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NORTH BAY, ON – The federal and provincial governments are playing political games that will severely hurt the North, labour and community leaders will say at a rally outside MP Jay Aspin’s constituency office tomorrow.
“Northern Ontario needs good jobs and a strategy to build the northern economy. The austerity agenda of Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty doesn’t deliver for the North,” says Fred Hahn, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario. “Instead their budget omnibus bills contain hundreds of attacks on services that keep the North vibrant. Packing so many massive changes into a single bill is simply undemocratic.”
Speakers at the rally will call on both levels of government to stop using budget omnibus bills and allow MPs and MPPs the freedom to study and debate hundreds of major changes that will affect pensions, Old Age Security, the environment, health care, schools, the economy and thousands of government services communities rely on every day.
“Harper is cutting federal jobs in our communities, McGuinty is wiping out the jobs at Ontario Northland. We’re getting it from both sides and it’s going to kill the Northern economy,” says Henri Giroux, president of the North Bay Labour Council. “We need an economic strategy that will deliver good jobs and growth, not one that gambles our future away.”
WHO: Fred Hahn, President, CUPE Ontario
Henri Giroux, President, North Bay Labour Council
Brennain Lloyd, Project Coordinator, Northwatch
Eddie Ste-Marie, Canadian Labour Congress
WHAT: Rally against Bill C-38 and Ontario Bill 55
WHEN: 12:15 p.m., Wednesday, June 13
WHERE: Constituency office of MP Jay Aspin, 133 Main Street West, Suite 100, North Bay
CUPE Ontario is the province’s largest union. It represents more than 230,000 workers in five main sectors: health care, school boards, municipalities, social services and universities.
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For more information, please contact:
Craig Saunders, CUPE Communications, 416-576-7316
