February 7, 2000
Presentation
to the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs
by Jim Murray, OPSEU Local 439
Brockville and District Labour Council
The Vice-Chair: I will now call our next witness forward, Mr Jim Murray from the
Brockville and District Labour Council. Mr Murray, representing an organization, you have
a half an hour for presentation and then the remaining time will be divided up among the
three caucuses for comment and/or questions. Please state your name and away you go.
Mr Jim Murray: Thank you very much. My name is Jim Murray. I am vice-president of the
Brockville and District Labour Council, which I am representing this morning. I am also a
member of OPSEU, local 439, at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital--so it would be the
Royal Ottawa hospital, I guess--where I work as a psychometrist.
Since I think all of you are from out of town, I'd like to begin by giving you a little
bit of a tour of our town, Brockville. As you come into the city, if you come in from the
west, the first thing you'll see is a major plant called Phillips Cables, which is now
closed, which formerly employed 600 workers. Mr Runciman assured the community that lots
of great things would be happening there. So far, a few small operations are in that
facility, but it's pretty much empty.
As you continue on your tour into the town you'll go through our main street, which is
not a big main street. It's probably six blocks, if you live in a city. Yesterday, I drove
through there and counted over 24 vacant stores in the downtown core. That's a pretty high
percentage when you consider the total number that we have in downtown Brockville.
If you go north and up about a block, you'll find a building which formerly housed the
VON, where they had a big banner which proudly said, "Serving the community" for
some 50 years. Well, the VON is no longer in business because this government decided that
the homecare business, the not-for-profit business like the VON or the Red Cross, that
someone had to make a profit on that, and so the VON is now out of there and not in the
homecare business, along with the Red Cross and other not-for-profit organizations that we
used to depend on, because I guess that's what the government thought we wanted them to
do.
You can swing now back along King Street and drive west through the main street. On
your left you'll see the former Fulford Home, which was a long-term-care facility, which
is now closed. The funding formula is the reason that's given. Really, I guess that means
the government has decided to make the operators operate with too few dollars to run that
facility, so it's now closed.
If you proceed a little further, on the right-hand side you'll see St Lawrence Lodge,
which is the municipally funded home for the aged. Now, St Lawrence Lodge is in a lot of
trouble these days because under the new funding formula and by the edict of this
government, they have been told they can't expand that facility. They need more beds. They
can't expand on that property. I know this firsthand because my mother, before she passed
away, was a resident of that facility. I, the caregiver for my mother, received a letter:
"Oh, by the way, St Lawrence Lodge cannot expand. It cannot be renovated. It must be
replaced. We must raise money to replace it." Even though it was a municipally funded
facility, as I said, which my mother and other people in the community helped to build,
they were run out of business. They are going to be replaced for, again, business-operated
homes for the aged where you can get in if you have the money, I suppose.
On the left of St Lawrence Lodge you'll see Brockville Psychiatric Hospital where I
work, at least for now. That's a place where the restructuring commission came
in--actually they didn't come in, they didn't even set foot on the property, but they
ordered it closed. Duncan Sinclair was the man, I think, responsible for that. Right now
it's in total disarray. The Royal Ottawa is supposedly taking over. Nobody really is sure
why, or how this is going to work out, but that's what's happening there.
I should say that before you get to the hospital there is another building which I
forgot, another Ontario government building which formerly housed the MNR, the natural
resources people. We of course are gone, because this government decided we don't need
people to go out and look after our natural resources, that we don't need people to police
our parks and so on. We can hire it out to anybody with a badge who wants to work for
$6.85 an hour or whatever these private security firms do. That's what has happened in
that building.
If you go a little further north, you'll see St Lawrence College, a community college
which we're all very proud of, which this government has managed to turn into a former
shell of what it was. A number of the programs that were there are now abandoned. They've
been sent out to the Kingston or Cornwall campus. We hear now that one of them may return.
People have been really fighting to keep that place open. I am sure it was the mission of
the former administration to have that place closed and out of there. They really would
like private trainers to be able to come in and do the job that Canadian colleges have
done. So that's St Lawrence College.
If you go further west now, you'll see the former Black and Decker plant, which is
closed, of course, which was another giant loss to our community.
This government has told us that the economy is booming. I say to them, for whom? Not
for people in Brockville; I don't even think for people in Toronto or any city in Ontario.
It's booming for the people at the top end of the scale because, if you look at the
profits, look at the CEO earnings, look at the stock market, of course it's booming. It's
certainly not booming for any workers in Ontario.
There are a couple of industries that have expanded in Brockville. We now have I think
four pawnshops. The food bank can't keep up with demand. In fact, they've expanded to a
Loaves and Fishes operation, which is a restaurant-soup kitchen, and God love them for
doing that. These people are really trying to make a difference in the community, a job
which really should be done by the government. I don't know why, in a province that
produces more wealth than any other, more and more people have to go to a food bank in
order to survive, but that's the reality. That's the reality of Brockville.
When we look at what this government does, and the budget impacts everything they do,
people would ask, "Why has this government abandoned so many workers?" I'm one
of those, as are the people at MNR and anyone in the public service. I guess the short
answer is that privatization is the key to our fortunes, or so we're told.
Mike Harris and his followers think, and I remember Dave Johnson saying: "Oh yes,
we have to get more bang for our buck. We can get services cheaper, better, faster,"
whatever. That is the big lie that we're being told. When you extract a profit margin, it
can't be cheaper. We don't think--those of us who are working people are people who used
to trust our government--that you need to make a profit on sick people. We don't think you
have to make a profit on the elderly. We don't think you have to make a profit on
students, our children, our education. But this government thinks that. This government
thinks that the only thing that's worthwhile is to make a profit wherever possible. This
government has abandoned its responsibility as a government and really has become a weak
appendage of big business. When Mike Harris said that Ontario was open for business, he
forgot to tell you that it's closed to people, and he forgot to say: "Not open for
business generally; open for big business." As we just heard from the gentleman
earlier, small business operators, people trying to strive, are not getting a break from
this government.
If you believe that privatization is the ultimate goal, what do you have to do? As a
famous man, John Snobelen--everybody remembers him--once said, and I think he misspoke,
"What we have to do is create a crisis in education and then go about solving
it." I think he really let out, misspoke, what the true aim of the government is: We
create a crisis in every situation where we have publicly funded institutions, not only in
education. If you want to make something look bad--and I know because I work in one of
those facilities--and you control the funding to that facility, it's very easy to cut the
funding, make that institution look bad and then say: "Gee, this is so terrible, we
have to close it. We have to find an alternative." The great example is in education.
People are saying, and I hear it in the media all the time: "The public schools are
so bad, the public colleges and universities are so bad, we have to do something. We have
to open them up to private trainers. Boy, we could really do great things if we operated
under the same principles they do in the United States." In the United States, people
send their kids to private schools. They're afraid to send them to public schools because
they have gotten that bad. Well, this government wants our schools to get that bad, very
simply.
Health care: Ralph Klein, Mike Harris's idol, is going on and on about how we should
make health care more flexible, open it up to private enterprise and concerns. What he's
really saying is, "Let's let rich folks jump to the head of the line and get their
health care, and if nobody else gets it, that's too bad." Of course the model again
is the United States, but what they don't tell you is that 40 million people in the United
States have no health care at all; they have no insurance. People in Ontario right now are
feeling the crunch because this government wants to open up health care to private
concerns. Health care is in crisis, just as education is. It's a created crisis.
When it comes to the aged, the saying is, and this comes from the US and it's a
terrible statement: "It's mining grey gold. There is money to be made on the backs of
old people." This is a government that we should respect? I don't think so.
Again and again we hear of public institutions that really have to be done away with.
We hear about the "old Ontario Hydro--so bad." Yet, when we look at what happens
in privately run operations, people don't want to hear things like Three Mile Island, what
happened in Japan recently with those nuclear waste buckets. Yet Mike Harris is saying,
"Fine, let's privatize Ontario Hydro." Ontario Hydro, which has a track record
that's probably unmatched in the world as far as safety, now has become the "old
Ontario Hydro." In communities across the province, as a result--one little bit of
our tour that I forgot to mention was the PUC, the Brockville public utilities. There is
such a cash crunch now that while the foundations are being laid, the population is being
fed bits and bits of information from the propaganda network of this government to tell us
how bad the public utilities are, how far they're in debt. Yet it's this very government
that is putting them in debt. They wouldn't let them bail themselves out even though they
had a reserve fund. Now we're seeing increased costs, and my question is, when private
concerns take over public utilities, who is going to pay the 30% tax that private
businesses pay for electrical services? Of course it's going to be the people. It's not
going to be the corporation.
The second question is, why is there such a need to make a profit on something that we
need to live in this country, especially this time of year? Do we need people to make a
profit so that people can stay warm? We see what happened in Britain, where they went the
whole nine yards and in fact privatized water. Judging from the track record of this
government, that'll probably be next here. Maybe air will be after that. You see,
everything has to be taxed; everything has to make a profit.
How have the policies of this government impacted on this community? I'd just like to
give you a couple of real-life stories. One is a lady who has a deaf daughter who has now
lost the supports that she needs to attend school because the funding formula changed.
It's all being blamed on the school board, but we know that it goes directly back to the
government's budget. Another lady I know, who was a welfare recipient, was
encouraged--actually forced, I suppose you could say--to be involved in the Ontario Works
project. She was given a placement--not a job, a placement--and subsequently talked into
taking a course from a private trainer and now has no job but also an OSAP loan to repay.
I would like to know how many jobs Ontario Works/workfare has created. I don't know of
any. We know of all the placements--tons of placements--but no jobs.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the tax cut. This government is telling us that tax
cuts create jobs. I would like someone from the government to tell me what hard data they
have to prove that the tax cut has created a single job in Ontario. I haven't seen any
data. In fact, this regressive tax only goes to the people at the top end. When you give a
tax cut to someone rich, Mike Harris thinks that's a great idea. It's going to trickle all
down. Well, I don't like being trickled on; in fact, I haven't been. It didn't work for
Ronald Reagan, didn't work for Margaret Thatcher, and it's not working in Ontario for the
people. It is working for Mr Harris and his friends.
I think it's best exemplified by the Premier himself. If you give a tax cut to someone
at the low end, they spend it immediately. If they need food, if they need clothes, if
their kids need things, it goes immediately back to the economy. That's not the route that
this government has chosen, because there is very little in the way of a tax cut for
people at the low or middle end. All of the tax cut benefits the people at the top.
Our illustrious Premier I think best illustrates what happens when you get a tax cut.
Over the Christmas vacation, what did Mike Harris do, supposedly with his tax cut? He went
to Florida. How did that benefit the people of Ontario? It really didn't, as I can see.
The other thing is, he was supposed to be in North Bay. I don't know what happened there.
He told everyone he was in North Bay. I don't know why he would tell us he was in North
Bay when he was in Florida. I suppose he has his reasons. Maybe somebody here could tell
me that; I don't know.
Yesterday a friend of mine in the construction industry handed me a publication put out
by the Council of Onta-rio Construction Associations. This is new; he just got this in the
mail. This is an example of what the Harris government is doing to workers in this
province. I'm going to read from this:
"Major contractor groups are going to the Harris government asking to change the
labour laws in Ontario. They want to delete section 1(4) of the Labour Relations Act so
they can spin off non-union companies that operate outside the union agreement. This has
been against the law in Ontario for decades but these contractors want that changed. They
want the flexibility to walk away from union rates and conditions. They may still keep a
union operation in case they need skilled workers from the hiring hall for big industrial
jobs, but most of their work will be shifted to the non-union side where they will set
whatever wages they want."
Mike Harris has bought into this plan. He wants to change an agreement that has worked
with labour for years in Ontario. I suppose he feels that people who work in construction
don't deserve the money they earn. I think if that's the case, he should probably go out
and work alongside someone in construction for a couple of days. Compared to trotting
around a golf course, he might find it a little different.
Just another little quick note around the health care issue. These are not the words of
myself; this is from Maclean's magazine, January 17. It compares all the provinces in
terms of the number of seniors' long-term-care beds and home care beds.
If we look at home care, this government has recently cut the maximum to 60 hours a
month. If anybody here has had a sick relative, as I have, or knows someone who is
chronically ill, 60 hours a month just doesn't cut it. What is that a week? What is that a
day? A little over an hour a day for someone who probably needs to be in hospital but
can't. So the long-term care has been cut to 60 hours in Ontario.
If you compare Ontario to, say, New Brunswick, and we're looking at home care, the
waiting list in New Brunswick for home care is about 83 people. The waiting list in Quebec
for home care--there is no waiting list. The waiting list in Manitoba for home care is
nothing. There is no waiting list, and they provide 32,000 people a year with home care.
Their maximum hours are unlimited.
In Ontario the waiting list for home care is 11,000 people. People are dying, suffering
immeasurably, as a result of the policies of this government. If you don't believe me,
talk to someone who has had a sick relative recently, and if you don't do that, your time
will come and you'll find out. This is absolutely disgraceful. We're the province that's
producing more wealth than any other, yet here we are taking it out on the backs of the
most vulnerable, the weakest, the oldest people in the province. This is absolutely
shameful.
While we're on the subject of budgets, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that
this government has continually ignored what was probably the most telling event of this
government's tenure, and that was the shooting of Dudley George at Ipperwash in 1995. It
is estimated that the coalition for the public inquiry into Ipperwash has cost--and this
is a conservative estimate--over $4 million, to investigate and cover up what happened at
Ipper-wash in September 1995.
As a taxpayer and a citizen, I think our tax money would be better spent uncovering the
truth about what happened at Ipperwash than covering it up. I encourage the people sitting
to my right to continue that struggle. When the United Nations tells Canada that there
should be a full public inquiry into what happened at Ipperwash in the shooting of Dudley
George, this government cannot continue to ignore it. Thank you.
The Chair: We have approximately one minute per caucus. Mr Phillips.
Mr Phillips: Let me assure you that I for one will not ever give up on the Ipperwash
affair until we find out the truth of what happened there. I can guarantee you that.
It was a very good presentation, by the way, and I know from colleagues like Mr
Gerretsen the challenges of the economy in the Brockville area. It's hard to know where to
begin, but to start, Ontario is now the most export-reliant jurisdiction in the world.
When we started these hearings, the government said, "What is driving the Ontario
economy is domestic spending." Since 1995, domestic spending is up $20 billion and
exports are up $80 billion. Exports are driving the Ontario economy.
I have a suspicion that that is one of the challenges for Brockville. Exports are
tending to go to New York state through Buffalo and to Michigan through Detroit-Port
Huron. The challenge we are going to run into, and we've seen this at the hearings, is
that exporters say we have to harmonize our taxes with the US. So we are going to see
enormous pressure to harmonize taxes with the US. Then everybody needs to harmonize
services with the US, or lower services, because our productivity per capita in Ontario is
lower than in the US. Therefore, in my opinion, if we don't figure out how to manage this,
we are heading towards undermining the primary thing we do with our taxes, and that is our
health care system. That is the number one area we spend our tax dollars on for ourselves.
I don't whether the Brockville Labour Council has had an opportunity to look at the
impact of the trends in exports to your economy. I know that was not central to your
theme, but we don't have the chamber of commerce speaking to us today, and I think the
economic group has cancelled its presentation. So we do not have a chance to talk to the
business community about the effects.
The Chair: Do you have a question, Mr Phillips?
Mr Phillips: Have you had a chance to look at the impact of exports on your businesses
here?
Mr Murray: Certainly that has been a problem with companies. Another plant, Newell, has
just closed in Prescott--90 years in Prescott--bought by Rubbermaid and moved to Freeport,
Illinois, I believe. Rather than keep the company open to produce for the local market,
they just decided to draw back and save jobs in the US; the same with Black and Decker.
We don't have a domestic market. I think Brockville is no different than anywhere else.
When you had to produce in Canada to sell in Canada, we had a domestic market. With free
trade and NAFTA, that is no longer the case. So unless somehow, some way, government
recaptures what we had in some fashion, we're continually going to compete with Mexico and
Third World countries for these jobs.
Mr Christopherson: Thank you , Jim. I don't know if you were here at the opening of the
hearings this morning, but right off the bat we heard from Mr Bickerton, a general
insurance broker in Gananoque. His presentation was basically singing the praises of this
government. So it was good to have you come in and talk about the other part of Ontario
that exists out there.
Let me just read you a couple of quotes from his presentation. I wouldn't mind your
thoughts, particularly as the last one relates directly to health care. He did start out
by saying, "I would like to compliment the government on its accomplishments since
the beginning of its first term in office just over four years ago." He went on to
say: "To any naysayers out there"--and I suspect that might be you and me,
Jim--"who have felt they were disadvantaged by the cuts that were made, I say that we
had all become too used to having government throw money at our every request. This
includes education and health care, as well as many other departments. It was high time
for us to accept a dose of reality and stop feeling sorry for ourselves." He also
said, "I think that all citizens expressing concern now about health care truly
understand that you did what you had to do."
Well, Jim, do you understand and believe the government did what they had to do in
terms of what they've done in health and education?
Mr Murray: No. I think they threw money all right, but they threw money back at their
friends and themselves, because of course they don't have to worry about health care. When
someone with a fair amount of money becomes ill, they can get whatever they want to save
their life--have a heart transplant. If you're a working person in Ontario and you're at
the back of the line, you simply may not get it in time. People are literally dying on
waiting lists. To make that statement is absolutely misguided.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Government side.
Mr Christopherson: We will also continue to fight for an inquest into the Dudley George
affair.
Mrs Tina R. Molinari (Thornhill): Thank you, Mr Murray, for your presentation this
morning. I want to assure that this government truly cares about all the people of
Ontario. The difference is that we've had the courage to make the difficult decisions
needed in order to provide for long-term care.
You talked about some of the decisions with respect to health care. For a long time it
was stated that health care was not in the position to provide for all of the services
needed and changes needed to be mind. This government recognized the aging population, and
as a result introduced and made available more long-term-care beds to provide for the
aging population.
You also talked about the tax cuts going to the wealthy. Well, more than 90% of Ontario
taxpayers experienced a 30% tax cut, and those who earn $60,000 or less got more than 30%
of the tax cut. So if your idea is that 90% of the people of Ontario are the richest, then
I think we have a province that is quite fruitful.
You talked about some personal experiences with people in health care. Let me tell you
about a personal experience of a very close friend of mine whose father was very ill. She
told me that because of the change in the drug formulary and the fact that we introduced
more drugs that were able to be accessed through insurance plans and through other
sources, they were able to better afford those drugs that they hadn't been able to afford
before. So I have to take issue with some of the comments that you've made.
With respect to funding for education and health, it's ever-evolving. No plan is
perfect. What we're doing is trying to make it better, and hopefully, as we move towards
the future ideas that come through, that will help make it even better and improve it.
Certainly as the government we're open to listening to a number of constructive ideas on
how we can improve all of the services that are presently in place for the future. So I
want to assure you that definitely these hearings are a way for us to be listening to the
people, of improving what we already have in place and moving forward for all the people
of Ontario.
The Chair: With that, we've run out of time. On behalf of the committee, thank you very
much for your presentation this morning.
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