Teachers to crash Liberal anniversary
Frustrated educators, angered about contract talks, to disrupt celebration
COLLINGWOOD, ONT.— A year after spending millions to help elect Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, busloads of teachers will spend the weekend trying to disrupt the party’s annual meeting at a swank hotel.
Angered by the slow pace of contract talks, teacher unions plan to converge on the Blue Mountain Resort on Saturday while Wynne and party activists celebrate the anniversary of their majority.
The premier also faces a leadership review vote she is expected to pass easily.
The protest follows “nine months of stalled bargaining, sweeping backto-work legislation for striking secondary teachers and contract demands that would unravel a decade of progress,” Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, said in a statement Friday.
At Queen’s Park, Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid said the teachers’ protests are understandable since “we’re in the middle of collective bargaining.”
“We know that it’s never easy, that it’s always challenging, that this is part of the collective-bargaining process,” Duguid told reporters before heading up to Collingwood.
He said teachers have done well since the Liberals took power under Dalton McGuinty in 2003, but with an $8.5-billion deficit that the government has promised to eliminate within three years, resources are thin.
“This government respects our teachers like no government has before. We continue to make record investments in education, but these are challenging fiscal times,” Duguid added, insisting the Liberals have shown “probably an unprecedented level of respect for our teachers.”
Opposition parties have raised the spectre of widespread teachers strikes in September, saying Education Minister Liz Sandals has bungled bargaining so far, souring the odds of agreements over the summer.
Hammond said the government’s demands threaten to “unravel a decade of progress in creating a strong education system” that included caps on elementary class sizes and a move to full-day kindergarten.
He accused Wynne’s administration of trying to control teachers’ preparation time, remove “fair hiring practices,” increase supervision time and undermine teachers’ ability to determine how best to assess students.
Unions will also protest the government’s controversial move to privatize Hydro One, selling a 60-percent stake in the Crown utility that has been plagued lately by billing problems that have seen thousands of customers receive hefty invoices for electricity they didn’t use.
Under the party’s constitution, the leader must face a review by party members in the year following a general election.
Wynne’s rise to a majority followed a collapse by the Progressive Conservatives after former leader Tim Hudak promised to cut 100,000 public sector jobs and a lacklustre campaign by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath that saw her party lose three key Toronto seats to the Liberals.
After the 2011 election that saw his Liberals reduced to a minority, McGuinty won 85.8 per cent support from his party.
That was down from 95.4 per cent in 2008, the year after he led the party to its first back-to-back majorities in 70 years.
In contrast, Horwath won her last leadership vote in the fall with 76.9 per cent, slightly above the 76.4 per cent she earned after the 2011 election. Hudak got a 78.7 per cent endorsement from Conservatives after the 2011 election, where he blew a strong lead in the polls. He was ousted by caucus members after the party dropped nine seats in last spring’s general election. With files from Robert Benzie