Labor gearing up for battle in Canada

By Thomas Walkom

Toronto, Canada, June 17— When anti-poverty protesters invaded Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s Whitby constituency office and threw his furniture out the door last week, most reaction was predictably negative.

“Outrageous,” said Education Minister Janet Ecker.

“Nothing short of anarchy,” fumed Labor Minister Chris Stockwell.

“We call it pillaging,” thundered the National Post, which demanded maximum jail sentences for those arrested.

The Toronto Star’s editorial board, while sympathizing with the protesters’ aims (the action was designed to draw attention to Toronto’s alarming eviction rate), denounced what it called a “display of orchestrated violence” and suggested that, in the future, critics of Premier Mike Harris’ government confine themselves to passing out leaflets.

Indeed, for many, the notion of a busload of protesters invading a quiet suburban constituency office struck uncomfortably close to the bone.

Well, get used to it. Because, according to labor leaders as well as social activists, there’s more on the way.

Direct action — civil disobedience backed by muscle -- is becoming more respectable, particularly among those who feel squeezed by right-of-center governments.

The executive of the Ontario Federation of Labor (OFL) has just voted unanimously to endorse “direct action” to fight legislation it says would harm worker health and safety.

“We’re going to be more active in how we express our opposition,” says OFL vice-president Irene Harris (no relation to the Premier). “There’s a real sense of anger out there and people want to express their anger. Everything is on the table.”

Sid Ryan, Ontario President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, says the unions have agreed to form flying squads to invade workplaces they deem unsafe.

“Each union’s going to contribute 10 to 20 members,” Ryan says. “We’re going to hit four or five places before the end of this month – unannounced — and shut them down.

“We’re fed up with just handing out leaflets. We’ve done that. It’s pointless. We protest in front of Queen’s Park and the building is empty. Mike Harris doesn’t even show up there anymore.”

Vigorous political protest is not new in Canada. But for most of the ’80s and early ’90s, political protest in Ontario followed a predictable series of steps, a kind of minuet.

First would come an authorized march (usually held at a time when traffic wouldn’t be disrupted). This would be followed by an authorized rally at Queen’s Park at which speeches would be made and slogans chanted.

The aim of those rallies was to demonstrate that protest organizers enjoyed at least some level of popular support. Once that point was made, the leaders — be they unionists, environmentalists, child-care advocates or student council presidents — could repair to the back rooms to hammer out some kind of arrangement with the government of the day.

In this constellation of efforts, the protest was the public face, the way to win media attention. Television in particular, with its insatiable demand for visual images and its insistence that news follow an orderly schedule (in order to make efficient use of costly camera crews), was always susceptible to a well-planned protest.

But by the late ’90s, two things had happened. First, the media had begun to pay less attention to protesters and their issues. Even television, which had by this time become more technologically flexible, was no longer as dependent on the scheduled demonstration.

In some cases, changes in media ownership appeared to make a difference. In Vancouver and Calgary, for instance, journalists complained privately that they were under orders to no longer cover what their new bosses referred to as bleeding heart stories. In some cases, journalists themselves became bored by poverty stories and more concerned with problems that reflected those in their own lives — such as mortgage rates, the stock market and how to save for retirement.

But perhaps most important was the structural bias of media. Typically, the poor are not the target audience of newspapers and television. The reason is simple — the poor don’t have much money. And those without money aren’t much use to advertisers, upon whose revenues most media rely.

While some news organizations made a conscious effort to cover poverty issues, there was no structural imperative to do so — particularly at a time when the media’s real target audience, the broad middle classes, appeared to have so little interest in the topic.

The second development, in Ontario at least, was the election of a provincial government which prided itself on ignoring “special interests.” In fact, the Harris government proved itself quite open to some interests. It was just more discriminating than its predecessors. Business lobbyists, golf entrepreneurs and friends of the Premier could always get fast access to government. But those speaking up for wage earners, the old, the sick, or the poor were out of luck.

All of this would be moot if the social problems plaguing Ontario had disappeared over six years of Harris rule. But they didn’t. Indeed, many worsened.

The number of children living below the poverty line is on the rise. In Toronto, the ranks of the poor are growing at a faster rate than those of the well-off. Rents are rising faster than incomes. The number of homeless is on the increase. About 60,000 Ontario families were evicted from their homes last year. That number has been climbing by about 10 percent annually since the Harris government moved to abolish rent controls in 1998.

Even those with jobs haven’t fared well. Wage increases have not kept pace with either the stock market or the pay packages awarded corporate CEOs. Across Canada, average family earnings have increased by less than 2 per cent in 10 years — and that only because more family members are working.

This is the situation after six years of economic boom. If the doomsayers are right, Canada is heading back into another era of slow growth, joblessness and lower public revenues — which will increase both the numbers living below the poverty line and the pressure on governments to cut those social programs which still remain.

Is it any wonder that there is something like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty? The coalition (usually known by its initials, OCAP) makes Toronto’s establishment — even its left establishment — uneasy. An eclectic band that includes not only poor people, but students, retirees and the odd university professor, OCAP doesn’t play by the usual rules. It is direct, in-your-face and occasionally rude. Where other protest groups try to make their points by holding demonstrations in authorized public spaces such as Nathan Phillips Square, OCAP tends to take the fight right to where its enemies live.

Source: Toronto Star