BY ROBERT SIMMS
TORONTO - Two months after the June 8 election of a Conservative Party government in Ontario, led by Premier Mike Harris, resistance by working people is growing to cuts in social services, and to plans to repeal affirmative action pay equity and "anti-scab" laws. These laws were adopted by the recently defeated union-backed New Democratic Party (NDP) government.
A coalition of community activists, unionists, and young people called the Embarrass Harris Campaign is gearing up for a demonstration at the opening of the fall session of the Ontario legislature, most likely on September 25.
The coalition organized a demonstration of 2,000 at the swearing in ceremony of the new government on June 26. A "March Against Poverty" organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty brought more than 1,000 to the legislature on July 29.
The defense of health care, child care, education, social assistance, pay equity, jobs, and union rights will be the theme of the annual Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto Labour Day parade on September 4.
On July 20 more than 1,000 day care workers and their supporters rallied in the rain in front of the provincial legislature. "My wife and I are average working parents...who don't get subsidies. We supported Mike Harris but we didn't vote for this," said Doug Prentice at the protest rally."
In the new government's July 21 budget statement, Finance Minister Ernie Eves plans to slash welfare assistance rates by 21.6 percent with the goal of cutting $1 billion per year out of social assistance. More than 1 million working people will be affected by the cuts. The Conservatives have promised $5 billion in cuts to balance the budget by the year 2001.
Speaking for Canada's billionaire capitalist families, the Toronto Globe and Mail, which endorsed the Conservatives, was not impressed with their first effort, calling it "fussing on the fringes." Noting that the biggest target in the statement was welfare recipients, the July 22 editorial exhorted the Conservatives to make much deeper cuts that would affect working people more broadly, especially in education and health spending.
Harris campaigned during the election for a "common sense revolution." He blamed workers on welfare for the deficit and called for a workfare program in which all able- bodied adults would be forced to work for free on government- organized projects.
The Conservatives, who won 45 percent of the popular vote out of the 65 percent of eligible voters who cast ballots, defeated Ontario's first New Democratic Party government, which had been elected in June 1990. The NDP came in third after the Liberals, who are now the official opposition.
Thousands of workers in 1990 campaigned for the NDP through their unions. They had hoped for improvements in their living conditions as a result of that NDP victory.
However, like the Saskatchewan and British Columbia NDP governments, which closed hospitals; the New Brunswick Liberals, who slashed welfare benefits; Alberta's Conservative government, which took the axe to health and welfare spending; and the Parti Quebecois government in Quebec, which faces mounting protests over its effort to cut thousands of hospital beds; the Ontario NDP government carried out its own "deficit-cutting" program aimed at working people.
The austerity programs of the provincial governments have followed the lead of the federal Liberal government, which has slashed billions in transfer payments to the provinces for health care, education, and social assistance. More than 40,000 federal government jobs are on the chopping block.
Union officials were initially divided on whether to support the NDP's reelection campaign. Most of them supported the NDP while the Canadian Auto Workers and public sector union tops stood aside. But as Conservative support in the polls increased, nearly all union officials swung in behind the NDP to save Bill 40, its "anti-scab" legislation.
The demonstrations that have taken place in the first eight weeks of the Conservative government are a factor in the unease that is now being expressed by some big-business editorialists about the possible reaction of working people to the speed and scope of the Conservative government's cuts.
John Steele is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 2113 in Toronto.