“Jump in Dwight, the water is fine,” must have been the advice Ontario Treasurer Dwight Duncan got from his boss Dalton McGuinty. Now it is Duncan’s turn to be vilified by unions and public sector employees. His latest bill is denying a half million more Ontario workers the right to negotiate a fair contract or to strike. He and McGuinty are bringing back the gift of slavery to the people of Ontario.
Duncan has informed the news media that he thinks this legislation preserves the right to strike and will therefore pass the test of fairness in the courts. The problem the unions see is that the legislation allows the Minister to negate any contract that does not meet his approval, effectively denying them their rights.
How the legislation will sit with unionized employees in colleges, provincial agencies, hospitals and long-term care facilities is another question. The teachers unions have already promised to take the earlier contract freeze legislation to the Supreme Court and these other unions will look to making common cause with them.
So now we have the tandem team of McGuinty and Duncan leading the Ontario Liberal Party in their lemming-like run for the sea. They are leaving their opposition, Tiny Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath standing on the sidelines cheering them on.
Tiny Tim Hudak even voted in favour of the earlier legislation slamming the teachers and is eager to put his ‘John Henry’ on the newer legislation from Duncan. Andrea Horwath wants the support of those workers and is standing at the sidelines clucking her tongue at the meanness of those nasty Liberals.
Those nasty Liberals are so busy ensuring their self destruction that they do not know that they are well on the way to enabling Ontario to have its second New Democratic government in 20 years. (If Ontario voters are stupid enough to elect Conservative Tiny Tim, we would all have to jump into the sea with the lemmings.)
And do you know that 85 per cent of the party members at the Liberal Party conference in Ottawa this weekend voted in favour of McGuinty’s lemming-like behaviour? As we mentioned before, you need an alpha lemming to challenge the leadership to force the party to make a choice. The problem is that the alpha lemmings are drowned first.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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