A local representative for the province’s public service union says Ontario’s latest budget is only good news for the rich and special interest groups.
OPSEU Northwestern Ontario vice-president James Tocker said he sees major hits to health care and education coming over the years. And the cuts will be worse than Mike Harris’ Progressive Conservative government ever were.
“What we see here is the Liberal government lining the pockets of the rich once again,” Tocker said. “It’s worse than what we were expecting.”
Tocker said as the government moves to privatize more Service Ontario jobs, such as mainting the province’s 11 databases of personal information from marriage to death certificates, people’s privacy will be jeopardized.
“We are not happy with the fact they want to release this information to private sector,” he said.
And increased privatization could lead to scandal he said.
“We’ve seen this happen before where it goes to private sector and things go wrong look at ORNGE.”
Elementary Teachers of Ontario local president Ellen Chambers-Picard said with the province demanding wage freezes for its public sector, the blame has been put in the wrong place.
“It wasn’t the wage earners of Ontario that created the economic problems,” she said.
Finance minister Dwight Duncan said he’s prepared to legislate the freeze if it can’t be negotiated. Chamber-Picard said unions and the government are both bound by a contract and have to respect the bargaining process.
“That’s nothing new that’s certainly happened before.”
