To Be a Voting Tax Payer (non-fiction) - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

I am a voting tax-payer who lives in the Ajax-Pickering constituency. During the school year 2012-2013, I wrote a letter to my Ontario Liberal MPP (as well as many other MPPs of all the parties) to express a collective displeasure on the part of Ontario teachers since I am one of them. All Ontario teachers are members of various unions, one of which is the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF), to which all public high school teachers belong. Still, OSSTF is only a subset of total education workers who were adversely affected by the passage of Bill 115, a very controversial education bill. Currently, there are approximately 60,000 OSSTF members, so one can appreciate how extensive an effect this new and very controversial law was having on all workers in the public education sector.

The point I wanted to make with my letter below was that Bill 115, a bill which had given sweeping powers to the Minister of Education, Hon. Laurel Broten, took away our fundamental right to collectively bargain and negotiate our teacher contracts via our union, OSSTF. A very dangerous precedent was being set here. Where would it lead, ultimately? In particular, I was extremely fearful for the future of the teaching profession in Ontario as a direct result of this legislation.  Later, when Bill 115 was ultimately repealed, I did not feel better somehow.

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Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Mr. Joe Dickson
Ontario Liberal MPP, Ajax--Pickering
Suite 201A, 50 Commercial Avenue
Ajax, Ontario L1S 2H5

Re: Protest against Bill 115

To Mr. Joe Dickson:

Sir, I would like to express my vehement objection to the recent law (Bill 115) passed by the Liberal Government here in Ontario. Our union (the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation or OSSTF) has traditionally participated as fairly as possible in all bargaining and negotiations regarding any new contracts for its teacher members. As an individual teacher and OSSTF member, I now feel that I am at a distinct disadvantage in this new situation. I feel extremely disappointed, resentful and utterly powerless in my current role as a high school teacher. This is a relatively new feeling for me in the more than 12 years that I have spent in full-time teaching for the Toronto District School Board.

I’m sure that, as a group, Ontario teachers also mirror my own feelings to a large extent. We do not think that this new bill is fair to us at all as education workers and we want it overturned in the near future. As an Ontario Liberal MPP, you are not making our jobs any easier to perform. We honestly want to do the best we can for our students. Many of us are also parents, which means that our children are, most likely, students in the current Ontario public school system. We are all adversely affected by Bill 115 in some way.

I would personally request that you look into this bill’s future ramifications further. New and potentially great teachers may very well become discouraged from ever wanting to enter this profession or from staying, long-term, in this profession. Teaching is, indeed, a truly wonderful and rewarding profession, but what the government has now done to it with the passing of Bill 115 is unconscionable. Ontario teachers, without a doubt, consider this to be a “3D” kind of problem: it’s thoroughly Demoralizing, Degrading and Depressing to be working as a teacher under the thumb of this Ontario Liberal Regime.

Yours truly,


"Shirley Underfire"

Now, we are facing yet another provincial election today, Thursday June 12, 2014.  I was not going to vote Liberal, needless to say.  But, our union thinks otherwise.  The Toronto Teachers’ Executive tells us that unless a riding in Ontario is already NDP (New Democratic Party), we should vote Liberal.  Why? Because, it comes down to the lesser of two evils.  While the PCs (Progressive Conservatives) made our lives absolutely miserable during the Mike Harris years when they were in power earlier on between 1995 and 2003, so did the Liberals do their best to make us feel undignified and disrespected in our proud profession….as if public education and its teacher members were and are the root cause of the provincial government’s problems.  Is it our fault that the province, in general, and the TDSB (our employer), in particular, are in dire financial straits? No, that is not the case.  As we all know, governments are very good at spending public money, or getting the consumer to spend its money, to fund its programs.  Now, it finds itself broke and unable to meet its financial obligations.  What should we as teachers do, then?  Quit our jobs?  Retire too early?  If I knew the answer to that question, we would all be better off because then, we would know what to do to contribute to solving this collective problem.  But, we are just people with families and financial obligations of our own and we don’t think that becoming scapegoats for the current government is at all in our best interest.  So, no matter which party wins today’s election, either as a majority or minority government, no one is going to care about us, either now or in the future, and that makes me very sad both as a current teacher and as a future retired teacher.

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.