Speaking notes for OPSEU president Leah Casselman
for a presentation to the Standing Committee
on Finance and Economic Affairs
Tuesday, March 5, 2002, 3:40 p.m.
Amthyst Room (Committee Room #151), Main Legislative Building
Queen’s Park, Toronto
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you here today.
My name is Leah Casselman. For almost seven years now, I have been the president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
In some ways the work of a union is similar to that of a government.
Like the Premier and Cabinet, I and my Executive Board are chosen to manage the budget when we win democratic elections.
So far I have won four to the Premier’s two.
Like government, a union is responsible for providing services to people. We negotiate and enforce legal contracts, manage pensions and benefit funds, train people, and advocate publicly for the interests of our members.
To pay for these services, we collect money from our members, just as the government collects taxes from Ontarians.
Over the last seven years, I have been accountable for an annual budget of about $50 million. I am very familiar with the budgeting process, let me tell you.
Building a budget is about setting priorities.
It involves, first of all, deciding the things you must do, and then deciding the things that would be good to do if you are able to do them.
Second, it involves ensuring that your revenues are adequate to provide the services you have decided to provide. There are two ways to do this. One is to make sure that you are spending your money wisely. The other is to make sure that you actually have enough money.
I would like to comment here today on the way the Minister of Finance seems to be going about the budgeting process. I base my remarks on his comments in front of this committee Feb. 27, as well as comments he has made over the last year.
Jim Flaherty is, first of all, making huge mistakes in determining what are high priority items and what are low priority items.
Second, he is planning to continue many of the wasteful and inefficient policies of his government.
And third, he is making poor-quality assumptions about both the current economic climate and the options available for government revenue.
I would like to comment on each of these three items.
First, priorities: Here last week, Mr. Flaherty made virtually no mention of the services that government must provide, or that government should provide.
This is very telling. Apparently, public services are not a priority for him.
They are, however, a priority for the Ontario public.
Recognizing this – because he does, after all, want to be Premier – Jim Flaherty has, at other times, set out his spending priorities. As described on his web site, these priorities are schools, hospitals, the environment, and caring for the vulnerable.
Of course he has offered few details except for his plan to put the homeless in jail.
If you know anything about jail, which Mr. Flaherty clearly doesn’t, this is an impressively stupid idea.
It’s not a crime to be poor. It’s not a crime to be homeless.
Our jails are overcrowded as it is. In most of them, there’s no programming to speak of. Correctional officers can get tuberculosis simply by going to work. Armed robbers are getting extra time knocked off their sentences because conditions inside are so horrendous.
The idea of putting homeless people behind bars is absolutely unreal.
Jim Flaherty says he wants to cut what he calls “non-priority” spending. Again, he won’t give details.
But it’s fair to assume that everything that’s not a priority is a non-priority. Let’s take a look at some of his “non-priorities.”
Right now, today Ontario’s stressed-out probation and parole officers have the highest caseloads of any in Canada.
Seven hundred people are supposed to keep tabs on over 70,000 convicted offenders serving sentences in our communities.
On average, they only have time to meet for 30 minutes a month with sex offenders. And sex offenders get more attention. Our officers have 15 minutes a month for other offenders. Sometimes it’s only two minutes.
But is Jim Flaherty talking about this? Is he talking about increasing the number of p&p officers and support staff to keep our communities safe?
No, he’s not. To him, it’s a “non-priority.”
Or look at food safety. Ontario used to have 150 permanent provincial meat inspectors. Now there are eight.
Ontario used to have 20 provincial fruit and vegetable inspectors. Now there are zero.
In November, the provincial auditor said, and I’m quoting, that
· “Food safety deficiencies that are defined as critical by the Ministry and could pose risks to human health were noted during annual licensing audits of abattoirs…. Such deficiencies include unsanitary food contact surfaces, rusty equipment, and the transportation of meat in non-refrigerated vehicles…. Newer testing
methods allow bacterial, chemical, and other hazards to be detected easily and quickly. However, the Ministry did not have a process in place to randomly test meat from abattoirs for evidence of these hazards….”
Shocking stuff. But is Jim Flaherty talking about food safety? No, he’s not. To him, it’s a “non-priority.”
In the Ministry of Labour, the full complement of occupational health and safety inspectors is supposed to be about 280. We’re about 40 short, and we’ve been about 40 short for a long time.
These people do important work. Their job is to stop people from getting killed on the job, or having their arms ripped off, or getting occupational diseases.
But because of this government, thousands of workplaces are being ignored. Is this costing lives? Yes, it likely is.
But those lives are a “non-priority” to Jim Flaherty.
In November, the provincial auditor called the Ministry of Transportation on the carpet for mismanaging highway safety. Is Flaherty talking about this? No, he’s not.
Which brings me to my second main point. Instead of talking about improving services, Flaherty is talking about wasting more money through the magic of privatization.
It’s right there on his campaign web site. It says, "I am committed to privatization in order to provide a more efficient government.”
The only proper response to this is, “Huh?”
Since 1995, privatization has been the most disastrous policy of any provincial government in Ontario history.
In many cases, as the provincial auditor reported in November, private operators are charging the government two, three, and more times what it would cost to have accountable public employees do the same work.
In the Andersen Consulting fiasco, the Ministry of Community and Social Services paid the project manager $575 an hour to manage a computer system that still doesn’t work.
The provincial auditor said public service employees could have done the $200-million project for wages one-sixth of what Andersen charged.
Andersen employees billed the government an average of $24,000 each for personal expenses without receipts.
If this is supposed to be “efficient,” I’d hate to see what inefficient looks like.
The auditor said that highway maintenance cost more when performed by the private sector in three out of four cases he looked at.
When the Ministry of Health privatized our air ambulance system, they paid out over $2 million in severance to critical care flight paramedics just to have the same people come back to work at the same job for the private operator.
Our air ambulance system now costs more than ever –with no improvement in service!
That’s Jim Flaherty’s idea of “efficiency.”
It’s a joke. It’s not a funny joke, but it is a joke.
A budget that’s built around privatization is a budget that’s built around waste. The only way that privatization is efficient is as a method of transferring taxpayers’ dollars into the pockets of private business people.
Meanwhile, Flaherty says he can’t afford the services Ontarians need.
Jim Flaherty is like the guy who spends all day in the bar buying drinks for his buddies but won’t put food on the table for his kids.
Which brings me to my third point: revenue.
Government revenues this year will be over 20 per cent higher, in real terms, than they were in 1995.
Even without the $12 billion in annual revenue that they’ve blown out the window on tax cuts, this government is richer than any other government in Ontario history.
Yet Jim Flaherty is crying poor.
In his speech here last week, Flaherty said that private sector economists were predicting an average rate of real GDP growth for the year 2002 of 1.3 per cent.
I don’t know who these forecasters are. Perhaps they are forecasters like the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, which announced in November that the Canadian economy was in recession.
As we now know, there was no recession. But even when CIBC was saying there was, they were still predicting growth of 1.7 per cent for 2002.
I can’t afford the private sector economists anyway, so I’ll stick with the public sector ones.
In the United States, Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, has endorsed a prediction of 2.5 to 3 per cent economic growth in 2002.
As you know, the downturn in the U.S. has been worse than it has been here.
Here in Canada, David Dodge, governor of the Bank of Canada, has predicted growth of 1-2 per cent in the first half of 2002 and 3-4 per cent in the second half.
Even Dodge’s predictions may be too low. Growth in the last quarter of 2001 was 0.5 per cent, or an annual rate of 2.0 per cent.
And bear in mind that the budget you are making is not for 2002, but for fiscal 2002, which includes the first quarter of 2003.
And in 2003, as you know, even Jim Flaherty is predicting real GDP growth of 4.4 per cent.
Looking at these numbers, a strong case can be made for a forecast of over three per cent growth for fiscal 2002-03.
In 1996, then Finance Minister Ernie Eves referred to numbers lower than that as “steady, solid growth.”
Flaherty’s prediction of 1.3 per cent is a deliberate lowballing designed to provide a rationale for his real agenda: cuts and privatization to transfer public dollars into private hands.
Flaherty has bragged about balancing the budget in 2001-02.
We should all be asking the question: “If we could have a balanced budget in 2001-2002, with one per cent economic growth, how can we be short several billion dollars in 2002-2003 when economic growth is going to be much higher?
There is only one answer to this: “There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza.”
Somebody is still buying drinks at the bar when they should be thinking about groceries.
For example, Jim Flaherty’s pet project, the tax credit for parents with children in private schools, will cost at least $300 million a year and possibly as much as $700 million once it’s fully implemented.
By supporting the public services I mentioned earlier, Ontarians get a stronger public service. By supporting private schools, we get a weaker public school system. Who would vote for that if they had a choice?
Then there’s the $2.2 billion corporate tax cut. Why are we draining the public purse when Canada is the cheapest place to do business of all the G-7 nations, according to KPMG Consulting?
It’s pure right-wing ideology. It is not based on common sense.
Now, you may be surprised to hear me say this, but I agree with Jim Flaherty on something.
We both agree that there is a crisis in Ontario.
But I’m telling you now, it is not a financial crisis. It is a crisis in public services.
To keep it short and sweet, I’m just talking today about the Ontario Public Service specifically.
At last count, the OPSEU bargaining unit in the Ontario Public Service had been reduced by over 23,400 employees. That is a reduction of one-third.
Workloads are up. Stress is up. Frustration is up.
The story of today’s public service is the story of a system that has broken down.
If we had 100 provincial auditors, or if an inquiry like the Walkerton Inquiry were held in every Ministry, it would be revealed that the same policies that undercut the Ministry of Environment are at work in every Ontario government ministry.
The process we call “Walkertonization” is a process of mismanagement. It involves:
· selling off services;
· wiping out rules;
· axing jobs;
· reducing job security, job quality, and wages for public employees, while increasing workloads, frustration, and stress;
· creating confusion, not leadership; and
· destroying employee morale.
Walkertonization creates a mismanaged, fragmented patchwork of a public service. In its current state, the Ontario Public Service can no longer adequately protect public health and safety, let alone the public interest.
It’s time we did something about it.
After six-and-a-half years of cuts, layoffs, and privatization, it is now clear that we, as Ontarians, have no choice: We must rebuild the Ontario Public Service.
That is what you should be thinking about in your budget deliberations.
The foundation of the public service is people.
If we want public safety, value for money, and a professional, accountable, open public service, you have to start by supporting the people on the front lines.
After the September 11 attacks, air security experts asked, “Can we really expect safe airports with security guards paid six dollars and turnover rates of up to 200 per cent per year?”
Not surprisingly, their answer was NO, and the U.S. government made major changes to airport security.
Here at home, Justice Dennis O’Connor reported on January 18 that “[a Ministry of Environment] human resources plan in 2000-2001 reported that the MOE has difficulties attracting and retaining skilled personnel in a number of areas.”
There is a direct relationship between the quality of the public services Ontarians receive and the wages and working conditions of public employees.
Lab technologists at our Resources Road lab in Etobicoke worked day and night during the Walkerton disaster. They were public service heroes. Yet their pay is between 17 and 20 per cent less than pay for the same job at a community hospital.
And that’s just one example. Our nurses, pharmacists, tradespeople, and workers in close to 100 occupations all face the same problem.
How can the government expect to hang on to skilled, experienced people? How can the government expect to recruit enthusiastic new ones?
The answer is, it can’t.
Take a look at the 25 junior Environmental Officers who have been hired to inspect water plants.
All of them are temporary contract staff. Is the government saying that water quality is a temporary problem? It certainly looks that way.
We now have 26 per cent of our members on contract, with no benefits, no pension plan, and no job security rights.
Not surprisingly, many of them leave when they find out that a contract job is not a foot in the door but a slap in the face.
It shouldn’t be that way. Public service is not just a job, it’s a calling.
When people have stable careers in the public service, they develop expertise and experience. They learn to live by a set of guiding principles on how to operate in the public interest.
Senior workers pass their knowledge on to junior workers.
More than that, they pass on the fact that they care about protecting the public interest. They pass on the fact that they are commited to protecting public safety, taking care of the public’s money, and ensuring democratic accountability.
That is the way the public service should work. But today, OPSEU members in the Ontario Public Service are overworked, stressed, and demoralized.
Their wages are low. They have little job security.
Staff turnover has never been higher. Staff recruitment has never been harder.
Those who remain on the job are forced to watch the looting of the public service by every junior Enron with a PC party card.
With these kinds of decisions going on, we shouldn’t be surprised that OPSEU members are wondering: How it is that we can afford a 36.6 per cent pay raise for MPPs but we can’t afford to support the people on the front lines of public service delivery?
We would be pleased to answer your questions now.
March 5 Press Release
