02) 15,000 DEMONSTRATE AGAINST ONTARIO'S AUSTERITY BUDGET
PV Ontario Bureau
More than 15,000 people descended on Queen's Park April 21 to protest the most right‑wing provincial budget in decades ‑ more devastating to working people, the unemployed and the poor than even the Mike Harris budgets of the 1990s, according to OFL President Sid Ryan.
The austerity budget includes massive layoffs in the public sector, and closures of hospitals, schools and child care centres. Social programs are slashed, with the elimination of many services. Cities face deep cuts to public transportation and housing. Social assistance and disability support rates, already among the lowest in Canada, are frozen. Many public assets, lands, and crown corporations will be privatized. Major new user fees are planned.
The budget viciously attacks public sector wages and pensions, with the government threatening to impose wage controls if unions refuse to accept the proposed "voluntary" pay freeze and other concessions that will eliminate thousands of jobs and the services that go with them.
According to the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario), the budget is aimed to drive down wages, pensions, incomes and living standards in the public and private sector, to privatize or eliminate social programs, and severely weaken labour and democratic rights. It will force the unemployed, those on social assistance and ODSP, and many in precarious jobs, to live on incomes too small to cover the cost of housing, let alone food. Combined with the federal budget, this could tip the province into another deep economic recession.
In January the OFL issued a call for the April 21 Day of Action. One hundred buses were filled with workers and community activists from all over Ontario. Thousands more arrived from the GTA and Toronto, filling the lawns of Queen's Park. Thunderous applause echoed across the downtown during the speeches, followed by chants, songs and music throughout the boisterous march that followed.
But it wasn't all applause. NDP leader Andrea Horwath was roundly booed by demonstrators (including many wearing orange scarves) who clearly felt the NDP caucus was giving away the store in negotiations with the minority Liberal government over the terms of the April 24 budget vote.
The Tories - the Official Opposition in Queen's Park - oppose the budget in an effort to force another election which they believe they can win. The ball fell to the NDP to get austerity off the agenda. But the big majority of demonstrators clearly felt the NDP had conceded too much, and ought to have pressed the Liberals a lot harder for the platform it had campaigned on last September, including its policy to restore the corporate income tax rate to 14%. A long stream of speakers talked about the horrendous effect of the budget cuts, underlining how little the NDP appeared to have secured.
Sid Ryan and many others spoke about the need for a sustained and broad‑based fight against austerity, about the bold and extended fight by Quebec students and labour against tuition hikes. They called on the labour and democratic movements to get involved in the Common Front.
A day earlier, in a downtown Toronto church, over a hundred labour, social, community and political activists crowded in to unanimously support the OFL's proposal for a Common Front to fight austerity and the budget cuts. Ryan, OFL Secretary‑Treasurer Nancy Hutchison, Ontario Health Coalition director Natalie Mehra, Social Planning Council Chair Peter Clutterbuck and others spoke about the need for a massive response to austerity. Ryan referenced the Days of Action that almost brought down the Harris government in the 90s, clearly indicating the direction he wants to move.
Ryan also expressed the view that the NDP should not be afraid of an election, clearly critical of the concessions made by Horwath. A survey commissioned by the OFL showed that a large majority of those polled supported taxing the corporations and the wealthy to avoid devastating budget cuts. An NDP member and sometime candidate, Ryan clearly expects the party to clean up if an election is called.
Not everyone shares that view. Other polls indicate an election now would likely result in another minority government, with voter support split among Liberals, Tories and NDP. The Greens and small parties could also be a factor in a tight vote.
The CPC (Ontario) warned against a snap election, suggesting an NDP outcome was far from certain, and that an NDP minority would be more likely to move towards the Liberals in a three‑party House, giving the Liberals and their austerity policies the upper hand in any future negotiations.
"Today the working class and its allies will be in the strongest position by building the Common Front into a massive extra‑parliamentary movement that can bring its weight to bear on the minority Liberal government ‑ and the NDP caucus," said CP (Ontario) leader Liz Rowley.
Instead of austerity measures, the Ontario Communists are calling for wealth taxes and inheritance taxes on large estates, higher corporate income taxes, restoring the capital tax, and increased capital gains taxes. This would generate the revenue needed to fund health, education, childcare and social programs, to create jobs and build affordable social housing, to substantially raise the minimum wage and social assistance rates on the road to a guaranteed annual income above the poverty line, and to enforce free collective bargaining and the right to strike.
"This is also the time to win gains such as rent control legislation, anti‑scab legislation, plant closure legislation, and other social, civil, labour, and democratic rights", said Rowley. "The working class and its allies must rely on their own united and mass independent political action to force the Legislature to jettison austerity and introduce policies for jobs and an economic recovery for working people."
The mass demonstration and the Common Front are welcome developments at a time when many battles are being fought alone by the few directly involved. The birth of the Common Front makes each struggle a common struggle for jobs and justice. It transforms the few into the many, the fingers of struggle into the fist of a powerful movement for real and progressive change.
(The above article is from the May 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)