Dear Mr. McGuinty....
I want to take this opportunity to welcome our new premier. I can be forgiven if I don’t seem overly excited but I’ve seen a lot of them come and go in my time.
However I really liked his campaign, even though a lot of it has since been rescinded in the meantime. There was something about listening to Ontarians, not raising taxes, fiscal responsibility, and ‘your vote really counts’. The last point deserves some elaboration, but I’ll get to this further on. Meanwhile the real purgatory of getting older is that you’ve seen and heard it all before.
Take the wonderment he expressed over the alleged $5.6B deficit. For the life of me I can’t figure out whether this is a new deficit that has been dropped on Dalton McGuinty’s doorstep, or the same deficit left by Bob Rae (NDP) on David Peterson’s doorstep [Liberal], and that David Peterson subsequently passed onto Mike Harris [Conservative].
So the legacy of inheriting a deficit is hardly news.
Listening is a two-way process
With regard to listening to Ontarians, Dalton McGuinty might start by giving them a meaningful voice at the polling box. At the last election Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals received 43% of the popular vote. This means that 57% of Ontarians didn’t approve, and said so. But this isn’t news either. [See my editorial “Vote or Else” at http://www.ils.net/~squireb/ed18.html]
Meanwhile Dalton McGuinty is doing some frantic back paddling on election promises, which isn’t news either. Just about anyone who can count knew that halting development of the Oak Ridges murrain wasn’t feasible, and said so. If McGuinty wasn’t listening then, what assurance do we have that his hearing has improved since?
However, taking him at his word, here are a few random views he might want to listen to.
Employment in this province stinks
Mr. Premier, the employment situation in this province stinks…especially at the unskilled level. For most of this current year I have been helping a friend find employment and hopefully get settled. The reason that this fell upon me is that Employment Canada--an oxymoron if ever I knew one--refused him E.I. The reason stated was that he hadn’t worked the required 700 hours in his previous job.
I observe that he would have qualified for ‘parental leave’ with only 600 hours, but I digress.
The only recourse he had, therefore, was to turn to a growing industry in this province known as the ‘temp agency’. These are privately run organizations that find employment for a profit. The profit comes from charging a percentage of the employee’s earned wage (usually about 1/3) for the service. Employers like this arrangement because they don’t have to go through a recruiting process, and the temp agencies assume responsibility for the payment of mandatory benefits…including E.I., and Worker Safety Insurance.
Governments also like this arrangement because it bolsters the employment statistics, and people like Jane Stewart [federal minister of HRDC and E.I.] can get back her much touted Parental Leave program, or perhaps searching for the $1B that has somehow eluded her ministry’s books.
However, on the lower end of the scale these employees are working for about 1/3 less than they could be earning through a direct agreement with the employer, and face an endless future of temporary placements.
I am told that some of these placements do evolve into a full time arrangement, but no one seems to know how many.
A disturbing trend
There are several things that are disturbing about this trend. For one thing I don’t think it was in the National Dream to have a particular segment of the workforce which wanders from temporary placement to temporary placement like a band of lost souls.
Moreover I personally can’t think of another segment of society that is forced to forfeit 1/3 of its income just for the privilege of finding gainful employment. The idea is absolutely repugnant, and in my opinion it is a provincial and national disgrace.
That’s one Ontarian’s view of things, Mr. Premier, whether you want to listen or not.