Doug Ford’s Showdown With Unions: Pundits Weigh In

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on as Ontario Premier Doug Ford responds to a question following an announcement in Ottawa on Oct. 17, 2022. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

Despite Ontario education workers going ahead with their strike after it had been declared illegal, and threats of supportive job action by unions across the country, some pundits say the Ford government could have stood stronger in its confrontation with education workers, while others say he had no choice but to back down.

After collective bargaining mediation fell apart, the province passed Bill 28 on Nov. 3, which imposed a contract on more than 55,000 workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The legislation also banned them from striking by using the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which allows the government to override parts of the charter for a five-year period to prevent constitutional challenges.

The next day, CUPE workers went on strike anyway, including education assistants, librarians, and custodians, despite potential fines of $4,000 per worker per day under the legislation.

David Haskell, a professor of digital media and journalism, religion, and culture at Wilfred Laurier University, said use of the notwithstanding clause to override constitutional rights to collective bargaining was too “authoritarian” a starting point. However, he said he doesn’t believe the province ultimately had to cave to union demands.

“I don’t want to talk about the rightness or the wrongness of either side of this issue,” Haskell said in an interview.

“What I’m specifically talking about is a way that a Conservative government should deal with a union that wants to hold a province or a state hostage.”

Unifor, which has 300,000 members in Canada, including 40,000 autoworkers in Ontario, had threatened its own job action in solidarity with the education workers.

Haskell said that even if the threat had become real, Ford could have prevailed. He gave as an example the UK coal miners’ nationwide strike in the 1980s.

“Margaret Thatcher said, ‘we will wait them out,’ ‘we will not give in,’ and it did cause incredible disruption, but at the end of it all she actually had a stronger economy for it,” he said.

“We have these models of true conservatives who were able to use legal means and essentially bring the unions to heel. There’s just not [that kind of] integrity in our leaders any longer. They do not have the courage of their convictions. Moreover, they actually don’t have the convictions.”

Giving Parents Choice

Haskell said he believes proper leadership could have manoeuvred through the crisis to launch a school voucher system, where parents receive a certain amount of money from the provincial government for each child in school.

“They should have gotten the parents onside, and then they would have had the public support for things like charter schools and vouchers so that parents can have choice, so that unions can no longer hold the province hostage. I think they missed that opportunity,” he said.

“What I wish [Ford] had done was follow the legal course and simply not give in, and then provide parents with alternatives. And he would have had the support because it would have shown people that our system doesn’t work.”

Political Crisis

Ford’s legislation was opposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said “proactive use of the notwithstanding clause is actually an attack on people’s fundamental rights.” He added that Ottawa was “absolutely looking at all different options” for how to restore those rights.

Scott Edward Bennett, a political science professor at Carleton University, said the Ford government likes to “maintain a cozy relationship with Ottawa for practical and symbolic reasons” and that it backed away from a defensible position to minimize political damage.

“The initial government response to the [education workers] was pretty much what I expected and was not badly handled from a PR perspective,” Bennett said in comments emailed to The Epoch Times.

“As to the notwithstanding clause, I personally think there is nothing wrong with using it pre-emptively or otherwise. … It is largely the result of the stands taken by [Prairie] provincial leaders of the past from opposite ends of the political spectrum ... who saw potential threats to the Westminster tradition.”

Bennett said premiers Peter Lougheed of Alberta, Allan Blakeney of Saskatchewan, and Sterling Lyon of Manitoba believed parliamentary supremacy should overrule judicial interpretation when the charter was negotiated. By contrast, he sees Ford’s acquiescence as an assessment of the immediate political crisis.

“The public is always concerned with the loss of the child-care function of schools. It is disruptive to family life if interrupted. Also, there may be some concern about the loss of learning during the pandemic. The few who follow the details will know that the government gave some thought to this,” he said.

Practical Decision

Regarding Ontario’s contract negotiations with CUPE, Bennet said that “in the short term the government is not in bad shape regarding the budget. So, it is difficult to sell people on the likelihood of long-term fiscal disasters. They will happen, though.”

During its first term, the Ford government limited provincial employees to 1 percent wage increases. Nelson Wiseman, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, says he doesn’t believe recent events mean much for the austerity agenda.

“Under the legislation passed in 2019, the 1 percent limit on public sector increases ends this year. The 1 percent limit has already been unravelled,” he said in an email.

Wiseman says the Ford government made a practical decision.

“The Ontario government realized after the strike lasted more than a day that they could not practically proceed with [their plans], and the courts would not entertain the prosecution of tens of thousands of people and their union,” he said.

“In this sense, Ford did not blink so much as he was overwhelmed by reality. He had no choice if he wanted to keep kids in school as he had vowed he would do. Charging and prosecuting people takes time; schools meet daily.”

Bennett says he doubts Ford’s austerity agenda is entirely done, but he does not expect the premier to champion it resolutely either.

“I don’t think that attempts to control public and near public sector power will suddenly unravel. However, they will slowly recede and some aspects [of] salary control will be allowed to fade into the background,” he said.

“Most politicians like to be liked, and the public is unlikely to see the importance of major changes from the status quo.”