OPSEU Brief to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
 

December 12, 2008, Niagara Falls

Good afternoon. My name is Patty Rout, First Vice President/Treasurer of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

OPSEU represents more than 125,000 Ontario workers, most of whom work in the public sector including ministries of the crown, hospitals, colleges and social service agencies, the LCBO and others in the broader public sector. I happen to be a medical laboratory technologist employed at Lakeridge Health Corporation, in Oshawa.

Let's be very clear on a few fundamental issues:

First. Ontario is facing an economic crisis the likes of which few of us in this room have witnessed before in our lifetimes. The impact on hundreds of thousands of people in this province is enormous. Jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate. Communities are watching as their economic lifelines are being snapped.

Second. With the exception of Stephen Harper everyone recognizes that all levels of government must take immediate action to strengthen our economy and effectively address the global economic calamity that is impacting Ontario and Canada.

Third.  Let's understand that economic stimulus and financial restraint are contradictory terms. In determining how it acts to address the economic crisis the provincial government cannot speak out of both sides of its mouth. It must make clear its intention to infuse the public sector with badly needed resources to curb the crippling impact of the economic crisis we face in this province.

Our public sector once supplied 20 per cent of the jobs and services in Ontario. That fell to less than 15 per cent from 1995 to 2003. The decline had a dramatically negative impact on many communities that delivered and received public services.

In tough economic times with heavy job losses in the private sector many families rely on a public sector pay cheque. And so do the communities in which those families live.

The public sector has only slightly recovered since 2003, to about a 16 per cent share of the economy since the McGuinty government took office on a promise to rebuild public services.

So the thrust of our argument today is that there remains much work to be done in restoring public services in this province - for the benefit of working families, for communities and for all residents of Ontario.

I will focus on four key areas of concern to our members.  

They are:

• temporary and contract workers in a ‘good jobs' economy

• the failure to adequately fund the front line of  the Ontario Public Service

• the privatized financing and delivery of health care

• the under funding shortfall facing community colleges

It is evident that the all levels of government must become much more aggressive about using the tools of the state to pull us out of the economic crisis we face.

This is what the Auditor General of Ontario is saying.

This is what virtually every leading economist is saying - at home and abroad.

This is what Canadian bankers are saying.

Everyone seems to understand this, except the Prime Minister of Canada.

What we're witnessing in Ontario is the failure of the provincial government to commit itself to bold action. We're hearing all the right words from our Premier, but what's missing a sweeping plan for bold action.

The reality today is that too many Ontario families are struggling.

If they are receiving social assistance, it's far too low.

If they are working one, two or more jobs at minimum wage, they are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

If they have a good job, it may be precarious.

Three out of eight jobs in Canada are part-time, temporary, seasonal, or precarious in some way.  These workers are often paid less than full-timers, they seldom have benefits, and lack of job security hangs over them like a dark cloud.

At least 40,000 OPSEU members are part-time or contract workers. They go by many different names - “casuals,” “unclassifieds,” etc. - but they face many common issues.  Now more than ever, Ontario needs good jobs that allow working people to live decently, bring their kids up properly, and retire with dignity.

This is the message we took to the street on December 10th, International Humans Rights Day, outside LCBO stores across Ontario. The LCBO has a four-tier wage structure. Its employees are fighting for equal wages, benefits and a little dignity.

It will take added provincial spending to create well-paying jobs and to help transform bad jobs into good ones. 

Any move now or in the next budget that cuts wage gains for real people doing real work is bound to fail. A strategy that puts money in workers' pockets is a good one.

To help get us on that path, the government should begin by taking a good, hard look at the dramatic report released last week by the provincial Auditor General.

He said that instead of getting on with rebuilding services in tough economic times, the province is falling behind in its mandate.

The Auditor said it would have been cheaper - by more than $600 million - for the government itself to have built the William Osler hospital in Brampton than to hand the job off to the private sector.  

And he exposed the fact that the Ministry of Revenue is badly under resourced.  At least $500 million in provincial sales taxes is going uncollected.

Can you imagine how those missing dollars could have been used to rebuild our teetering social infrastructure?  

The report notes that the province has not adequately addressed the deficiencies in public safety inspections - like meat safety and transportation safety, to cite two examples - that first took root under the Harris regime in the mid-1990s and continues to this day.

The Auditor General's report strongly indicates the government continues to fall short when it comes to court and correctional services.

How has it come to this? There's a simple explanation. It's because we've fallen far behind in keeping up staffing levels to meet public needs.

Let me return to health care.  At least half of our hospitals are in deficit this year. That is expected to increase to 70 per cent in 2009, given the government is providing much less than inflation.

Our hospitals were promised they would keep their services after amalgamation under the Mike Harris government, but this is not being honoured by the Local Health Integration Networks - LHINs.

If current provincial thinking on hospital operations does not change, emergency rooms will close. There will a major loss of health services to small towns and rural areas.

While the Auditor General's report acknowledges that the government has almost reached its target of reducing psychiatric beds to 35 per 100,000 people, the services that were meant to be put in place to assist the mentally ill are not being funded. 

The auditor revealed that over half the people with serious mental illness living in the community were not receiving an appropriate level of care.

We are failing the most vulnerable members of our society and their care providers.

Lastly, I would like to touch on community colleges - a cornerstone in preparing our people for the challenges presented by the new, green and knowledge-based global economy

When OPSEU last made a presentation to this committee 11 months ago we stressed that Ontario had fallen to 9th place among Canadian jurisdictions in per student funding. We urged to take this matter seriously by investing in our young people struggling to gain the education they need so that we can compete.

Sadly, on this score, absolutely nothing has changed. We're still Number 9. It's nothing to be proud of.

So we say to you again today, it's time to make a bold move in the direction of bringing our funding of community colleges more in line with, at the very least, the Canadian average.

Let me conclude by reinforcing OPSEU's key concerns and remedies.

In the face of the most severe economic downturn since the Depression, now is not the time to cutback on public services or public sector wage gains.

This is not the time to accelerate privatization of our health care system.

This is not the time to squeeze our community colleges even further to the point where we fall behind in the global economy.

It is, however, the time to plan boldly to meet and overcome the serious economic challenges we face.

It is the time to engage the tools of government to reduce the wage and benefit gaps caused by an economy that is fracturing into more and more categories of workers.

It is the time to take back our health care system that is hemorrhaging money to the private sector when all available evidence shows the public sector can do it better and more economically.

It is the time, as the Auditor General most accurately pointed out, to reinvest in public services if to safeguard the health and safety of the people of Ontario.

The challenges we face are steep. I don't pretend the solutions are simple.

But now is the time - more than ever - that we must begin to pull together in common cause.  Nothing less than the future well-being of our great province depends on it.

Thank you.