Ready, set, communicate!
McGuinty fires starting gun on OPSEU lobby campaign
If you needed a signal, that was it.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty walked out of a Cabinet meeting this morning to call on public employees to tone down demands for better wages and working conditions.
“This is the clearest sign yet that the Liberals see a direct connection between the Ontario budget and the household budgets of OPSEU members,” said OPSEU president Leah Casselman. “If the McGuinty government solves its budget problems by cutting costs, it’s coming out of our hides.”
The government is acting as if its expenses are too high, Casselman said, when in fact revenues are too low.
“After two years of cuts under the NDP and eight years of cuts under the Conservatives, Ontario does not have a spending problem,” she said. “If the Conservatives didn’t cut it, it couldn’t be cut.
“The real problem in Ontario’s finances is a revenue problem caused by the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves tax cuts.”
Tory tax cuts will take a total of $13.3 billion out of government coffers in the 2003-04 fiscal year. That’s more than twice the projected deficit of $5.6 billion.
Get the message out
Now is the time for OPSEU members to contact their Liberal MPPs, Casselman said.
“It’s time for the Liberals to think outside the box Mike Harris built and restore taxes to a level where we can really rebuild public services,” she said. “It’s time to get that message to every MPP, and our friends and neighbours, too.”
Go to the web
A brand new section on the OPSEU web site has everything you need to know about the province’s finances and the tools to make it easy to get the message out. Go to www.opseu.org and click on the red button that says, “Rebuild our Public Services.”
Download the leaflet
Our new tri-fold leaflet, “Basic arithmetic,” has the arguments in favour of restoring taxes to rebuild public services. If you need more detail, read http://www.opseu.org/news/AxFax98/remarks.htm
and the two papers from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Contact your MPP
To contact your MPP directly by e-mail, phone, or mail, go to http://www.opseu.org/rebuild/contactmpp.htm to get contact information. Don’t know who your MPP is? Find out here.
Send a letter to the editor
It’s easy to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper from http://www.opseu.org/rebuild/lettertoeditor.htm. The web site lists e-mail addresses for over 300 editors. Follow the links to fill out the letter template and click on the address of
the newspaper in your community.
Contact your Board member
To plug yourself in to the campaign to lobby MPPs face-to-face, contact the OPSEU coordinator for your region, listed at http://www.opseu.org/rebuild/coordinators.htm.
Original authorized for distribution: Leah Casselman, OPSEU President
OPSEU ActionFax is an electronic publication of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Original authorized for distribution by Leah Casselman, president.
