THUNDER BAY — The Ontario Liberal Party critic for labour and education says he had a chance to speak with union leaders while in Thunder Bay on Tuesday.
Although Ottawa South MPP John Fraser didn’t specify which unions he was going to be meeting with, he did weigh in on the continuing support staff strike at Ontario’s colleges, including Confederation College.
“This thing that we built, the college system, is being allowed to wither,” Fraser told Newswatch during his stop in the city. “The strike is just symptomatic of that.”
For almost a month now, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union have been picketing outside of colleges across Ontario.
Locally, approximately 200 OPSEU Local 731 support staff members from the Thunder Bay Confederation College campus have positioned themselves outside three entrances along Golf Links Road, William Street and Sibley Drive.
Fraser questioned the Ford government’s use of Ontario’s skills development fund when speaking about the college strike.
“The bigger problem is that the government’s not interested in building up our colleges, it’s that simple,” Fraser said. “And they feel that money is better spent sending out to bars and restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Toronto and people who have connections to the government.”
A recent Ontario Auditor General report found that, in many cases, political staff overrode bureaucrats to approve millions of dollars in projects submitted to the $2.5-billion skills training program that were ranked by ministry staff as poor, low or medium against the program’s goals.
“There are a number of organizations that over the years have used skills development … to train and give skills to new Canadians, people where there’s a language barrier, marginalized groups,” Fraser said, adding that those organizations have historically included construction unions, health care unions, not-for-profits and others.
“The reality is the government’s used about half of that fund for low-ranking projects and proposals — a lot of whom have a connection to the government or were represented by someone with a very close connection to the government.”
The skills development fund training stream is meant to support projects that address challenges in hiring, training or retaining workers — including apprentices.
But the auditor found that 64 low-and medium-ranked projects were clients of lobbyists with ties to the Premier’s Office.
“Twenty-seven million dollars to bars and restaurants and nightclubs in downtown Toronto, and at the same time, our colleges are losing 10 thousand staff and they’re cutting hundreds and hundreds of programs,” Fraser said.
“Which means less access for young people who want to get trained to want to learn a skill.”
