex. He told a CBC national television audience that if we all used it when we get on a bus, he could lay off the people who count the cash that won’t be in the fare boxes. We seldom get a chance to hear someone in his position so brazenly praise the job killing potential of technology. Mastercard loves Mondex. Not just because they own 51 per cent of it, but because they get to use our money. When you put your $20 onto the chip, you are actually transferring the money from your account to theirs. Then they give it back in bits and pieces as you spend it. Marketers love Mondex, because the little chip will track the last 300 purchases we make. They’ll know where we shop, and what we buy. Call me an old-fashioned Luddite, but if I want to carry $20 around, I will go down to the credit union and get it. I can spend it here and there, and always be able to look in my wallet, or my pocket, to see how much is left. I can't think why I would load up a micro chip with the $20, then wander around town spending it. Especially when I won't be able to look at the card to see how much I have left. To know that, I would have to get a smart wallet to read the smart card. Why go through all these extra steps when the end result will still be that I'm broke by payday? go back to the table of contents March 22, 1997 A federal election is getting closer. The signs are multiplying, and they point to early June. In the most recent development, Jean Charest released a document almost indistinguishable from Preston Manning's federal platform or Mike Harris' provincial fiasco. Charest promises to cut payroll taxes. This means he will reduce employer EI premiums by 70 cents. There is a large surplus in the employment insurance fund, and the Tories want to give it back to the corporations. But the surplus exists largely because previous Tory governments, and the present Liberal one, slashed benefits and made it harder for unemployed workers to collect them. The surplus should go to the people who are out of work. They earned it, they need it and they deserve it. He also promised to slash government spending and give a 10% cut in income taxes. We are already going through the pain of this at the provincial level. Any such tax cut, by its nature, will benefit high income earners. Spending cuts hurt lower income people who need the services that will disappear. Look no further than our own city for evidence of what happens when governments slash spending and taxes. Provincial downloading will cost us $11 million. If we allow this viciousness to spread to Ottawa, the result will be disastrous. In yet another signal that an election is just around the corner, Jean Chretien is bypassing democratic procedures by appointing women candidates in ridings they are unlikely to win. This is the only way the Liberals can guarantee that at least 25% of their nominees are women. Neither the Tories nor Reform care enough about women's rights to even have an equity policy in place. The NDP, on the other hand, has a goal of 50% women candidates. They achieve this by giving women the support they need to run in open nomination contests. In many ridings, including Guelph-Wellington, women are proving they can win. Obviously, Chretien does not have any confidence in democratic structures, or in a process he does not control. The signs also tell us that there are now three right wing parties competing for power in Canada. The Tories and Reform are in a nose to nose battle for the same people. Charest even wants to repeal a gun control law that is still not as strict as it should have been. The Liberals are running on their record of slashing programs and services while keeping the unemployment rate high. In 1993, when the New Democrats lost their official party status, we all lost a crucial voice in Parliament. In June, we can correct this imbalance, and stop our country’s tragic slide into corporatism. go back to the table of contents March 08, 1997 The jokers at the local Chamber of Comics want to get rid of the ward system and reduce City Council. This is not a new idea, even though these business people have come about it rather late. It is all part of the provincial government's attack on communities and democratic structures. Current battles in Toronto show what Mike Harris and his Reform crew intend to do to cities. In the face of incredible popular resistance, they are charging ahead with plans to create a "megacity". There will be fewer councilors in the new City of Toronto. Those now in place have had their authority severely curtailed. A group of appointed trustees can over ride any of their decisions. This move to make city councils smaller and less responsive comes, ironically, at the same time as new burdens and responsibilities are being downloaded. In the name of good government, Harris is destroying good governments. Our Chamber of Commerce is showing that we are not immune to the virus infecting the heart of Toronto. Once begun, an abuse of democracy can quickly escalate into a denial of democracy. One of the reasons for reducing Council is that it is easier for six people to reach consensus on an issue than it is for 12. This is dangerous logic. By extension, it is even easier for a single dictator to reach that consensus. We don't have two representatives from every ward to make decisions more easily from an administrative point of view. They are there so that the interests of the whole city can be met while each section has a voice at the table. I have lived in Guelph for 26 years. For most of that time, we had a city council elected "at large." All-candidate meetings were outrageous, often with 30 or more candidates for 11 seats. There could be no effective debate at those meetings, and candidates could not be properly examined. The cost of running a campaign made it difficult for candidates with new ideas but low bank accounts. As a result, incumbents were nearly always returned. We had several councilors not just from the same area of town, but who lived on the same street. Less than 10 years ago we decided to institute the ward system. We did it because the old way was inadequate. The Chamber opposed it then, and still do. It is time they recognized that democracy is not just about decisions. It is about process. It is about providing access to the corridors of power to people who don't frequent the corridors of power. The ward system now in place provides us with this access. go back to the table of contents February 22, 1997 About three-quarters of the way through his budget speech last Tuesday, Paul Martin said "our children are our most precious resource." This is a frightening thought, coming from a Liberal cabinet minister. Think about how badly they have treated our precious natural resources. Then look at the rest of the budget speech. You will see what the federal government has in store for our children: clear cutting their future, strip mining their prospects. Martin did absolutely nothing for children, or their parents, in this budget. He made it sound as though he was adding $850 million to the child tax benefit, but it was all smoke and mirrors. It is really "$600 million in new funds as of July 1998, in addition to the $250 million increase in child benefits announced in the 1996 budget." That is next year. And last year. This year, he will cut $3 billion from health, education and anti-poverty measures. NDP leader Alexa McDonough quite accurately portrayed Martin as "a mugger who keeps your purse but gives you bus fare to get home." Martin had room to move. He had choices to make. He admitted, quite proudly, that he has reduced the deficit by $9.5 billion, "the largest year-over-year decline ever." This is more than $5 billion lower than the target they set themselves in previous budgets. The human cost of his maniacal pursuit of the deficit bogey man has been horrific. The unemployment rate remains high and this budget set neither a target nor a program for reducing it. Martin could have reinvested part of that $5 billion into job creation. He could have reinvested it into health care, or education. He could have done so many things, yet he chose to do nothing. By their own admission, the Liberals have fought the deficit on the backs of the working poor. Martin brags that "by 1998-99, government spending on everything but the debt will have been reduced from $120 billion in 1993-94 to $103.5 billion." That is spending on social programs he’s talking about. At the same time, he is refusing to introduce changes that will force corporations and wealthy Canadians to pay their fair share of taxes. It is obvious that the promises made in this budget, such as they are, will be used as fodder for the Liberal election campaign later this year. It is just as obvious that they intend to campaign on their record of neglecting working Canadians and our families while pampering their wealthy friends in the corporate board rooms. It is a pre-election budget. Now let’s get on with the election so that we can halt this destruction and turn our attention to restoring our social programs. go back to the table of contents February 08, 1997 Mike Harris asked me for more money last week. It wasn't the request I've been expecting though. Thanks to him, we'll all soon pay more for the bus tickets we need to get our kids to school. That's because of his cuts to municipal funding. There will be more user fees when the recent mega-announcements settle in. Last week's request was different, and came as quite a surprise. Mike wrote and asked for a donation to help his re-election. When I opened the envelope I almost, to put it delicately, soiled myself. It had my correct name and address, and a letter explaining why I should take leave of my senses and send him "$35, $50, $100, $250 or more." Among the reasons which he thinks I'll find persuasive, he says his government "scrapped unfair labour laws to restore a fair balance between employers and employees." It's true enough that he scrapped the law preventing employers from hiring strike breakers. It is absolutely untrue to say this restored balance into the collective bargaining process. At the moment, there are at least 12 labour disputes in Ontario where scabs are being used. In six of them, the employer locked out the workers. Projectionists at Cineplex Odeon cinemas in Toronto, Niagara, Ottawa, Sudbury and Thunder Bay refused a demand for an 80 per cent cut in pay and benefits. Workers for ICS Courier Service in Toronto made $9 an hour and were looking for a first collective agreement. About 350 security guards in Ottawa objected to a unilateral wage cut. Three groups of workers who provide services for disabled individuals in the Ottawa area objected to wage and benefit cuts. During contract negotiations, Air Ontario ran newspaper ads to recruit the scabs now replacing striking flight attendants. A manufacturer of industrial pumps, S. A. Armstrong Ltd. in Toronto, has been using strike breakers for almost a year while 80 workers walk the picket line. They have been told that even if the strike is settled, they will have to take a special test before they can get their jobs back. The Bancroft IGA store cut off pension contributions for its 55 workers, then hired scabs when the workers went on strike. None of this has anything to do with fairness. It is all about giving more power to the corporations. Harris threw out a very balanced labour law, and tilted the scales in favour of employers. In fact, he has removed any sense of balance or fairness, not just from labour relations, but from nearly every aspect of life in Ontario. As a result, his hopes of getting a campaign contribution from me range from nil to zero. go back to the table of contents January 25, 1997 In three more years, child poverty will no longer exist in Canada. At least, that's the commitment the federal government made eight years ago. They still have a long way to go before this becomes a reality. According to a Statistics Canada report released last December, there are now more children living in poverty than there were when the commitment was made. In 1989, the Canadian parliament passed an all-party resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000. At that time, 15.3 per cent of Canadian children lived below the poverty line. In 1990, Canada co-sponsored the first United Nations Summit on Children. By then, 17.8 per cent of our children lived below the poverty line. Continuing its valiant efforts, the federal government published an Action Plan for Children in 1992, when child poverty had risen to 19.2 per cent. By 1995, this figure had gone up to 21 per cent. That is a 45 per cent increase in the eight years since the government's pledge. This is a shameful record. Like most federal commitments to social programs, it has been a cruel hoax. There is only one way to end child poverty, and that is to end family poverty. This simple fact has eluded the bright minds who run our country. Between 1994 and 1995, families in the middle and lower income groups suffered a decline. Average weekly earnings from employment dropped 1.2 per cent, and unemployment insurance and welfare payments went down 3.8 per cent, between 1994 and 1995. More than half the families headed by single mothers in Canada live in poverty. Wealthy families continue to enjoy increased incomes. The statistics prove that the standard of living for working families is being slowly, but steadily, eroded. The only way to reverse this is for governments to invest in job creation programs, and in meaningful training programs. There is no sense leaving it to private employers. Left to their own devices, they will not do it. Recently, both General Motors and Canadian Airlines went on high profile campaigns to win the right to slash their workforces and reduce their labour costs. In both cases, it was only through the intervention of a strong union that another reduction in family incomes was prevented. The rationale for downsizing was shown to be completely without substance. We need, both federally and provincially, governments that are willing to make the same stand against corporate greed. We need governments that will intervene in the economy on behalf of the middle and lower income families who are being pushed deeper into the swamp of poverty. The way we are going, we have no hope of ending poverty by the end of this century. go back to the table of contents January 22, 1997 Last week’s Tory announcements only make sense in one way. They were a logical next step in the road Mike Harris has been travelling since his election a year and a half ago. Beyond that, they make absolutely no sense at all. We can easily look back and see his previous moves as preparation for these latest ones. He first turned the clock back on labour laws, making it more difficult for workers to protect themselves and their families from his "revolution." He stopped construction of new provincially funded housing projects. He slashed welfare benefits. He pushed through the infamous omnibus bill to give his government the power to do what they did last week. All of this was done without meaningful public hearings, and with a minimum of debate in the legislature. Now he has brought in massive changes to the way Ontario is governed. Last week began with education minister John Snobelen declaring that such "out of classroom" expenses as school libraries, guidance counsellors, principals, and custodians are expendable frills that can be cut back. Of course, in the Common Sense Revolution, they promised not to cut expenditures on classroom programs. The only way to fulfill this promise while dragging money out of the education system is to arbitrarily define most of a child's education as an out of class experience. Then they did much the same with health care. After promising not to make cuts in this area, they decided that ambulances and nursing homes are no longer part of their health care responsibility and dumped them onto municipalities. Municipal governments were also given financial responsibility for a larger share of the welfare bill and the cost of provincial highways, ferries, public transit, public libraries, and housing onto municipalities. Needless to say, the costs of the services downloaded to municipalities will exceed the cost of education that was taken out of property taxes. Governments everywhere are struggling to cope with an aging population. The federal government is worried about the strain this will put on the Canada Pension Plan. Now cities will need to pay for the long term care of elderly citizens. Municipalities will be hard-pressed to afford the programs dumped on them even with the increased property taxes from the new actual value assessment system. Their first temptation will be to make the cuts for which Harris himself is unwilling to take responsibility. There will be further pressures on city councils to privatize them and begin a downward spiral of wages and benefits. The quality of services will decline. If the province is no longer paying the bill, how can they enforce uniform standards? The Conservative's goal is to reduce the amount of government programs by turning as many as possible over to the private sector. They can then give a tax break to their friends while making us pay user fees for services. At the same time, they will drive down the incomes of the people who deliver them. These proposals are wrong for many reasons, but all of them boil down to the fashion of defining people as taxpayers. This puts our relationship to each other, and to the government, into a strictly financial arrangement. What we have to do instead is define ourselves as citizens. We pay taxes because we are citizens of a community in which everyone is entitled to an equitable share of the public wealth. We need to get back a government that recognizes this principle, and which is prepared to act upon it. go back to the table of contents January 11, 1997 Over the Christmas holidays, my family witnessed a crisis which reminded us of how fortunate we are to live in Canada. It also strengthened our resolve to resist the efforts of politicians and faceless bureaucrats who are eroding the quality and accessibility of health care in our country. On the Monday before Christmas, Carly Hunt, a little girl who lives next door to us, was stricken with a frighteningly severe case of meningitis. Had it not been for the prompt and efficient actions of her parents and the staff at Guelph General and Toronto’s Sick Children’s Hospitals this bright and cheerful child could have died on Christmas Eve. Or she could have been left with permanent damage. As it is, she recovered and now appears to be back to normal. With the crisis over, we can reflect on some of the wider implications of the experience. The nurses and doctors in both Guelph and Toronto showed themselves to be well-trained and compassionate people. When the decision was made to transfer Carly to Toronto, an ambulance was available with a police escort to clear the way along the 100 km route. Precautionary drugs were prescribed for her family and friends, including my daughter. When Carly was out of danger, a second ambulance brought her back to Guelph. Without our medicare system, this could have impoverished her family. If they lived in the United States and did not have expensive private insurance, it would have. Carly’s father is also fortunate to belong to the Canadian Auto Workers local 1917, with good negotiated health benefits from his employer. The cost of prescription drugs for the entire family would have been enormous without this protection. An even more worrisome part of this experience is that it happened while the provincial government’s task force on hospital restructuring is studying every hospital in every community in Ontario. When they talk about restructuring, they really mean closing. The government has already accepted the task force’s recommendation to close hospitals in some communities. More are coming. People who used to rely on these hospitals must now travel further to get the care they need. Meningitis is a deadly disease that spreads quickly through the body. Had Carly’s family lived in one of the communities whose hospital has been closed, the additional time needed to get her to the hospital could have made the difference between recovery and tragedy. Our health care system must not be defined and debated in terms of pure accounting principles. It is not about cost-efficiencies and budgetary deficits. It is about the health and well-being of children like Carly Hunt. Preserving it, as we found out, is a matter of life and death. go back to the table of contents |