DEFENDING THE RIGHT TO STRIKE!

ONT. NDP given boot from legislature after refusing to back down on Bill 28
Antonella Artuso - 47m ago

NDP given boot from legislature after refusing to back down on Bill 28© Provided by Toronto Sun

Ontario NDP members were removed from the legislature Wednesday after accusing Premier Doug Ford and Education Minister Stephen Lecce of lying.

Speaker Ted Arnott asked the MPPs to withdraw their unparliamentary language but they refused.

“If you’ve got a government that’s got a stick poised over people’s head, you’re not bargaining in good faith,” NDP Leader Peter Tabuns said, the first to be removed. “You are actually intimidating people.”

Question Period was dominated by Ontario’s Bill 28, the Keeping Students in Class Act, which would use the power of the notwithstanding clause to override collective bargaining rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and impose a contract on 55,000 CUPE education workers who had threatened to strike Friday.

Ford said the union refused to accept the government’s improved offer or back down from a strike that would put kids out of class starting as early as Friday.

“We won’t let that happen,” Ford said.

The CUPE members, which include maintenance workers and educational assistants, would have the most generous pension and benefits plan for this sector in the country, he said.

The union has said some of their members, many earning under $40,000 a year, have had to go to food banks.

aartuso@postmedia.com