Ontario Budget 2012 - A bad pill prescribed by the financial sector

The Ontario Budget was released last week with the expected austerity measures aimed to reduce the provincial deficit. The furor over the deficit and the potential fiscal crisis was months in the making and is a throwback to the deficit reducing rhetoric of the 1990s and the Mike Harris years. The Harris platform was all about cuts to public service and social spending. The Liberals, however, are playing it like they have no choice thanks to Moody’s and the Drummond report.  

Moody’s credit rating

In December, Moody’s threatened to downgrade Ontario’s credit rating if it did not take action to implement austerity measures to rein in their deficits. Credit ratings are being used to discipline governments into accepting austerity. A downgraded rating makes the province less attractive to investors. As a result due to higher risks, money is lent at higher interest rates and investors worry the province may default and they may not get their money back.

A panic is created because of these ratings. However, Moody’s has been accused by some EU states of fueling the crisis by causing further unnecessary panic by being quick to downgrade ratings that did not really reflect the financial status of the state. The credibility of credit rating agencies is also in question when they failed to downgrade the ratings of corporations that caused the sub- prime mortgage crisis in 2008. At the time, Lehman Brothers had an AAA rating, the highest rating from Moody’s and other agencies.

Yet, the Ontario Budget makes cuts to health care and social spending in order to avoid a downgrade in their credit rating to appease investors.  Capitalism is all about taking risks and sometimes losses are made. But instead of the financial sector taking the potential loss on their risk, the public is force to pay to offset these risks unnecessarily through cuts to public services. Meanwhile, the harmonization of the sales tax, the elimination of the capital tax, and the reduction of corporate taxes from 14% in 2009 to 11% today has reduced provincial revenues by about $8.5 billion annually. (1) (2)

Tax cuts for corporation does not benefit the rest of us. In Ontario, corporate profits have gone up by 19.1% in 2010 and 13.8% in 2011. (1) While, real wages have decreased  by 1.3% since 2010 as most jobs are temporary or part-time. (3) We're being told we have to make do with less, but there's no austerity for the rich.  

The Drummond report

The Globe and Mail referred to the hiring of Don Drummond by the Liberals as a stroke of genius. Hardly, it was an underhanded public relations tactic to stir up panic and the media played along. The Liberals hired an expert who happens to be a former economist of a bank to tell people what needs to be done, he says drastic cuts are needed or else we’re headed for a severe financial crisis.  The Liberals implement most of the recommendations, but not all, so they can come out looking like the good guys. The media played along saying the budget wasn’t so bad, it could have been worse. Cuts to health care, cuts for the poor, wagefreezes, privatization of services, and no tax increases all make for a right-wing budget. But the Liberals got someone else to do the dirty work for them. 

This isn’t the first time that the Ontario government has done this.  In 1976, the Red Tory Conservatives of Bill Davis hired Maxwell Henderson, former head of the Chamber of Commerce and an executive of Seagrams. The report known as the Henderson report called for public sector job cuts, privatization of services, and tuition increases, and roll-backs in the construction of affordable housing.  This was around the time the welfare state was slowly being dismantled. Today we have even less and it is a further race to the bottom.   

1. "Ontario hopes deep budget cuts will calm debt markets". National Post. March 27, 2012. <http://www.nationalpost.com/Ontario+hopes+deep+budget+cuts+will+calm+debt+markets/6368096/story.html>

2.Valiani, Salimah. "Fixing the Fiscal House: Alternative Macroeconomic Solutions for Ontario." Ontario Nurses Association. Jan 10, 2012. <http://www.ona.org/documents/File/politicalaction/ONAResearchSeries_FixingTheFiscalHouse_20120110.pdf>

3. Reardon, Khristopher. "Ontario Workers' Wages Declining" The Arbitrage Magazine <http://www.arbitragemagazine.com/topics/finance/ontario1-workers%E2%80%992-wages-declining/>

Sex Workers Solidarity

The Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly hosted a panel on Sex Workers Solidarity on March 4^th. The speakers on the panel were members of Maggie’s: TheToronto Sex Worker’s Action Project, run by and for local sex workers.

Kathryn Payne started the talk by reading a recent motion passed by the GTWA in solidarity with sex workers. Part of the motion states:

Increased services for the health and safety of sex workers, including services that provide assistance for those who want to exit the trade.

Kathryn pointed out that the GTWA would not have a statement on assistance to exit other types of work that could also be dangerous and exploitative, like in the manufacturing sector.

All the speakers stress the importance of looking at sex work as work and that there are different experiences in the trade. The focus should be on improving working conditions through a union and the decriminalization of sex work rather than trying to end the work. Kathryn says sex work is a way for unskilled women to make a lot of money. However, there is a different level of privilege within the industry with street-based workers being the most vulnerable to poor working conditions.

The GTWA motion highlights the ongoing stigmatization sex workers  face. The discourse around human trafficking further adds to this stigmatization. On a separate occasion, I spoke to Keisha Scott who says that human trafficking gets conflated with sex work and as a result sex work becomes further criminalized.

What is the future of unions?

The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Canadian Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) are discussing a possible merger. In January, they released a discussion paper called A Moment of Truth for Canadian Unions which details the current troubling state of unions in Canada.

They worry that the declining union movement in Canada will mirror that of the US where union membership is 7% in the private sector. In Canada it is about 17.4%. The paper calls for a new kind of Canadian unionism that can confront globalization, aggressive employers and an unsympathetic public and it also lays out why a bigger union is better.

I interviewed David Camfield, author of Canadian Labour in Crisis; Stephanie Ross, Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Work and Society at York University; and Winnie Ng, CAW-Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University to get their views on the discussion paper and a union renewal strategy.

The interviews are divided into three posts below.

What is the future of unions? Interview with Winnie Ng

Winnie Ng is the CAW-Sam Gindin Chair at Ryerson University.

Winnie Ng by FTGU

Q: What surprised or struck you in the CAW-CEP's paper, A Moment of Truth?

WN: The paper confirms the trend. Corporations merge and so should the unions. Having that gathering of strength and strategy is a positive signal for the labour movement and overall the workers movement.

What was surprising is the timing. It might signal in terms of the broader economic and political context that people within the labour movement are recognizing the writing on the wall, that unless we make some drastic changes, it’s a race to bottom and you can't do the same old, same old all the time.

With the recession and the austerity agenda, the two largest private sector unions are taking the lead in coming together in moving some of these initiatives forward. It takes certain courage to have the political will to say, "It's now or never."

Q: What do you feel was missing in the paper?

WN: It would have been important to include a much stronger focus on the inclusion or the equity agenda. If we are going to drastically be looking inward and be reflexive on how we have done things, then take a look at the demographic shifts within the Canadian population.

There is no 'one-size-fits-all' type of union organizing strategy or bargaining strategy. Having full respect for those who are involved in the this merger initiative, we need to recognize the divide and rule tactics that are being used by right-wing populists like Rob Ford; that whole perception out there is that anyone who is in a union and has contract protections action is on the gravy train. We should be asking why shouldn't we have the audacity to ask for decent jobs for all. In underscoring the 'for all', how would a labour renewal strategy include a cornerstone platform on reaching out to those who have been marginalized and further marginalized because they belong to one of the equity seeking groups?

There's recognition that the nature of work has changed, but in terms of the organizing strategy we are still assuming that workers are a homogeneous group. That's the discrepancy. This is only a very preliminary paper, so I'm hoping that there will be more substanstive and more in depth searching questions and discussions on a new vision for a union.

Q: How can unions be more inclusive? 

If you look at the history of the movement from the early days to now, things changed and things improved because the workers were protesting out on the street to the point that - May Day, Haymarket - people died for it. You see the same thing happening in the global south in China, India and elsewhere. As we speak there are 10 million Indian workers that are out on strike against the austerity agenda.

Within the movement here, we become much more at ease in trying to seek legislative change and working within the framework of bargaining in good faith. When actually with the Caterpillar closure, you recognize that employers and the corporate sector - the worst of them - never bargain in good faith. They will try whatever to maximize profits and instill fear in workers. We need to be much more cognizant of the broader corporate agenda along with the political legislative agenda and those two pieces are not there as friends of workers.

I'm by no means knocking down all the gains we have made. But how do we work within the legislative framework, at the same time push for more advocacy and push for more changes? For workers that are doing precarious work or temp work - the right to organize is something that is a privilege - they don’t have access to that right to enjoy. How do we make sure that that we push the frame so that there would be more sectoral organizing, or creatively how do we do some pre-organizing?

There’s some good examples. The Steelworkers are now working with taxi drivers, getting them organized as associate members. At least there’s some representation, some collective pooling of resources. CUPE reached out to domestic caregivers. These are examples where you sometimes see the spark. I'm hoping that it will take shape and take root in a deeper and profound way.

At Ryerson, I met students who wake up a 5’o clock in the morning waiting for the temp agency to call so they can work as day labourers. They get assigned to different work places on a day to day depending on the availability of work. Our pool of –the ones that we could organize - is so much larger than the confinement of organizing workplace by workplace. A lot of times smaller workplaces can’t even get a union organizer to come and take a look. It’s too small. It’s not cost-effective or viable. This is where legislation has impeded how workers can mobilize in a union or organize together.

What is the future of unions? Interview with Stephanie Ross

Stephanie Ross is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director for the Centre for Research on Work and Society. 

This interview was conducted via email.

 Q: Is consolidating unions a good strategy to fight against the attack on unions and workers? Do you agree with the some of the advantages the CAW-CEP discussion paper puts forward?

 SR: There is a lot of fragmentation in the Canadian union movement, and this is a long-standing situation, not a recent development. Workers' organizations in general tend to mirror the structures of workplaces, employers and industrial sectors, which is reinforced by Canada's very decentralized legal framework for union certification and collective bargaining.

This fragmentation, especially as some employers themselves consolidate and globalize, has revealed the limited bargaining power of many private sector unions. We also have very weak labour federations in Canada, which has made building effective solidarity across union lines very difficult. As unions lose members due to the effects of economic restructuring, competition for new members has intensified, and the capacity to cooperate to conduct new organizing is very low.

 So I agree with the authors of A Moment of Truth that the problems of union fragmentation, duplication, competition, and inability to cooperate are real and serious. And a merger between the CAW and CEP specifically makes some sense, as they share a lot in common: both emerged as national unions born out of splits with US-based unions, and both have used mergers and amalgamations as a key growth strategy in the past 20 years which has led them to become general unions.

 However, organizational consolidation through mergers isn't a silver bullet for these problems, and in some ways can create new ones. First, mergers don’t automatically generate more union members. Instead, they reallocate existing union members amongst fewer organizations. So, for organizations that have suffered major declines in their memberships, consolidation is a rational, short-term defensive strategy, but whether it creates a capacity to organize and effectively represent new groups of workers is an open question. It all depends on how those resources are used.

 Second, mergers create larger organizations, in which maintaining membership engagement and democratic control are a real challenge. Third, mergers bring together unions with distinct traditions, political orientations and identities, which are very persistent and to which people are very attached. These can come into conflict and can be very difficult to sort out, no matter how much good will there is. So having to rethink “who we are” and “what we do” is a major task that can sometimes generate lots of internal conflict, which can actually interfere with responding effectively to external attacks.

 Finally, mergers are often desired by and negotiated by leaders, who have their own stakes in the particular shape of any future organization and in where they end up in the new organization. Often, new positions are created to satisfy competing leadership groups and make the merger possible, which can eliminate any cost-savings that might go to other initiatives. So, while I agree that a new merged organization might have a greater potential to do some of the things discussed in the paper, I don't think they are guaranteed outcomes of merger as such.

 Q: How do we strengthen unions when the rank and file is not as militant as we would like them to be?

 SR: I don’t think workers are naturally “militant”. Although workers’ experiences of capitalism create the basis for such militancy, it’s not automatic that they believe that collective opposition to either employers or governments is either effective or possible. That insight must be learned, through both radical forms of union education and real practical opportunities for workers to exercise their collective power and win. In other words, unions themselves must provide both the tools and organizational support for developing a militant orientation amongst the membership.

A major step in this direction would be a more politicized approach to stewards’ training, in which stewards come to see themselves as organizers, both in the workplace and in the community, and are encouraged to look for opportunities to use collective direct action to make gains, no matter how small. Of course, given that many union leaders have themselves retreated from militant tactics, and prefer negotiation, court cases or lobbying instead, we have a vicious cycle in many unions where the voices for more militant responses are quite marginalized.

 The broader left has a role to play in fostering such educational opportunities outside of the unions, but that also has to be grounded in real practices. It’s important for the left not to simply call for militancy for its own sake; otherwise people can dismiss this as unrealistic dreaming. In general, I think fighting is better than always finding ways to “manage the losses” which is typical of much union strategy today.

But militancy which ends in failure can also be counter-productive for movement building, as people learn that collective action makes things worse. It’s important that, as leftists, we be able to point to concrete instances where militancy has produced gains, built workers’ confidence, and enhanced an organization’s capacity for future struggles.

What is the future of unions? Interview with David Camfield

David Camfield is associate professor in labour studies at the University of Manitoba and is the author of Canadian Labour in Crisis.

David Camfield by FTGU

The following is a slightly edited transcript.

Q: Is consolidating unions a good strategy to fight against the attack on unions and workers?

DC: I don’t think the amalgamation strategy by itself is a good strategy. It will be interesting to see what actually happens with the discussion between the CEP and the CAW. But I have major concerns about what kind of union would be produced by a merger of those two organizations. The CAW-CEP discussion paper says that bigger is better in a number of ways.

They talk about more members bringing more visibility, more clout, and more money. I think that some of these things can be true but it’s entirely possible to have a union with more members and more money that’s not actually more effective for workers. That’s why I don’t think there’s anything automatic about bigger being better. Yes, sometimes there can be advantages, but there can also be disadvantages.

If you end up with a union with more money, but  it's a union in which workers have less democratic control within their own organization, then that will be a problem. Or if the merged union has a practice or strategy that's inferior to what the previous union had then that could also be a step backwards. Rather than saying bigger is better, yes or no, we need to be more specific and talk about better in what ways, for which unions, and in what circumstances.

Q: In your book Canadian Labour in Crisis, you write that leadership driven reforms are not the solution, that we need a rank and file approach to reinventing unions. The paper doesn’t address rank and file involvement. How do you see the rank and file reinventing unions?

DC: I think that it is striking that there is virtually nothing about democracy mentioned in this paper.  I think it speaks to the outlook of the leaders of the two unions that we are talking about.   If unions are going to be reinvented they are going to be reinvented by workers. It is going to be a much more prolonged, uneven, and gradual process than flashy high profile mergers and other kinds of reorganizations and I don’t think anyone has a crystal ball for this. I certainly don’t claim to have the ability to see the future or a program to make it happen.

But what we can say from recent experience is that it won’t happen out of a merger like this as opposed to a wave of new initiatives by workers themselves. I don’t know what a reinvented union movement would look like. But are some interesting examples that I touch on in my book that hint at what it could be like.

This is something workers will have to figure out in the early 21st century and I sincerely hope there is some progress in this direction because circumstances for workers are getting worse. The document of the CAW - CEP certainly recognizes that -- it flows out of a sense of growing crisis. It’s not wrong to recognize that the problems are very significant and actually becoming worse. In fact, they're worse now than when the document came out because of the dramatic defeat at Caterpillar, for example.

Q: How do we make unions more democratic?

Sisters in the Struggle

On Friday, March 2, the Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity hosted a film screening of Sisters in the Struggle (1991), a documentary directed by Dionne Brand and Ginny Stikeman which "features Afrikan womyn who are active in community organizing electoral politics, labour and feminist organizing" in the late 80s. The film still resonates today with themes of racism, police brutality, sexism, and homophobia both in the mainstream and within social movements.

The screening was part of a month long film series and panels for Afrikan Liberation Month. The organizers wanted to look beyond the past and multiculturalism of Black History Month and see the work that still needs be done to liberate Afrikan people. An article by Wangui Kimari written in rabble provides further details.



The film was followed by a panel discussion with Angela Robertson, Yolisa Dalamba, and Wariri Muhungi focusing on the theme: Toward a Resurgent Afrikan Womyn's Activism in Toronto. The evening's MC was Ijeoma Ekoh.

Angela Robertson, Director of Equity and Community Engagement, gave an overview of black women organizing in anti-racist, feminist, and queer communities in Toronto. She says that the organizing that black women have done contributed to the building of community services and the anti-racist, gender and queer analysis that exists today. Black women have organized around access to employment and the fight for fair labour practices. She gave nursing as an example.

Angela spoke about police brutality recalling the spate of killings by police in the late 80s and mid 90s of young black men and the case of Sophie Cook that became a catalyst for black women organizing against police brutality.

She talked about the organizing around Caribbean domestic workers and the fight against deportations and unjust immigration policies. Other topics that she touched on included black women organizing in education, violence against women, the LGBTQ community, the sexism and exclusion within the black community, and the racism in the feminist community including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

As well as the importance of taking to the streets, she said it was also important to create institutions. She named institutions that black women established: Sister Vision Press, the Black Women Collective, ZAMI, Black CAP, Blackorama, and Black Lesbians of Toronto.

Angela Robertson by FTGU

Yolisa Dalamba, Executive Director of the Association for Part-Time Undergraduate Students at the University of Toronto, gave a framework to challenge white supremacist values. She started her talk about her personal history of leaving apartheid South Africa and finding apartheid in Canada. The apartheid in South Africa was modeled on Canada's reserve system for aboriginal people. She said Afrikan communities are segregated all across Canada particularly in Nova Scotia.

Yolisa talked about the ways Afrikan have been dehumanized by the dominate culture and the importance of resistance, but also the importance of self-care.

Yolisa Dalamba by FTGU


Wariri Muhungi, member of Network for Pan African Solidarity, spoke about building sustainable organizations and mobilizing resources and the challenges and opportunities around that building. She emphasized the importance of inter-generational knowledge sharing and talked that organizations need to take the time to lay out the foundation that brings people together in organizing. She also touched on the NGO Industrial Complex and how the State controls social justice movements through funding.


Wariri Muhungi by FTGU

In the discussion, questions were asked around coalition building while ensuring space for black women, internalized racism, and self-care and caring for others. The first question was asked by Janaya, followed by Kimalee and the last question was from Kalmplex.


Q and A by FTGU

CUPE 3902 Vote and Its Impact

On Friday, members of CUPE 3902 Unit 1 voted to send the latest offer by the University of Toronto to a ratification vote for February 29th, March 5th and 6th. I spoke with members of CUPE 3902 who feel that the latest offer by the university administration is not a good deal and will have wider implications beyond U of T. CUPE 3902 represents teaching assistants, post-doctoral fellows and part-time lecturers.

Carolyn Shapiro is a first-year Master's student in Philosophy and a Teaching Assistant in CUPE 3902.

Alan Wai Kiat Tang is an undergraduate student in Political Science and History at the University of Toronto - Scarborough Campus and Assistant Invigilator with CUPE 3902.


  Cupe 3902 by FTGU

Partial Transcript:

Q: How does this new offer by the university differ from the one they offered in January?

CS: On our bargaining point of trying to create tutorial and lab caps, the administration has proposed that we create a working group. However there are some problems with the solution because all recommendations made by the working group are subject to the Provost. 

What that means is we set up another bargaining table between the union and the administration, but it’s one which has no leverage. We can come to a head at the end if they disagree over what those recommendations should be. In the last round of bargaining, we created a working group and that has not been successful. It has not prevented tutorial and lab sizes from ballooning and so we don’t need a working group, we really need a solution which is caps in our opinion.

As to the graduate funding that is being replaced by (Research Assistant positions), the administration has also proposed a working group, whose recommendations are also subject to the approval of the Provost. They have given us a one time payout of $150,000 for 2012 and 2013.

It’s important to pay attention to the language in the contract that says one-time only because virtually what this means is that we are accepting a bribe from the administration to not bring up this issue at bargaining again, that the issue is closed and that we’re not plugging the loophole in the contract which stipulates that we can be paid through these taxable and non-dissertation RAs.

The third is the Doctoral Completion Grant. The administration has proposed again another one-time payout  for 2012 and 2013. That payout is $250,000. If we were to divide that between every upper year student in five and six that really only represents $312 and a doctoral completion grant is usually worth between $4000 and $6000, so that is a significant loss. This is one-time only issue so it prevents us from bargaining around it or closes that door for the future.

As for the compensation around our wages, the administration has proposed to up our wages a tiny bit 1.5% for 2011 so that it would be retroactive; 1.75% in 2012 and 2% in 2013. But ultimately this falls below the inflation rate which means that we are losing wages every year.

Q: How does this agreement differ from the last agreement in 2009?

The Doctoral Completion Grant use to cover senior students and it no longer does. The quality of education is declining and out working conditions are deteriorating. We're doing more work for the same pay. We are being overworked because we are responsible for more students all the time and at the end of the day we're making less because our wages are decreasing in that they are not matched to inflation. We've lost a lot since the last bargaining round.

Our demands are extremely modest. Our demands is to fight for what we had before. It's an insult to me that the administration won't take our demands seriously because we're not demanding that we get more, that we be paid more or that we deserve more. We're telling the administration that they have taken away something from us. They have taken away from the quality of education at U of T, not just for graduate students but also for undergrads. 

Q: What impact will this have beyond U of T? 

CS: In the age of austerity, there’s have been a huge push on the part of many corporate bodies including universities to try to impose measures on their workers which basically asks for concession and to take less and to tighten their belts. We’re seeing that here at U of T right now with the position that the administration has taken. This affects not just our bargaining round but also the bargaining taking place at many workplaces including York with CUPE 3903. I know that the TAs and contract workers there are engaged in a round of bargaining. If we take concessions, then we're empowering the employer at York to also push concessions on their workers.

Q: Why is this issue important to undergrads?

AT:  Given the context of the unpopularity of the labour movement where the perception of the public is that the union is for their membership and for themselves and not really as a community as a whole, the proposal that we put out, mainly centered on the slogan- our working conditions are undergrad's learning conditions.

We're trying to get across to undergrad students is that the reality in this job market is that a lot of undergrads who want to pursue their careers in their discipline won’t be able to do so with an undergraduate degree. The reality is a lot of them will go on to graduate and  post graduate studies to pursue their discipline.

One of the positives in the initial mobilization by the union in reaching out to the undergrads and the broader Uof T community has been to take a more social union approach - taking demands that are relevant to everyday working students. Based on my anecdotal experience, I work out of U of T Scarborough campus. The composition of that campus is more representative of working class, more people of colour; this constituency that has been more positive to our proposal because  they are centered around their learning conditions and the fact that they will be future workers as well.

I generally think that's the approach that needs to be taken by the broader labour movement. If we are going to have any relevance, we need to take a more social community unionist approach which looks to take care of its membership but also acknowledges that the broader community and articulate a point that organized labour, even though its a small section of the working class can be a lever for better social change and wages in our community. 

National Day of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

About 200 people turned out for the 7th annual National Day of Action rally for missing and murdered indigenous women. The rally called for the United Nations Committee to End Discrimination Against Women to investigate missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. The Committee’s last investigation was into missing and murdered women in Juarez, Mexico.

The Native Women Association of Canada’s research under the Sisters in Spirit Program reported over 600 murdered or missing indigenous women over the past 30 years. The rally was also an opportunity to remember and honour the lives of indigenous women who have been denied justice and whose stories are often neglected by the mainstream media.

The federal government and the justice system have been indifferent and complicit in the disappearances and deaths of indigenous women. In 2010, the federal government cut funding to the Sisters in Spirit program, which conducted researched and raised awareness of the high rates of violence against Aboriginal Women.

The rally was organized by the February 14th organizing committee which includes No More Silence, The Native Youth Sexual Health Network, and the Native Women’s Resource Centre.

Racism Free Ontario Campaign

Racism Free Ontario by FTGU

The Racism Fee Ontario Campaign is an initiative organized by the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA). In its second year, the campaign launched last December on International Human Rights Day and ends March 21st on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. I spoke to CASSA’s Executive Director Neethan Shan about the campaign.

Q:   What prompted CASSA to launch the Racism Free Ontario campaign?

NS: The main focus was that we were noticing that it was becoming increasingly difficult to talk about racism in Ontario. It was covered within the discourse of multiculturalism. The root cause of racism and the fact that it was taking place. It was difficult to have those conversations. It was difficult to get acknowledgement and recognition of those issues.  

The other objective was those who were doing work against racism - anti-racism activists and advocates are often finding challenging to confront racism. In order to motivate, learn and share and collaborate, people need to know who is doing what in the field.  

Other people need to know that there are people in the field doing anti-racism activism, that we do similar work and face similar challenges.

One of the goal is to connect and celebrate anti-racism activism.

Q: How does this campaign define racism?

NS: We define racism as institutional, structural, that marginalizes individuals because of their skin colour or racial origins. We don’t follow a particular definition of racism per se because there’s multiple definitions out there. But we wanted to look at structural, institutionalized, the marginalization of individuals and the continuing legacy of those marginalization.  

Community Activist Panel on Mining Injustice and Bill C323

On February 9, 2012, the  Mining Injustice Solidarity Network hosted a panel on the injustices caused by Canadian Mining Companies overseas including Latin America and Africa. Bill C-323, introduced by NDP MP Peter Julian, would allow people anywhere in the world to bring civil action lawsuits against Canadian companies. The Federal Court of Canada would hear cases and lawsuits against Canadian companies who violate international human rights, labour rights, and environmental protections overseas. The panel was part of a series of events for Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Month.

Members of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network spoke of the crimes that Canadian mining companies commit with the assistance of the Canadian government.

Christine Mettler spoke about the violations of human rights and the environment degradation committed by Canadian companies such as Gold Corp, Pacific Rim and Barrick Gold and the violence, murder and rape towards local anti-mining activists. Human Rights Watch reported gang rape by security forces hired by Barrick Gold in Papua New Guinea. Instead of taking responsibility, Barrick Gold responded with racism by saying that gang rape is a cultural deficiency of the locals.  

Despite these threats, local community activists continue to oppose mining on their land. In El Salvador, communities were successful in opposing the mine proposed by Pacific Rim. The El Salvadoran rejected their proposal and using the CAFTA Free Trade Agreement, Pacific Rim in suing the government.

She says that resource extraction do not lift people out of poverty in developing countries, despite arguments by mining companies that they are helping communities by providing jobs.  Mining displaces communities and destroys their environment. 

The Harper's government initiative of Corporate Social Responsibility believes corporations can regulate themselves and have their own internal policies. There's no legal recourse to address infractions by Canadian mining corporations abroad.

Christine Mettler by FTGU

Marie Sydney says it is important not to forget that mining companies commit infractions here towards First Nations communities. Human right abuses also happen. However, Bill C323 is specifically for people who are not Canadian residents and allows them to bring civil lawsuits against Canadian companies involved in human rights and labour rights violations.

There are limitations to the bill as it doesn't allow for prosecution or fines. There are also challenges to civil lawsuits. The courts regard subsidiaries as separate entities. They don't recognize them to be the same company unless it can be proven that the person in the parent company is directing the subsidiary.

She compared Bill C323 to Bill C300. The Canadian government provides financial investments to Canadian mining companies to open mines abroad. Bill C300 set guidelines and would withdraw financial support from companies who violated human rights abroad. Bill C300 didn't get pass in parliament.

Marie Sydney by FTGU

Raul Burbano says the campaign for Bill C323 is not to support a political party or party line, but rather it is just one tool among many to make corporations accountable. The Harper government's response to criticism of mining companies was to set up The Office of the Extractive Sector Corporate Social Responsibility.  The office has no teeth, companies do not have to participate in processes that the office undertakes. Another strategy of Harper's Corporate Social Responsibility is to pour more money into mining companies by funding NGOs through CIDA to partner with mining companies on development projects.

Despite the bleak outlook, Burbano says there are many different successes of stopping mining in Latin America and he mentioned the Keystone pipeline victory here. He urged people to sign their petition at passthebill.ca.


Raul Burbano by FTGU

Fiscal Alternatives to the Drummond Report

Fiscal Alternatives to the Drummond report by FTGU

The Drummond report, to be released on February 15th, will likely recommend deep cuts to public services and other austerity measures. I spoke to Salimah Valiani, an economist with the Ontario Nurses Association, whose report Fixing the Fiscal House: Alternative Macroeconomic Solutions for Ontario, shows that Ontario fiscal crisis is exaggerated and argues that Ontario has a revenue problem and not a spending problem. It provides alternatives to the austerity measures of the Drummond report.

This interview has been condensed.

Q: In your report, you write that compared to several countries, Ontario has relatively small deficit-to-GDP and debt-to-GDP ratios. Can you explain this further?

SV: The amount of public debt that is being carried by the government relative to the wealth being produced is the debt to GDP ratio. In Ontario, it is at 34% and at the national level it is at 32%. Now this compares with about 58% for Germany; 41% for the USA and in an extreme case is Greece which is over 100%.

According to the bankers in Ontario and according to Moody’s, there’s a fiscal crisis, but when we look at the debt to GDP ratio around the world especially in rich countries, we see that Ontario has a low debt-to-GDP ratio.

The deficit to GDP ratio is also low. The deficit is the amount of shortfall for any particular year. The current rate is 3%, 3% in a capitalist economy is very standard.

Credit is a key motor of the capitalist economy and we know that as individuals. We carry debt as individuals and we don’t see that to be the end of the world. Actually, neither do the bankers. If they did, we would have even less overall wealth because people would not be able to buy and that would mean less production.

At a 3% deficit, we need to question why there is now an urge, not only on the part of Drummond, but more importantly on the part of the ruling party in Ontario and most of the opposition, to get of that 3% by 2017. We need to put that questions as Ontarians and not leave it to Drummond.

There isn’t a crisis in Ontario. Like there isn’t a crisis in Germany which is upheld as a very high performing country though it’s debt to GDP ratio is 58%. So if there isn’t a crisis, what is the fuss about?

Q: We have heard a lot about Greece and the austerity measures there. The media paints Greece as a country that has out of control spending. Your report argues to the contrary. Can you talk about the revenue problem as oppose to the spending problem in Greece and how that relates to Ontario.

SV: In Greece, when you study the longer economic history, you see there’s an incredible low rate of tax collection on the wealthy, on corporations and even on small businesses. There are also many tax breaks.

The debt that is accumulated in Greece is due to the inability of the government to collect money which then can spend socially on programs for the people. Because the revenue is so low relative to other European countries there’s social spending is low.

In Ontario, we have a similar situation, if we look at fiscal 1998 and fiscal 2003, we actually lost $6.9 billion in fiscal revenue. Why? Because of tax cuts again on corporations, companies and wealthy individuals.

That’s just a five year figure, from 2003 we have to calculate how much more have been lost. Even after the Conservative party was voted out of Ontario, the tax cuts continued and there is a plan to continue them still. We need to calculate from 2003 onwards to know further losses that have been the reality for the Ontario government. What we do know, for the calculation right now, is that Ontario is third from the bottom in terms of public social spending in Canada.

Q: How has austerity measures in Greece made things worse?

SV: Austerity is cutting public spending which targets public sector workers. What we see in Greece is a huge increase in unemployment because the public sector workers are losing their jobs and that then means that you have even less tax collection. The Greek unemployment rate is now 17% and that is at least 6% more than it was before the public spending cuts happened in 2010. We had 17.5% in 2011 and before that, it was 11.4%.

In Ontario, we have had a lot of job losses and we have a higher rate of unemployment than most of the other provinces in Canada.

If we also entertain public sector spending cuts, we’re simply going to add to the numbers of unemployed workers. Similar to Greece, we will have less fiscal capacity, more workers out of jobs and less able to pay taxes. We will dig ourselves into a further hole except that we will bring down the deficit –this is the argument that is being made.

Does it make sense? We need to ask ourselves and we need to ask our elected officials.

Q: There’s a lot of buzz around the Drummond report being released on Feb. 15th. The report is treated like it’s the answers to all of Ontario’s problems by the mainstream media and these answers are given by one man - Don Drummond, who is the former economist for TD Bank. What else can you tell us about him?

SV: Prior to that, he was working in Paul Martin’s office back when the Canadian government decided to get rid of the debt quickly and made immense cuts in health transfers to the provinces. That was the design of Don Drummond.

Q: We’ve already heard a little bit about the contents of Drummond report such as reducing annual spending increases to 1% and 3% for health care. What consequences will this have for health care and nurses?

Occupy Debrief

The Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly organized an Occupy Toronto debrief on Friday, January 27th at the Beit Zatoun.

The panel aimed to address the following questions: Is this the beginning of a new community/labour coalition that we've been waiting for? Will the Occupy movement be able to sustain itself and help awaken a dormant labour movement? How did the Occupy Toronto experience measure up with other Occupations? How did the existing Toronto far-left respond to Occupy at first, and then once it coalesced? Will Occupy be co-opted, or indeed, is it co-optable? The speakers were all part of Occupy Toronto.

The first speaker, Lana Goldberg spoke about her experiences with Occupy and the day-to-day work, including the Action and Outreach committee, the Finance and the Legal Committee. Some work was done around outreaching to the unions and they were able to get financial support from the unions.

She said the relationship between Occupy and labour weren’t too strong. There wasn’t a lot of labour people in the park and there was some anti-union sentiment amongst some of the Occupy people. A lot of work was done in the committees to challenge these sentiments. She spoke about the work being done post-eviction Occupy.

Lana Goldberg by FTGU

Megan Kinch said Occupy wasn’t really a left project or space. She spoke about the differences and similarities between Occupy and the traditional left. Occupy had a diverse grouping of people who had different political views and as a result was not a safe left space. But that this was not necessarily a bad thing.

She talked about the advantages of the Occupy space and about the importance of working with people who have different views from leftists. Initially Occupy was middle class university students, but this shifted as people from different socio-economic backgrounds joined. She stressed the importance of doing continued long-term education and organizational work if the left wants a voice in the movement.

Megan Kinch by FTGU

Brendan Bruce spoke about labour’s relationship to the Occupy movement. He talked about SEIU and the Occupy Washington and how the union tried to take over the Occupy movement there, then moved onto Occupy Toronto’s experience with the labour movement and their lack of support in fighting their eviction from the park. However, there was tremendous support from the rank and file such as the Air Canada workers. He says Occupy has shown the assembly model of democracy works rather than having labour leaders tell workers what they should do.

Brendan Bruce by FTGU

For Paul Gray, Occupy has called into question the assumptions socialists have. He talked about Engels attack on social democracy and how this relates to Occupy. He argues that the Occupy movement is the logical result for the entire historic arc of social democracy and asks whether the barricade is obsolete and if it isn’t what that means for socialist strategy.

Paul Gray by FTGU

Occupy Talks: Indigenous Perspectives on the Occupy Movement

Video of John Trudell's Look at Us was shown before the talk.

Over 150 people attended the Indigenous Perspectives on the Occupy Movement as part of a series by Occupy Talks at the Beit Zatoun on January 23rd.

Jessica Yee’s article on the Occupy movement, published on Racialicious blog, sparked much debate and discussion around Occupy and the occupation of Indigenous land. Yee argues that the left often organizes campaigns using nationalist and patriotic language and fails to incorporate an anti-colonial and anti-oppression framework into their anti-capitalist project.

Tannis Nielsen, a Metis artist and the evening’s moderator, agreed with Yee’s criticism and called Occupy a re-occupation with potential.

The other speakers agreed with Nielsen and Yee’s analysis. 

Leanne Simpson, a band member of Alderville First Nation and an Adjunct Professor in Indigenous Studies at Trent University, said that Indigenous communities have been resisting the occupation of their land for the last 400 years.

She gave a historical and geographical framework of Southern Ontario and spoke of the devastating impact the Indian Act has on Indigenous people. She stressed the importance of the role of women’s leadership in the resistance against colonization.   
Clayton Thomas-Muller, of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation and the Tar Sands Campaign Director for the Indigenous Environmental Network, spoke of his reaction to the Occupy movement when it first started, both his hopes and his concerns.

One of his concerns was that Occupy would take away energy from other campaigns that started before Occupy. He also spoke about how the Occupy movement is dominated by white males and their privilege and the importance of an anti-oppression framework.

But he was also impressed by the infrastructure that Occupy had set up. He wrapped up his talk by talking about London’s Climate Camp where they held a space, but also organized different actions each week. He felt the Occupy people were caught in the day to day work of holding the space such as dealing with conflict resolution, that left little energy for solidarity work such as the Tar Sands campaign.

Tom B.K. Goldtooth, the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), headquartered at Bemidji, Minnesota, talked about the Indigenous protocol for communication and developing relationship with each other and the relationship to Mother Earth. He felt we need to ask critical questions such as: who are the 99% and when we say take back, who are we taking back from? 

Sponsors: Canadian Auto Workers, Canadian Labour Council, Ryerson University, Environmental Justice Toronto, Indigenous Environmental Network

To download click the arrow on the right under info.


Tannis Nielsen by FTGU


Leanne Simpson by FTGU


Clayton Thomas Muller by FTGU


Tom Goldtooth by FTGU

Mayor delays vote on sell-off of social housing

Media Advisory from Tenants for Social Housing

Confusion, uncertainty continue to plague hasty social housing selloff
Tenants dismayed at chaotic process driving potential sale of their homes

TORONTO - After the close of business today and less than 24 hours before the meeting commences, the Executive Committee has removed the controversial sale of Toronto Community Housing homes from the January 24th agenda.

Tenants expressed concern at the chaotic process that seems to be directing the proposed sale of over 700 homes. Confusion over how many homes would be sold, which homes are actually available for sale and how affected tenants would be treated have caused anxiety among social housing residents and concern among many Councillors.

This evening’s abrupt decision to cancel the roughly 75 deputations scheduled for tomorrow afternoon have created further concern that there is no real plan and little clarity about the proposed sale, despite its significant impact on tenants.

The Fight for Social Housing

Download interview by clicking on the arrow on the right under info.

tenants for social housing by FTGU

On October 21, 2011, Toronto Community Housing approved the sale of 706 homes. The Tenants for Social Housing has been organizing to stop the sale and have taken their fight to city hall. On January 24th, they and tenants across the city will be deputing at the City Executive Committee to oppose the sale. There’s still hope after the 24th as the vote goes to City Council in February. I interviewed Susan Gapka of Tenants for Social Housing about their campaign and what can still be done.


Q: Can you tell me about Tenants for Social Housing?

SG: Tenant for social housing is a group of volunteers. We’re not staff. We’re tenants in Toronto Community Housing (TCH). We formed about 11 months ago. It was early in the new Mayor Ford administration. It was around February, there was an audit that came out from TCH that reported overspending and improper contracts.

The mayor set out to disgrace and fire the board of TCH. They met in early March and the mayor fired the board, and bullied the appointed board members who then resigned. It was done without a report to City Council.

There were a number of us tenants who lived in social housing who are organizers. In 2005 and 2006, we had organized a meeting with members of provincial parliament. There’s definitely a problem with housing, the housing is falling apart all around us.

We needed the money for capital repairs. We were able to get commitments from all three levels of government. It wasn’t only the tenants, there were a lot of people involved, there was a lot of goodwill, but we were part of that and we got $380 M in commitments from the federal, provincial government. We had some experience organizing.

When the mayor publicly fired the board of TCH, we organized –that’s where Tenants for Social Housing –We Are Not for Sale came out of.

Q: Can you tell me about the board? I understand there are only two tenants on the board.

SG: That was a really important thing. The tenants and the alternates were removed by City Council without a report. We thought that was inappropriate. The tenants are certainly not living on any gravy train that we know of. Many of us don’t even know what a gravy train looks like. We had elected tenants to the board, so we thought it was wrong for City Council to remove democratically elected tenants.

We weren’t able to stop that. But we were able to re-elect one of them. Catherine Wilkinson was re-elected to the board and Munira Abukar, a Ryerson student, a woman of colour, a young person was elected. We saw that as a victory. When everyone was being fired, we managed to get our elected representatives to the board.

Unfortunately, what happened during the appointment process is that city councillors (Frances Nunziata and Cesar Palacio) favourable to the mayor were appointed. The other citizen appointments, are real estate people. In the very first meeting, instead of looking at a judicial framework, a housing network, they moved a report that approved the sale of 706 homes. We tried to fight that, but we’re unsuccessful. They voted as a block.

Stop the Cuts Rally and Victory

Community mobilization has stopped cuts to many city services. I got an update from Kelly O'Sullivan on the Budget today.

Stop the Cuts Update by FTGU


Over 1000 people turned out for the Stop the Cuts rally at City Hall this evening.




Residents from Etobicoke came down to city hall by buses organized by the Etobicoke Stop the Cuts Committee.




Occupy City Hall sets up tents.




Protestors were blocked from entering city hall by police. Four people were arrested.

Community Recreation For All

C4all by FTGU

On January 17 to 19, City Council will finalize the 2012 budget for Toronto. On the table is a proposal to eliminate free registered programs for children and youth as well as cutting 17 out of 29 community youth outreach jobs. I interviewed Amy Katz with the Community Recreation For All campaign.

Q: What is Community Recreation For All?

AK: Community Recreation for All is a group of community organizations and residents across the city and we are concerned about access to our community centres and recreation programs.

Q: The proposed budget will eliminate free registered programs for children and youth. What are some of the recreation programs that the city funds?

AK: Right now there are 134 community centres across Toronto and 21 of these are called priority centres and just to clarify they’re not related to priority neighbourhoods. They’re scattered across the city.

A priority centre and priority neighbourhood are two different things. The priority centres were established in 1999 long before there were priority neighbourhoods, not all the priority neighbourhoods have them. Priority Centres until 2011 were free for everyone, adults, youth, seniors, and community spaces were free.

Programs include swimming, skating, art, free swim, computer skills, leadership training, fitness, sport, sewing. It’s a real range depending on the kind of programs they run.

Q: Why are these recreation programs important?

Etobicoke North - Stop the Cuts

Etobicoke North by FTGU

Partial transcript of interview:

In the Etobicoke North Stop the Cuts Committee, they have formed a coalition called Rexdale United to organize against the cuts to city services. I talked to Nigel Barriffe, an elementary school teacher and a member of the coalition, about their work.

Q: Can you tell me about the Etobicoke North community?

NB: The Etobicoke North has one of the highest unemployment rates of the 44 wards, one of the lowest average incomes – the average income is about $44,000. That information is available on the City of Toronto website. It’s a high mix of racialized people. You have a very large South Asian community from India, Pakistan. Then we have a very large African, East African, Somali, Horn of Africa, along with the English-speaking Carribean community.

Q: How has the community reacted to the cuts?

NB: There have been a number of smaller groups that have come together under the banner of Rexdale United. So we have been doing a lot of door knocking, a lot of flyering and emailing to the community. We had over 100 residents that came out to a budget forum that was finally called by the councillor after receiving numerous phone calls from our constituents.

We went out and said these are the cuts that are on the table and they were quite obviously upset by it, such as reducing TTC service and at the same time increasing fares. Routes Martin Grove 46, Steeles 60, Islington are all major routes for the TTC and all major routes that service Ward 1 and Ward 2. Councillor Criscanti was hiding behind the fact that he did support getting rid of Transit City which was the opportunity for us to have ligt rail transit in our area. It would have been a huge service increase to our neighbourhood.

They were very upset by these cuts and it showed by the number of people that came out. During the elections, there were never that many people that came out to the electoral debates. There were quite a lot of people that came out to express their views.

A group of youth from Rexdale are doing a campaign to ask the councillors to ride the bus with them for a week. There were a few progressive councillors who said they were willing to take that challenge. Unfortunately our councillor Crisanti, I’m paraphrasing, he was basically saying look it’s not convenient. I can ride it with you for a day, but not for a week.

The youth replied back in another email, ‘That’s our point. It’s not convenient. So that’s why we shouldn’t be cutting back on services and increasing fares. If anything we should be decreasing fares and increasing service.’ It’s unfortunate that he did not take their challenge. It will be interesting to see whether he puts his hand on Jan 17th or not in support of the continued cuts to the TTC.

(youtube video: Rexdale Youth Challenge Toronto City Councillors)

Q: How many people are involved in the committee?

NB: There have been 20 of us that have been working together on it. Everybody has been taking up different roles. It’s interesting to see how the tactics and strategies play out. None of us are full-time organizers. We either work full-time or we’re unemployed looking for work. We’re mothers or grandparents. We’re not professional organizers by any means. We’re citizens and we want the councillors to understand that the cuts he’s making to our neighbourhood are going to disproportionately affect communities like Rexdale.

The effects these cuts will have on Rosedale or Forest Hill are quite different from the effect it will have on Rexdale. When you close down a daycare centre like Greenholme Middle School, you lose those daycare spots, those are affordable daycare spots. People who have the lowest average income in the city, don’t have those resources to go out and pay the regular price for day care.

We have the Rexdale Community Health Centre that offers a lot of senior programs that I understand with a 10% reduction across the board means reducing the number of services that are being offered to the seniors in our neighbourhood. That’s what at stake here for us at Rexdale United and the community members that I’m working with.

Q: Why is it important that we stop these cuts?

NB: We've done the priority neighbourhood investment. The investment in childcare, the investment in transit city, the providing of decent jobs that provide a living wage – that’s called city building. That’s what makes a great city that it is. You have in my opinion a Tea Party mentality, a very right wing, hegemonic, neoliberal agenda, an ideological agenda that is being pushed down on us. We know that because there’s actually a surplus. So there’s no actual reason to cut these services. They have the money, but they’re choosing not to save these services. It’s ideological warfare that’s going on. That’s why it’s important for groups like Stop the Cuts to build coalitions, to build community groups, to build a grassroots movement that’s going to push back against this ideological warfare that’s coming down against our community.

Downtown East Side Stop the Cuts

DTES by FTGU

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and their allies have had a long history organizing in the Downtown Eastside fighting for the rights of the poor, the homeless, and immigrants and refugees. Last summer they and other community members formed the Downtown Eastside Committee, which is one of 10 committees that are part of the Stop the Cuts Network. I spoke to Kelly O'Sullivan, president of CUPE local 4308, about their work in that area.

Partial transcript of interview:

Q: Can you tell me a little about the Downtown Eastside?

KO: The Downtown Eastside is the area east of Yonge St. But for those of us in the neighbourhood, we think of it primarily as three neighbourhoods east of Yonge, so St. Jamestown, Regent Park, and Moss Park.

One of the focus for us the Sherbourne and Dundas area. It’s an area of our community that has been impacted by cuts and systemic issues. It’s really a diverse and broad community as far as who lives in the community. There has been a lot of gentrification over the years, but there are still many people who live in poverty.

Particularly with Regent Park and St. Jamestown, there are a lot of newcomers that are in those communities. Obviously affected by the propose cuts and the gentrification.

Q: What are some of the issues you are working on in your neighbourhood?

KO: Those of that are already active in our community had some sense of the issue that we have seen around housing, around access to services, and childcare. But we didn’t want to assume based on what we experienced. So we held a broader community meeting back in July.

We had close to 90 people in that community attend. We identify priorities to work on. One of that was housing and the potential sell-off of housing. User fees at the community rec centre was another key issue because our neighbourhoods have been identified as priority neighbourhoods.

There had already been a cap put on the welcome policy so people weren’t able to access the rec programs through that access programs. In addition, there were talking about implementing user fees and that had done that at some of the community centres that provide services in the neighbourhood like the Wellesley community centre.

The third area that people talked about was around child care. Many of our community members rely on subsidized child care. We were going to see a potential loss of 2000 child care spaces.

The fourth one was shelters and access to shelters. There are a number of shelters in the community and we had concerns about those being pushed out and closed without actual housing being implemented prior.

Q: How many people are in your committee?

KO: We have a core group of about ten people that come to every meeting. We meet every two weeks; that’s a pretty decent number involved on an on-going basis. But we also have up to at least 20 people that are actively involved that will take on tasks like doing outreach or doing flyering in the community and to talk about issues that are coming up. As well, we have close to 200 people on our listserv and outreach list and who will come out and more specifically to do actions, activities or events that we hold.

Q: Can you tell me the impact gentrification is having in your neighbourhood?

KO: Services that provide programs to people who are poor or who are newcomers are targeted. There hasn’t been a decrease in the number of people living in poverty in our community. But has happen because of condo development is that there has been an increase in the number of people that have privilege that live in the community.

This concept of a mixed community being so healthy is completely false. Because what happens is people with privilege, they, not to stereotype them all, I’m sure some folks are open to a ‘mixed neighbourhood’, but it’s the people with privilege who move into the community who then don’t feel comfortable with the reality of the community is that poverty exists, there are issues that arise and they want to see those things changed in the community.