Organized Labour and friends of labour are preparing to converge on Niagara Falls on February 22nd.

Grey Bruce Labour Council President, Kevin Smith notes for the record, “Lead by the most unsuitable and unqualified Premier in more than a generation, Premier Doug Ford’s Ontario Conservatives will be attending their policy convention at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls. Labour, including members of the Grey Bruce Labour Council, intend on being there to make sure that the Conservatives know that neither their profoundly regressive policies nor those attending the policy convention are welcome in Niagara Falls or anywhere in Ontario.” Smith also wants to publicly thank the Society of United Professionals for their commitment to the Labour Council and for leadership in offering to put on a bus from our region for the rally.

The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is hosting the Rally. The OFL has asked that people rally together with at least 20,000 sisters and brothers by 10:30 on the 22nd, where we will force the Conservatives to walk a gauntlet that will include community members, sisters and brothers holding placards listing a cut that the Ford government has made based on policies that have been approved at prior conventions, with the intention of them getting to see the cuts and the impact it has made.

Across the Grey Bruce Labour Council region, MPP’s Lisa Thompson and Bill Walker have demonstrated just what the Ontario Conservatives represent. Labour Council VP, Dave Trumble, and other Labour Council members, delegates and friends of the council have been on numerous picket lines with education workers over the past weeks. Trumble notes that “Thompson and Walker have been nothing if not enablers of the attacks and release of gross misinformation about bargaining with the education unions. Their ongoing bending to the will of Doug Ford and his minions shows not only that Walker and Thompson are not for the people, but just what we can expect when a hall full obsequious convention attendees show up and line up to applaud every backwards step that Ford, his caucus and his staff put in front of the policy convention.”

There is urgency in making sure that the Ford government knows that Ontario citizens and Labour are not going anywhere and that challenges to this deeply regressive government will continue unabated until this government is unelected and placed in the trash bin of history.

source: media release, Grey Bruce Labour Council