The first victims of Doug Ford's austerity program are children. Ford is cutting $100 million earmarked to fund school repairs in Ontario. The schools in Ontario are already in a state of disrepair. In Toronto alone there is a $4 billion repair backlog. The province overall has $15 billion in repair backlogs across 4,900 schools. Schools have inadequate heating and cooling systems, mold infestations, wiring issues, and even structural damage.
Mass protests erupted last Friday (6 July) across Haiti to oppose the government’s plan to cut fuel subsidies. President Jovenel Moïse’s government at first appeared prepared to push ahead regardless of the protests, but with the demonstrations growing in size and scope, the government backed down on Saturday and announced a temporary suspension of the price hike.
Doug Ford weakens police oversight
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- M. Thompson and M.A. Olanick
As one of his first initiatives, Ford is rolling back reforms intended to strengthen civilian oversight of police, increase accountability, and ultimately, remedy some of the worst excesses of police violence and harassment against poor, racialized, and otherwise marginalized communities. Passed in March of this year, many of the provisions of the Safer Ontario Act have not yet come into effect. Now, thanks to Ford, they will never see the light of day.
The Toronto and York Region Labour Council (TYRLC) has passed a resolution calling on labour organizations and unions to organize mass resistance in the event that “back-to-work” legislation is used against striking workers. Initiated by rank-and-file trade unionists with Labour Fightback and the Workers United Canada Council, the resolution was submitted by members of Workers United Local 154 at the July 5 Labour Council meeting, where it was passed unanimously. The adoption of this resolution by the TYRLC, which represents approximately 205,000 workers in the Greater Toronto Area, sends a strong signal to the Conservative government of Premier Doug Ford that workers will not be bullied out of their democratic rights.
On July 4, striking miners and electricians in Goderich, Ont. erected a blockade in front of the salt mine where they work. The approximately 350 Unifor members have been on strike now for almost 10 weeks. The workers hope the blockade will stop the flow of scab labour into the mine, something which the company, Compass Minerals, has become increasingly reliant on as the strike drags on. Union president Gary Lynch made his intentions clear as the blockade went up:
