My Letter to Ms. Cheri DiNovo (Ont. NDP MPP, Parkdale--High Park) -- by Anne Shier

Here is the letter I sent to Ms. Cheri DiNovo, Ontario NDP MPP for Parkdale--High Park in reply to the letter she'd sent me earlier this month.  I wanted to express my personal (and our collective) appreciation for her party's support of Ontario's public secondary school teachers since the passage of Bill 115.

Friday October 26, 2012

Ms. Cheri DiNovo

Ontario NDP MPP, Parkdale—High Park

2849 Dundas Street West

Toronto, Ontario M6P 1Y6

Re:  Protest against Bill 115

Dear Ms. Cheri DiNovo:

I would like to thank you very much for expressing your support for Ontario teachers on behalf of the NDP Party due to the drastic effect that Bill 115 is having on us.  We very much want to let the public know how we feel, particularly about losing our right to bargain our collective agreements with our local school board.  So, we are happy that you are supporting our cause.  We need all the help we can get right now.

I believe that the public thinks that teachers just want more money and more benefits; they seem convinced that we already have a great setup as teachers.  Every time someone who’s not a teacher says this kind of thing to me, I feel that I have no choice but to tell them that everyone thinks these things until they become a teacher.  And, if they think it’s so great to be a teacher, why don’t they do it?  I’ve never gotten an affirmative answer to this, however, which I think is due to the public’s inherent lack of knowledge of all of the ramifications that teaching involves.  We are accountable to so many entities:  our students (first and foremost), our kids’ parents, our school principal, the school, the school board and the community as a whole.  I think teaching is an awesome profession and I am very happy to have been a teacher for the last 12 and half years.  But, who knows what may happen to this wonderful profession now?

I’d like to quote an excerpt from the OSSTF magazine called “Education Forum”.  The source article is called “Workers’ Rights at Risk”, by Gary Fenn.  Here is the excerpt:  “Bill 115 has very little to do with putting students first [despite its name] and has everything to do with making the educational workers of Ontario pay for a recession they did not cause.  It is about making educational workers pay for the cuts to corporate taxes that have not stimulated the economy.  And now, it is about taking away the constitutionally protected right to free collective bargaining……McGuinty won the support of Progressive Conservative MPPs and their leader, Tim Hudak, to pass this legislation.  The Premier has mused about going after other public-sector workers in Ontario, including doctors, nurses and firefighters.  One can conclude that if McGuinty and Hudak can do this to educational workers, they can do it to any worker.  All workers should be very afraid of this precedent.”

We want you and the NDP to know that we are intent on fighting for our bargaining rights as long as we need to in order to make our point and further our cause.  We have conducted a few peaceful demonstrations in front of various MPPs’ offices in Scarborough and elsewhere in the GTA and we will continue to do so into the future.

I’d like to thank you, Ms. DiNovo, again for your and your party’s support of our cause.  You have a good handle on the government’s real intentions and approach to this economic situation and you know that it cannot lead, ultimately, to anything good down the road for Ontario’s public-sector workers.  This is the important message that we ourselves would like to convey to the public.  It’s all about the government’s attacks on the collective bargaining process, what their agenda really is about and what they hope to achieve by implementing Bill 115.

Yours truly,

"Shirley Underfire"