The Washington Post published an op-ed piece by David Mossop on April 18 calling on Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford to resign. While it may seem odd that the call comes first from a foreign source, we should remember that they’re right next door, and suddenly, given the relatively competent leadership the US is experiencing at the moment, […]
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Doug Ford began his press conference Friday, April 16 with “we’re losing the battle.” Knowing Ford, many expected him to continue with “but we’re winning the war.” Mercifully, he spared us that. It would have been more than a stretch to make that claim given the latest grim figures from Ontario for the virus. The […]
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Amazon’s warehouse in Brampton, on the edge of Toronto, was ordered to close by Peel Public Health…
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“We’re all in this together” has been a constant refrain from politicians during the course of the pandemic. From the beginning, there was never any truth in this. In the same storm, yes, but the boats that became available for this storm ranged from yachts, to rowing boats, to scraps of wood. Given what’s happened […]
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Ford and for-profit homes to blame At the height of the first wave of COVID-19 in Ontario, the Canadian army released a searing report of what the troops found when deployed in some of the worst affected long-term care (LTC) homes. Nearly 77 percent of total COVID-19-linked deaths in the province were residents in LTC, […]
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The Ford government in Ontario, using the COVID-19 crisis as an excuse, has launched an attack on the principle of union seniority as it pertains to the hiring of new teachers. The seniority principle, often simplified to “last in, first out” has been incorporated into the language of union collective agreements going back to the […]
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Tim Heffernan and Jim Sugiyama Cockroaches, rotten food, patients with ulcers left bed-bound, staff moving from unit to unit wearing contaminated gear, staff afraid to ask for supplies for fear of increasing the costs to the home. Those were just some of the disturbing conditions detailed in a Canadian Armed Forces report based on the […]
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This article updates one from the same author from May 2019. The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, would have us believe that the deaths of 249 people (April 20) in residential care homes are just an unfortunate aspect of the COVID-19 crisis. In reality, it’s a case of a chronicle of deaths foretold. Step back […]
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Tim Heffernan is a retired Ontario Teacher. Friday, February 21, saw the biggest show of united action by Ontario teachers since 1997. All 4 unions (elementary, secondary, Catholic and French) representing 160,000 teachers, in a one day strike closed down schools that affected 2 million students. In Toronto, an estimated 30,000 teachers, education workers, parents […]
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Tim Heffernan is a retired Ontario Teacher. Two months after the first one day strike by Ontario High School Teachers, the two sides are still miles apart. (This article gives background to the strike.) The High School teachers in the public boards, organized by OSSTF, were the first to take action with a series of […]
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