Mr. Howard Hampton: I’m pleased to be able to participate in this debate. I want to say at the outset that this is an important debate. This is our job, to ensure that good legislation is passed and to ensure that bad legislation is not passed. There are a number of issues surrounding this legislation that I think the people across Ontario ought to know about.
In contrast, the McGuinty Liberals suddenly, in a sudden mood of panic, are saying, “This legislation should be passed with no debate, no discussion, no examination of the facts, no questions, no answers, no thought, no criticism.” This is, all a sudden, panic. These students were out of the classroom in the fall. What did the McGuinty Liberals do? I remember being in this House and debating material that was, frankly, of little consequence. I remember coming here some mornings and seeing that the House was recessed because the McGuinty Liberals had nothing to present to the Legislature. But now suddenly it’s a panic, and we’re all supposed to forget our brains and we’re all supposed to forget our jobs. We’re not supposed to ask any questions. We’re not supposed to ask about the facts or conduct any examination or demand any answers. Well, I intend to do my job. I intend to ask some questions. If Liberals want to behave like some kinds of mindless automatons, you do that, but there are serious questions that need to be asked here. The government had better come up with some answers.
But I want to deal first with: How could this government suddenly have a panic attack? Suddenly this is an immediate emergency. I want to ask: What do the McGuinty Liberals have to hide? What are they afraid of in debate or discussion? What are they afraid of in democracy? Isn’t that what democracy is about: thoughtful discussion, debate, asking questions, examining the facts? What are the McGuinty Liberals so afraid of in democratic debate, in democratic discussion?
Let me suggest what the McGuinty Liberals are afraid of. The McGuinty Liberals start from one end of the province, talking about education. Oh, they talk about education. They want everyone to believe that they’re the most wonderful thing to happen to education in this province since Egerton Ryerson. What are the facts? What are the facts in particular when it comes to post-secondary education? Here are the facts: There are 10 provinces in Canada, 10 provinces that have university systems. Guess which one has the lowest government financial support measured on a per capita basis? Is it Newfoundland? Is it Prince Edward Island? Is it those miserly Conservatives out in Alberta? Is it Manitoba? No. The province that has the lowest level of financial support for its university system, based on a per capita system, is the McGuinty Liberals in Ontario. The people who go around pretending to be holier than thou, more moral than the most moral, who want to lecture everyone in education, have the worst record on the funding of post-secondary education in Canada.
But we’re lectured by the McGuinty government that we live in an international world and we should think internationally, so let’s compare ourselves to the United States. Do you know that when you include four-year universities in the United States, the McGuinty government’s record on funding post-secondary universities would be almost at the bottom in the United States? You might be able to find a state like Alabama or like Mississippi that has a worse record, but you’re digging pretty deep there; you’re getting right down to the bottom of the well.
May I suggest that the real reason the McGuinty government wants this passed with no debate, no discussion, no questions, no examination is because of their own abysmal record? The government that goes around holier than thou, lecturing people about education, has failed miserably to fund post-secondary education in Ontario. That is the reality, and that is what McGuinty Liberals are trying to cover up here today.
But that’s not the only thing that’s happening here. There is much more. The government says that they really care about the students. Many of the people who are out there on the picket line, who have been trying to bargain a better collective agreement, are students. Some of them are students who put in four years of undergraduate, two years at a master’s degree, three years working on their Ph.D. They’ve racked up debts. Thanks to the McGuinty government habit of jacking tuition fees through the roof, they’ve racked up student loans like something you’ve never seen, like something you can’t imagine. These are the very people-they are students. You think they don’t want to pursue their studies? You think they don’t want to be able to move on? But here’s the reality that they face: They are limited, very limited, in their income. Many of them live below the poverty line. Some of them are working very hard doing contract work in the university for less than $10,000 a year. Some others who have responsibilities, such as teaching, that would rival a full professor’s responsibilities are being paid $17,000 a year. For God’ s sake, they’re living below the poverty line. They are taking on more and more responsibility, and they are living below the poverty line. Does the McGuinty government care about them? They are students. They’ve invested years in their education. Does the McGuinty government care about them? Obviously not.
I would say that the McGuinty government’s care for university students is very superficial at best. It amounts to a headline, and that’s about it. How else could you see a sorry situation where after five years their funding of post-secondary education is among the worst in North America? How else could you have graduate students, how else could you have contract teachers, living on salaries below the poverty line? It’s a government that continues to talk the game but a government that continues to neglect its responsibilities.
I think there’s something more that the McGuinty government wants to avoid. Here we have Bob Drummond, the dean of arts at York University, who confirmed just a couple of weeks ago that York University, as professors retire, is by and large not replacing those professors with new professors. No; because it is short of funding, it goes to the very folks who are the subject of this legislation, the people who have been trying to bargain a better contract, and it says to them, “You take on more responsibility. You teach more classes. You do more supervision. You do more marking. You take on more responsibility.” But is there any job security? No. Is there a significant increase in pay? No. A benefit package? No. I think most Ontarians would be shocked and appalled to learn this. That’s why we need to have this debate and this discussion, so that people across Ontario will learn the real facts about what’s going on in Ontario’s universities.
1440
I think there’s something else the Liberals want to cover up in this. York University is not alone. York University is not some anomaly. It’s not some anomaly where this is only happening at York and it’s not happening elsewhere. Go to Carleton. Go to the University of Ottawa. Go to Trent. Go to the University of Toronto. Go to McMaster. Go to Brock. Go to Laurier. Go to Windsor. The situation is happening in university after university across this province.
The only people who think this is good for the university system are the McGuinty Liberals. They think it’s so good that we shouldn’t even debate this and discuss it. They think it’s so wonderful that we should just shut up and behave like automatons and pass this piece of legislation. Let me say, I don’t think having one of the worst-funded university systems in North America is good for the students, is good for the workers, is good for the university, is good for the economic future of Ontario. I don’t think it’s good. McGuinty Liberals may think it is; I don’t think it’s good.
What’s happening at York is going to happen in very short order in other universities in Ontario. I think the people of Ontario need to know that. I know the McGuinty Liberals are desperate for people not to know this, but I think people ought to know it. The government that goes around lecturing people about education has our university system on the wrong road, and the more we go down that road, the more trouble we’re going to have. I think people need to know that.
But there are some other things that the McGuinty Liberals want to hide as well, and that’s why they are so panic-stricken about avoiding any debate and any discussion. When these students were out of the classroom for 30 days, did the McGuinty Liberals find anything urgent? Any panic? No. When they were out of the classroom for 60 days, did they see any panic or any urgency? No. It’s only when they introduce their legislation that suddenly they see panic. Why? Because they don’t want their own flimsy record analyzed. They do not want people to see this.
I have a few things that I think need to go on the record. I think we need to understand fully what is happening here. At York and in other universities, as I say, as professors retire in Ontario, those professors are by and large not being replaced by the appointment of new professors. More and more of the work at our universities is being done by part-time, temporary, on-call, contract workers. Here at York, the situation is such. These workers that the government wants to point fingers at and say that they are irresponsible and they’re terrible; these workers who are working for under $17,000 a year; these workers, some of whom are working for under $10,000 a year-these workers now do 54% of the teaching at York University. They do the lion’s share of the teaching. Do you know what they get of the university’s budget? Less than 7.5%.
As far as I know, teaching is supposed to be a big part of university. Yes, there’s research. These folks also do some research. But as far as I know, teaching is supposed to be a big share of what universities do-teaching young minds. These folks do 54% of the work, yet the McGuinty government says they should settle for less than 7.5% of the budget. I think any reasonable person in Ontario, any reasonable person, if they reflected on this, has to ask the question, “Where is the McGuinty government’s head? Where is their dedication to post-secondary education? Where is their thoughtfulness in all of this?”
That’s part of what the McGuinty government is trying to hide. That’s why this debate is so urgent that you pass it now. Shut off your brain, turn off any sense you have of being a responsible legislator and just behave like an automaton, because the McGuinty Liberals don’t want these facts known out there in the public.
There’s something else that needs to be examined, and I think it needs to be examined carefully. There’s another Liberal government. It’s in British Columbia. It advertises itself as a progressive government, just like this one does, but it runs around doing the same things: chopping up collective agreements, cutting health care workers, cutting funding to universities. And they got the bright idea back in early 2000 that they would just take an axe to health care funding in British Columbia. They introduced legislation which would totally scrap collective agreements, which denied all kinds of workers’ rights, cut the hearts out of budgets, and said, “This is going to be fine.” Except, some of the workers, just as these workers, had the gumption and the courage to stand up to that government and ask some questions.
In fact, they actually had the gumption to go to the Supreme Court of Canada and ask the questions. Here’s what the Supreme Court of Canada said-it’s a well-known decision now, and it’s a decision that I would urge all members of the McGuinty government to read. Rather than turning off your brains, acting like automatons and pretending that everything has to be passed without examination and without thought, I’d actually urge you to read the decision which originated out of British Columbia and dealt with the Liberal government there, because you may find yourself, in very short order, folks, having to answer some of the same questions that that Liberal government was forced to answer, questions which they couldn’t answer to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court of Canada.
As I said, the case arose out of the Liberal government in BC’s decision that they were going to take the axe to the rights of unionized health care workers in that province. They drafted Bill 29, the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act-sounds like the kind of title the McGuinty Liberals would give to a piece of legislation that attacks the rights of workers. It gutted health care workers’ collective agreements and placed limits on the union’s future ability to re-establish rights lost through the unilateral government action. As I said, the workers challenged that, and they had the courage to actually take it to the Supreme Court of Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada, after they heard the arguments, made a very important decision. The decision was this: the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that workers coming together to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment has a long history in Canadian labour relations. The Supreme Court of Canada said that this needs to be protected; it needs the protection of the Charter of Rights. The Supreme Court of Canada set out some criteria under which governments could impose binding arbitration, or governments could impose legislation which abridges or otherwise interferes with those rights.
Here’s what the Supreme Court said. It said that governments might be permitted to interfere with the collective bargaining process “on an exceptional and typically temporary basis, in situations, for example, involving essential services, vital state administration, clear deadlocks and national crisis.”
Do we have a national crisis here? I don’t think so. Do we have an essential service? Is this an essential service where somebody might be denied health care, or somebody might be denied something which would have an immediate effect on their life-dire consequences, life or death? I don’t think you could make that argument. Is this a vital state administration? If it’s vital, why has the state in effect transferred the administration off to other bodies, colleges and universities which are supposed to decide a number of these matters themselves? I don’t think that.
1450
The only thing this government could hang its hat on when it introduced this legislation was something they called “deadlock,” which is why the very same McGuinty Liberal members who want to shut off their brains and tell the rest of us to shut off our brains and don’t ask any questions, don’t examine, don’t think and don’t give any answers, constantly repeat “deadlock, deadlock, deadlock,” like the child who believes that if you repeat something long enough, it might become true.
One of our jobs is to examine what these McGuinty Liberals call deadlock, because there is some interesting history to the bargaining that went on here. The McGuinty Liberals say, “Oh, the kids have been out of the classroom for 77 days.” That’s true, and I have a lot of sympathy for those students, some of whom are members of the union and some of whom are not. I have sympathy for both. Having been a former university student, like most of us in this Legislature, and having kids of my own who will be going to university in the not-too-distant future, I understand that.
But I think the McGuinty government is trying to cover up some things on behalf of the university. Yes, the students have been out 77 days. But do you know how many days the university actually went to the bargaining table to bargain, to try to reach a settlement? Did they go half the days? Did they go 35 days? Did they go 30 days, 25 days, 20 days, a third of the time? Did they go 15 days? No, the university was so interested in getting a collective agreement, they were so interested in getting the students back into the classroom, that they wouldn’t meet on more than 12 occasions. On no more than 12 occasions would they meet.
In the last week, the university insisted on a vote on their offer. The workers voted; they voted democratically. They said, “No, this offer is not good. We turn it down.” The workers prepared a counter-offer. Do you know what the university said? “We’re not going to look at it. We’re not going to bargain. We’re not even prepared to discuss it.” Does that sound like a university that wants to get the students back in the classroom? Does that sound like deadlock? No, what it sounds like is a university that is saying, “We’re not going to bargain.”
Let me give you another example. We left here before Christmas. There was about a three-week break in the university schedule over Christmas before they’d return to class-the last exams; ample opportunity to bargain. Was York University willing to bargain during those three weeks over the so-called winter break? Lots of opportunity: three clear weeks. Was the university willing to bargain? No.
They tell us, and the McGuinty Liberals tell us, that it is absolutely essential to get these students back to the classroom today. They had three weeks, the end of December, the beginning of January, where they could have, should have been bargaining and they wouldn’t do it. And where were the McGuinty Liberals? Were the McGuinty Liberals calling up the York University administration, saying, “You’d better get to the table, and you’d better work within Ontario’s labour relations system and try to find a collective agreement”? No. The McGuinty Liberals weren’t doing anything either.
This isn’t deadlock. This is a university that decided, “We’ll lock out the students. We’ll put them in the street. We’ll go through the motions of making it look like we’re interested in bargaining and we’ll just string it out, string it out, and then we’ll go to the McGuinty government and ask them to end it.”
I don’t think that kind of conduct on behalf of an employer should be rewarded. I think that rewarding that conduct by passing this kind of legislation without any examination, without any thought, without asking any questions, does a disservice not only to the students at York University but it does a disservice, potentially, to university students and college students at every institution in Ontario. It does a disservice, potentially, to all workers who work in the broader public sector.
I have never seen a situation where one party, for three weeks, says, “We don’t want to bargain,” where one party says, after their offer has been voted down, “We refuse to respond. We refuse to look at anything else. We refuse to bargain.” The McGuinty Liberals say this is deadlock. The McGuinty Liberals sent in-they tried to make it sound as if this guy is the latest coming of Christ-Mr. Pearson as their mediation person. But even he said, when he talked to the union, “I can’t get a response from the university. It’s almost as if the university is playing for time, waiting and hoping and asking that the McGuinty government will legislate this.” Does that sound like deadlock to you? No, that sounds like the York University administration saying, “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we’re not going to bargain, but we’ll go through the appearance. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we want the McGuinty government to put an end to this collective bargaining nonsense, to put an end to negotiation and just legislate-and do it quick so that nobody asks any questions.” That’s what it looks like and sounds like to me.
I have to say, I don’t have the hard evidence of that now, but I think we’re going to have an opportunity over the next few days to inquire into some of this.
I am not prepared to play a part in that kind of kangaroo court process. And do you know what? If I were a member of the McGuinty Liberal government, I wouldn’t play a part in it either. I’d be asking some questions of your own government about this because, let me tell you, if this is challenged in court and they do an examination of when bargaining was conducted and when bargaining wasn’t conducted, and the court finds that this is a sham process, each and every one of you is going to wear the embarrassment on your head. You’re not elected to come here and be a trained seal. You’re not elected to come here and say, “Aye, aye, sir; five bags full, sir. How high do I jump, sir?” You’re elected to come here and ask questions. You’re elected to come here and demand answers. You’re elected to come here and exercise some thought. You’re elected to come here and be responsible to the people of Ontario. So far, from what I’ve seen in this, there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and there are a lot of answers that need to be provided.
Coming here as you have and saying, “Oh, the NDP is holding this up”-what have I have done to hold it up? I’m simply asking what I hope are some thoughtful questions. We haven’t rung any bells. I remember Liberals who used to ring the bells. I remember Liberals who used to engage in every kind of nefarious delay tactic. We’re simply asking the kinds of thoughtful questions that should be part of democratic debate in a democratic society, yet Liberals are so full of scorn for that.
Be careful, my friends. Be careful, because this may all come back on you.
I want to-
Interjection.
Mr. Howard Hampton: You want to talk about Bob Rae. Why are Liberals so mean to Bob Rae? My God, he’s a Liberal. He always was a Liberal. I know that. Why are you so mean to one of your own? He’s doing exactly what you want him to do. I never understand why these Liberals are so mean to their friend Bob Rae. Why do they criticize him? Why do they say that everything Bob Rae, that well-known Liberal, did was wrong? My, my, my. These Liberals have no loyalty.
Again, this is about the students and the workers who are caught in this situation.
I want to speak a little more broadly, because what’s happening here at York is also happening at other universities. What it amounts to is this: It is really about the degradation of the work that these people do. As I said, much of this work, 20 years ago, would have been done by full university professors. They would have been paid well, they’d have a pension plan and they’d have some job security and they’d have other things which attach to the job. But as those professors retire, the work is now being put upon contract workers-these workers. Do they have a pension? No. Do they have job security? No. Do they have much of a benefit package? No. Do they have much in terms of wages? No. You know what this almost sounds like? It almost sounds like the McGuinty Liberals want to introduce Wal-Mart to Ontario’s university system: have them work for less, have them work with no job security, have them work without pensions, have them work without benefits, and then say to the world, “We have a wonderful university system.”
1500
Let me tell you, the last time I checked, Wal-Mart was being sued to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States for denying workers their rights-immigrant workers; taking advantage of new Americans. The Supreme Court of the United States has ordered Wal-Mart to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for that kind of work concept. But if I look at what’s happening today in Ontario under the McGuinty Liberals, it’s not much different in Ontario’s university system: no pension, no benefits, no job security, low wages. And the McGuinty Liberals say it’s wonderful, that this is a wonderful system.
Let me say that this kind of degradation of work that is being done in our universities is not good for the students, it’s not good for the workers, it’s not good for universities like York University, it’s not good for Ontario and it’s not good for Ontario’s economic future. This is a bad road to be on; a very bad road to be on.
I say to other workers across Ontario who are facing the same kind of scenario, workers who have struggled hard to create jobs that pay reasonably well, that have some security to them: Watch out, because what the McGuinty government has in mind for these workers at York University-you may not be far behind. You may not be very far behind at all. So we can call this the casualization of labour, the devaluation of labour.
But I want people to think a minute-I hear the Premier’s speeches where he waxes on about the knowledge economy. Yes, we live in a knowledge economy, but these are knowledge workers: They teach; they think; they criticize; they analyze; they synthesize; they formulize; they conceptualize. These are knowledge workers. Is this your future for knowledge workers: low pay, no benefits, no job security, and by the way, if you have the temerity to stand up and say, “This isn’t fair,” we’ll simply legislate you back to work? Is this your future for knowledge workers in Ontario under the McGuinty Liberals?
I don’t think we’re going to see one Liberal get up and speak, so I can only assume from their silence that they don’t have anything to say in this debate. They don’t have anything to say on these points. I invite McGuinty Liberals to take part in this debate, to take part in this discussion.
There’s another piece to this. Ontario now has the second-highest tuition fees in all of Canada. If the projections are correct, Ontario is very soon going to have the highest tuition fees in all of Canada. So there’s something terribly out of whack here; terribly out of whack. Once again, I think the people of Ontario ought to know this. I think the people of Ontario, in fact, ought to be concerned about this.
I say again, the reason the McGuinty Liberals are so panic-stricken to have this legislation passed with no thought, no examination, no questions, no answers, is that they don’t want people to have this discussion. They don’t want people to know what is really going on in Ontario’s universities.
But there is more, there is much more, and I want people to have a picture of what is, in fact, going on. As I said earlier, Bob Drummond, who is the dean of arts at York University, has confirmed that as faculty retire, as professors retire, they are not being replaced by other full-time professors. More and more of their work is being placed on the shoulders of these contract workers, these contract workers that the McGuinty government, one way or another over the past few days, has started out to vilify.
But it’s more than that. I want to read from an Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations-OCUFA-report entitled A Failing Grade: Ontario’s Treatment of Post-Secondary Education Is Falling Behind Its Global Competitors. Here’s what they have to say, and I’m quoting here, Speaker, because I think this needs to be on the record:
“Currently Ontario universities are addressing their budget crunches by hiring a high proportion of faculty on short-term contracts-more than half of new faculty hires- who, in spite of their ability and dedication, cannot hope to give students the continuity, and the research opportunities, that tenure-stream faculty can.”
Further, this report recommends that “The government must commit to raising Ontario’s support for universities to the national average,” citing an additional $125 per person per year in operating and capital investment, or $1.6 billion every year for the next three years. They say that such an investment “would allow Ontario to hire the 11,000 full-time professors that it needs by 2009-2010”-unless I’m mistaken, we are just about to enter fiscal year 2009-10-“to keep up with enrolment and ensure internationally competitive student-faculty ratios. Increasing the number of faculty would also reduce class sizes, and provide more student-faculty interaction.”
As I said, that’s not me; this is, in effect, the collective university faculty speaking. This is their analysis of what needs to happen.
Are we debating that here today? Is that what this bill is about? No. That’s not what this bill is about. This bill is about ramrodding some workers, who happen also to be students, back to work and denying them their right to bargain for better pay, better working conditions and some job security.
There are some other pieces of this bill that I think we need to look at, because we did have a chance to speak to some of the folks who were here watching today about what they were able to negotiate, and I want the government to know what they were able to negotiate. In fact, despite the university’s attempts at avoiding bargaining, despite the university’s refusal to bargain for three weeks over the Christmas or winter break, despite the university’s refusal to bargain over the last week, these workers had been able to agree on some things. Local 3903 had reduced its demands to four items. The workers were prepared to accept the administration’s salary increase offer, most of the major benefit articles had been agreed to, and the local was prepared to negotiate and move on the remaining two issues. So even there, when you’re making headway towards a collective agreement, how could the government call this deadlock? The only appearance of deadlock here is simply the university’s refusal to bargain further. How can you have unilateral deadlock in our collective bargaining system?
The union dropped their salary demands from 9.4% to 8.3% over two years. In fact, the union was prepared to say, “Wages and salaries are no longer the issue; we recognize we have probably gone as far as we can in terms of that.” But the union did want to talk about ensuring that some of those professors who retired were, in fact, replaced by other professors. The union wanted eight tenure conversions in year one and seven tenure conversions in year two. I think that’s a good thing. If you’ re having full-time professors retire, why wouldn’t you want full-time professors replaced by full-time professors? What is the university afraid of? What’s the McGuinty government afraid of? York said they’re willing to create 17 five-year contract positions over three years. The union said that this is inadequate since there are already 67 contract faculty members with more than 10 years of experience. Imagine that. Some of these workers have essentially been doing the work of full-time professors for over 10 years and still have minimal job security and very low pay. It seems to me that these are real issues. These are real issues, and the university refused to bargain them. The university said, “Well, we’re not going to talk about this anymore. We’re refusing to talk about it.”
1510
The union asked for guaranteed funding for graduate students. York graduate students currently can earn $17,000 per year in wages and scholarships, which is below the poverty line. The union is asking for a huge increase: $19,000. I’m not sure that would bring you above the poverty line, but it would make a meaningful difference. No, in fact it wouldn’t bring you above the poverty line, because the poverty line in Toronto is $22,000.
Due to rising tuition and crippling debt, as many as 50% of the grad students in some grad programs are forced to leave before they can get their Ph.D. That’s what’s happening here. They’re good students, they’re dedicated students-they’re also dedicated teaching assistants-but they simply can’t afford to continue. They were simply trying to bargain something that would allow them to continue as students, but under the current system, they’re forced to drop out. They simply don’t have the financial wherewithal. Imagine. The university refused to bargain this.
This doesn’t sound like deadlock to me; this sounds like a university that is just not prepared to engage in a realistic discussion about the real issues that are happening under its very nose.
The union wanted some improvements in benefits. In fact, there has been some improvement on that front. The union felt that they had pretty much achieved what they could live with on that front.
I think that by any reasonable person’s review of this-any reasonable, objective person looking at what was going on here would find it pretty hard to say that there was a deadlock. In fact, there was, in some cases, an attempt by the university to avoid bargaining for three weeks over Christmas, to avoid bargaining over the last week and to avoid a collective agreement. I think there’s potentially evidence of the university failing to act in good faith, which, as we know, is an offence under Ontario’s labour relations law. Failing to act in good faith cannot ever be termed a deadlock, which is what this government hangs its hat on in this legislation.
There, again, are some other issues that I want to raise because I think they are important. I’v e heard McGuinty government members suddenly, just in the last day, suddenly talk about “Oh, the poor students.” I didn’t hear them say that three days ago. I didn’t hear them say that five days ago, 10 days ago, 15 days ago. It’s as if, all of a sudden, somebody wrote the members of the McGuinty Liberal government a speech and said, ” Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.” Where was this concern? Where were members of the McGuinty Liberal government when the university refused to bargain for three weeks over the Christmas winter break? Where were they? Where was the McGuinty government when the university refused to go to the bargaining table over the last week and refused to reply to the counter-offer that these workers, who are also students, put on the table? Where did this sudden concern come from when it wasn’t evident over the Christmas break and it wasn’t evident a week ago?
As I said, I don’t think there’s any real concern here at all. This is a government that’s interested in avoiding having its own sorry record put to analysis, and it’s a government that wants to avoid having the university’s refusal to bargain put to analysis. If this government really wants to see the students back in the classroom, this government should get on the phone today to the president of the university and say to the president of the university, “Get back to the bargaining table. Get back to the bargaining table and do what you should have been doing all this week and what you should have been doing for the three weeks over the Christmas break.”
I said earlier that members of our caucus have students who are at university. Members of our caucus have young people at home who have just finished their university course of study and have the debts to prove it. Members of our caucus have students in high school who, within the next year or so, are going to be going to university. So when the McGuinty Liberals say, “Oh, only the McGuinty Liberals care about the students”-please. Please. We all know that being a university student in Ontario today is a difficult undertaking. It’s expensive; it involves a lot of hard work; it involves a lot of sacrifice. I have great empathy for these students. I think, in fact, the university, by its conduct, has victimized the students and victimized the workers. Workers are not getting a fair deal, and students who have been out of the classroom for 77 days aren’t getting a fair deal either. But I do not think that is an excuse for members of the Legislature to come here and to turn off their brains, to ask no questions, to give no examination of the legislation and to give no examination of the facts.
I have great empathy for those students. I know what it’s like to have to pay off student debts. I know what it’s like not to be certain of your future. But I also want to say to the students that today is important, but where this government is headed in terms of post-secondary education, the consistent and persistent underfunding of post-secondary education, the loss of full-time professors and more and more reliance on contract workers who are underpaid and with no job security, means that not only are we in difficult straits today, but this is going to become more difficult as we go down the road over the next weeks and months ahead.
One of the other members said that contract teachers, contract workers, at the University of Toronto are also bargaining and could be in a strike position. That’ s true. They’re facing many of the same working conditions that these workers at York are facing. I’ve talked with people at other universities who acknowledge the same thing, that it’s only a matter of time when their collective agreement is up, when they’ve had a chance to bargain further. This is not just about concern for these students today; it’s a concern about where the university system in Ontario is headed in the short term, the medium term and the long term, because the more you look at what is happening here, it’s not getting better; it’s getting worse, and the prospects are getting worse.
I also have sympathy for the parents. As somebody who’s trying to save right now for our own kids to attend university, I know the size of the undertaking and the commitment that has to be made. As someone who came from a working-class family where my father-I was the oldest of three kids- made it very clear to me early on, “There’s not enough money in the household to put you through university, and you’re going to have to look after that yourself,” I have a lot of empathy for those parents. I understand what they are going through. But let me tell you that the phony crocodile tears that we’ve seen in this place over the last day or so are not going to help those parents and those students, either in the short run or in the long run. These are very phony crocodile tears and this is very, if I may, phony positioning by the McGuinty Liberal government.
Some have said, “Oh, you know, you can just have a legislated collective agreement and it will be fine.” I heard the Deputy Premier, in his usual hyperbole, today say, “The NDP was willing to legislate transit workers back to work four or five months ago.” Well, four or five months ago we spoke with both the TTC management and union representatives, who said to us very clearly, “We’ve accomplished all we can accomplish at the bargaining table. We do need the help of a mediator-arbitrator and we’re prepared to go through a binding arbitration process.”
1520
That was the situation then. That is not the situation today. The workers have expressed over and over again their willingness to bargain. Their latest offer was a series of givebacks, a series of things that they were prepared to make concessions on to York University. This is not a case where the workers have said, “We can’t make any further headway at the bargaining table.” This is a case of a university administration that has avoided bargaining from the beginning and avoided bargaining over the last week. It has made it clear that it doesn’t want to bargain. That’s the difference.
I just say to members of the McGuinty Liberal government that one of the reasons this legislation is a bad idea is that, if you think you can simply legislate these workers back to work, if you think you can continue the trend line that has been set up over the last few years, where they take on more and more responsibility but work for substandard wages, with no job security and very little in the way of benefits, if you think you can continue that, let me tell you that I think the workplace will be more difficult than ever. Even though these workers love to teach-they love to teach; they love being in the classroom; for them this is a labour of love-do you really want to poison the workplace atmosphere by doing this? I don’t think you do. I think the eventual results will be much, much worse.
This brings me to another question. Throughout this whole process, not once did I hear the Premier or the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities say in any public way that he wanted the administration of York University to get to the bargaining table and to use its best efforts to arrive at a collective agreement. I saw the McGuinty government, all fall, try to pretend that this was not an issue. I saw the university avoid bargaining for the three weeks over the Christmas break. Not once did I hear the Premier or the Deputy Premier or the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities give any sort of public indication to the university administration that it was important for them to go to the bargaining table and work out a negotiated collective agreement. And so the result: We have the mediator, appointed by the Premier at the last moment, who tells the union collective bargaining committee that he can’t get a response from the university administration. It almost seems as if the university administration is waiting for the McGuinty government to legislate an end to collective bargaining. How could this be? How could this be by a government that says, at least, that it believes in collective bargaining?
I just want to emphasize again, in the little bit of time that’s remaining, because I know some people watch this on television and sometimes they don’t tune in until the end, a couple of the points I made. The first basic point is this: Our job in this Legislature is to be thoughtful. Our job is to ask questions. Our job is to examine the facts. Yet we’ve been met with a McGuinty government here over the last two days that insists we should all turn off our brains, we should ask no questions, we should not examine the facts, we should engage in no thought, and at no time should we demand any answers. I say to people, why is the government panic-stricken all of a sudden? What are they trying to hide from? What are they trying to avoid? I want people to understand very clearly that part of what the McGuinty government is trying to avoid is their own sorry record, their own failure to adequately fund post-secondary education in the province of Ontario.
There are 10 provinces in Canada. Ontario, under the McGuinty Liberals, ranks last-10th out of all the provinces in government financial support for the university system when measured on a per capita basis. Not only that, but if you make an international comparison and include the United States, the McGuinty government would rank next to last in North America in terms of government financial support for post-secondary education as measured on a per capita basis. If you look at other comparators, the university system in Ontario ranks last in Canada in terms of the faculty-student ratio. The university system in Ontario, if you again make the international comparison, ranks near the bottom if you include peer-level American universities in this comparison. And that’s part of the reason why the McGuinty government has tried so hard to avoid any debate, any discussion with respect to this bill, because, as the president of the York University students’ association said when he was asked, “Who do you think is the biggest culprit here?” he was quick to say, “The McGuinty government, for failing to adequately fund my university.”
The second thing that I think the McGuinty government wants to avoid in introducing this legislation: This government is very nervous that it cannot meet the test set out by the Supreme Court of Canada for the interference in collective bargaining. It knows that it can’t hang its hat on essential service; it can’t hang its hat on national urgency; it knows that it can’t hang its hat on one of the other criteria, so it’s trying to hang its hat on deadlock. That’s why you hear the McGuinty Liberal members, almost as if they’ve been trained as robots, repeat the words, “Deadlock, deadlock, deadlock, deadlock, deadlock”-because they hope if they say it often enough, it might become true. But when you examine the facts, it’s very difficult to make out the case of deadlock.
The university refused to bargain. In the three weeks over Christmas, they just refused to bargain. That doesn’t sound like deadlock; it sounds like one of the parties doesn’t want to reach a collective agreement. In the week leading up to this Legislature being here today, the university refused to bargain. That doesn’t sound like deadlock; it sounds like one of the parties doesn’t want to take part in collective bargaining. It is a unilateral decision. It is trying to avoid the collective bargaining process. I think that’s why this government expresses almost panic and urgency when it speaks to the press and when any of the members of this government say anything about this issue: They don’t want their own sorry record of underfunding post-secondary education examined, and by God they don’ t want anyone to look at York University’s sorry and deplorable behaviour in terms of their avoidance of collective bargaining and their attempt to refuse to bargain any further. Because I think members of this government know that their efforts at establishing deadlock, deadlock, deadlock are flimsy at best.
So I would not be surprised if, in the next couple of days, we see an announcement from lawyers representing these workers and other workers that they’re prepared to challenge the constitutional viability and the constitutional basis of this legislation.
I urge all members of the McGuinty Liberal government-I know your training as seals has progressed now for five years. I know you have been told to say nothing-“Don’t participate in the debate, don’t ask any questions, don’t examine the facts, don’t demand any answers”-but I would urge you to do just that. I don’t think you want to wind up where the Liberal government in BC ended up: having to admit that they had breached the constitutional rights of hundreds if not thousands of workers, having to admit that they were going to have to make financial and other reparation for their breach of constitutional rights. That is why we raise these issues.
1530
We’re not going to engage in any bell-ringing. We’re not going to engage in any kind of process that is designed to waste time around here. We’re going to ask these questions, and we have many more questions to ask. They’re questions that need to be asked, because at the end of the day this is certainly about these workers and these students, but the implications also apply to other workers and other students within the Ontario university system and, ultimately, probably apply as well to any workers who work within the broader public sector in Ontario.
So there needs to be thoughtful examination. There needs to be an asking of tough questions. There needs to be an examination of the facts. Most of all, we need to have some real answers from the government other than the repeated rhetoric of “deadlock, deadlock, deadlock, deadlock.”
I know that many other members of our caucus want to speak to this legislation. I’m even hopeful that we might see some members of the McGuinty Liberal caucus stand and speak to this legislation. I’m even hopeful we might hear one of them ask a thoughtful question about this legislation.