Province chided for having a ‘cold heart’
More than 100 people showed up outside Saskatoon’s cabinet office in the pouring rain on Thursday to protest austerity measures and present the provincial government with a “Cold Heart Award.”
A sea of purple clad Service Employees International Union-West members, accompanied by a large placard adorned with a frozen heart, marched from the Radisson hotel to the cabinet office, where they joined forces with members of the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union, the Canadian Labour Congress and Canadian Union of Public Employees to protest the cuts to various programs and condemn tax breaks for large out-of-province corporations.
“Quite frankly this award is for anybody, any government, who is taking a back seat in their leadership role in this province,” SEIU-West president Barbara Cape said.
“The people of the province elect our governments in order to build a community and build a province for everybody. When they step back and make cuts to corporations, when they sell off our public services, that’s not doing anybody in this province any benefit.”
Police closed 22nd Street to traffic between Third and Fourth avenues through the lunch hour, as protesters with whistles, boom sticks, signs and flags spilled off the sidewalk out into the street, chanting choruses of “shame,” and “no more cuts.”
The cold, rainy weather was no bother for the protesters, some of whom joked that this is what it must feel like to be inside Premier Brad Wall’s heart. Another commented that this wasn’t her first protest in the rain and it wouldn’t be her last.
SGEU president Bob Bymoen said the protest was all about bringing more awareness to what is going on in government.
More than 200 members of his union will be out of work within the week thanks to the government’s decision to privatize its cleaning services, he said.
As the protest wound down, the award, alongside numerous noisemakers, flags and signs, was left inside the lobby of the cabinet office since no members of the Sask. Party attended the event.
“We had actually invited the Minister of Labour to our convention and he declined; we invited the Minister of Health to our convention and he declined as well. So I don’t think they actually want to talk to the people of the province, they just want to keep doing what they’re doing, keep their head down and see how much they can get through before we notice,” Cape said.