Sent on behalf of the OFL Communications Department
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 29, 2011
OFL: McGuinty sacrifices good jobs and public services to pay for billion-dollar corporate windfall
(TORONTO) - Ontarians struggling to make ends meet are going to be hit hard in this budget, according to the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL). While handing over $4 billion to already-profitable corporations, McGuinty is asking the public to manage with less. Dramatic public sector job loss will compound an already existing crisis in the public services, leaving many out of work and many more without the services they rely on.
“Three years of corporate tax cuts have bled the public coffers dry and manufactured a recession in the public service,” said OFL Secretary-Treasurer Marie Kelly. “The government’s plans to cut another 1,500 public sector jobs, on top of the 3,400 that were axed in the last budget, while deprive many – including the unemployed – of the services they rely on.”
The government’s own projections demonstrate that tens of thousands of those left unemployed by the recession in 2008 are still pounding the pavement today while thousands more continue to languish in part-time and precarious employment.
“Those who are struggling on the margins of society are the most reliant on public services and will be the hardest hit by the projected cuts,” said Kelly. “This budget offers nothing to expand access to retraining for unemployed workers and freezes the minimum wage freeze for the working poor. With little money allocated to the Poverty Reduction Strategy, a nine million dollar cut to children’s aid and only a fraction of the funding needed to prevent childcare centres from closing, this budget ensures that only corporate CEOs will get a leg up.”
“This budget outlines McGuinty’s strategy for getting re-elected on a platform of being more Tory than the Tories,” said Kelly. “But if McGuinty wants to get re-elected as Premier, it is time that he demonstrate that he has the interests of Ontarians at heart, not his corporate donors.”
The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario.
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