THUNDER BAY – The Ontario official opposition leader places blame squarely on the Liberal government for the strikes at the province’s colleges extending into a fourth week.
Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown said Premier Kathleen Wynne and her government should have intervened in the early days of the labour dispute that has resulted in more than 12,000 faculty members walking off the job at the province’s 24 public colleges.
“I would have immediately in the first week inserted myself and brought both sides back to the bargaining table. I think the hands off approach for the first three weeks was a significant mistake by the premier,” Brown said during a Wednesday morning media availability at the Terry Fox Lookout.
The strike officially began at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 16 and has shut down classes at colleges across province, including at Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
Brown said he had urged Wynne to take action during that first week in a session in the legislature at Queen’s Park but the premier refused, citing a reluctance to interfere with the collective bargaining process.
Wynne has urged the faculty, represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and the College Employer Council to return to the bargaining table. Last week, she did not close the door on back-to-work legislation.
Despite the lack of an agreement, the Ontario Relations Board has scheduled a vote at the request of the College Employer Council.
But the clock is ticking to get the students back into the classroom, Brown insisted.
“Right now, students I think have a legitimate argument that if they lose their semester they’re going to want their tuition back,” Brown said. “There are going to be a whole host of problems presented here and Kathleen Wynne has to put some urgency on this.”
The PC leader also took the Wynne government to task for the elimination of top-up funding for under capacity elementary and high schools that have crunched school boards across Ontario. In Thunder Bay, the Lakehead Public School Board has decided to close Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate and Vocational Institute and closing Edgewater Park and Agnew H. Johnston public schools into a new elementary school.
Brown argued that financial pressure, which he labelled as “cost cutting” to counter the government’s “mismanagement,” will be felt more profoundly in Northern Ontario and will trigger further declining enrolment.
“You want to depopulate Northern Ontario, you pull the schools out of communities. It has a snowball effect almost. You want to see depopulization, you rip the social infrastructure out of a town,” Brown said.
With the next provincial election looming seven months away, the party has yet to declare a candidate in either of the two city ridings. A nomination meeting is scheduled later this month to lock in a challenger for the Thunder Bay-Superior North riding held by longtime incumbent Liberal Michael Gravelle.
Brown pledged he won’t make the same misstep as former PC leader Tim Hudak, who skipped a Northern leader’s debate attended by Wynne and NDP leader Andrea Horwath held in Thunder Bay during the 2014 campaign.
“I will be there. Absolutely. Listen, you don’t go to Northern Ontario 30 times and miss an opportunity to debate Northern issues. I relish that opportunity,” Brown said.
“I want to ask Kathleen Wynne directly about how she’s abandoned Northern Ontario. Frankly, I want to ask the NDP why they’ve gone along with it.”
