Unionized LCBO employees set strike deadline of May 17

ByJonathon Liedtke, Metroland Media

There’s a chance that LCBO employees will be going on strike for Victoria Day weekend as 95% of unionized employees have voted in favour of striking and have set a deadline of May 17, the day before the Victoria Day weekend.

“We are still at the [negotiating] table and dates have been set through at least mid-May,” explained Heather Macgregor, media relations coordinator for the LCBO.

While negotiations began in February, Macgregor explained that so far there has only been roughly 17 hours of face-to-face bargaining.

“We are still focused on getting back to the table and getting a deal that’s fair to the employees but also to the taxpayers,” said Macgregor who declined to comment on how the negotiations were going.

“Given that there’s only been 17 hours and the union has kind of changed gears a little bit this week and has decided to hold a rally [and] about ten days ago they held a strike vote, our thinking is that the focus really should be at getting to the table and enough with these distractions,” said Macgregor who went on to stress that the union has the attention of management.

"They’ve said that these steps are necessary to get our attention, but the reality is, they have it,” said Macgregor. “We are at the table, we’re committed to staying there and getting a deal and we’d like to see a little bit more focus put there.”

Macgregor noted that the LCBO has a plan in place to provide some level of service to Ontarians in the event of a strike, however she was unable to explain what level of service would be provided.

“I’m not in a position to get into the details of that plan right now and frankly it’s not necessary because we’ve been here at least twice before,” said Macgregor.

In 2005 and 2009, the LCBO was in negotiations with the collective bargaining unit and reached the same stage the are in presently.

“In both of those instances we were able to negotiate a deal and we’re very optimistic that that’s going to happen this time,” said Macgregor.

“If you recall about two weeks ago when the government caved into teachers, [I] specifically said that they’d caved in and that given the fact that they’ve demonstrated that they don’t have the resolve to stand firm when cost control is an essential, that they were opening the door to 4,000 collective agreements, with various branches of the broader public sector, being questioned,” said MP Peter Shurman, PC Finance Critic.

Shurman believes that the Ontario Public Service Employee Union (OPSEU) which represents the 6,700 bargaining unit employees that the LCBO employs are building their strike campaign on the heels of a bitter labour tensions between the government and teachers’ unions.

“Why if you can change the rules of the game with teachers wouldn’t you be able to change them with anybody we said,” questioned Shurman. “Here’s Smoky Thomas, OPSEU and his LCBO workers saying ‘If you don’t sit down and work this out with us, you won’t be able to buy your LCBO products for May 24 weekend.’”

“If that's not putting Ontarians up against the wall in the face of the collective strength of organized labour, just because it can, especially in a monopoly position, then I don’t know what is,” said Shurman.

Shurman explained that he is disappointed with Warren (Smoky) Thomas (the president of the OPSEU), OPSEU membership, LCBO employees and the Liberal government itself before noting that the government “will pay.”

When asked whether or not he believed that a strike would actually occur, Shurman responded, “Sure. Could there be a strike, I’m not a fortune teller … they’ve decided that they will if they don’t get what they want.”

Shurman believes that there is a need for better distribution of beer and wine in the province overall and pointed to his party’s recent whitepapers on alcohol delivery in the province as examples of what could be done.

“I still think that we need to look at better distribution for beer and wine … you can look at the [LCBO] wholesale, retail division [or] the whole thing,” said Shurman. “The jury is still out.”

“Right now the issue is we’ve got one place to buy liquor, we’ve got the greatest gateway weekend of the year coming, and that’s when our broader public sector workers are telling the Wynne government what it can and can't do,” said Shurman.

Tories to move non-confidence motion over gas plant controversy
Posted By: Katie Franzios, Astral Media

The Ontario Tories are moving ahead with the party's plan to table a non-confidence motion this week, meaning you may be headed to the polls sooner than you thought.

It's all surrounding the Mississauga and Oakville gas plant cancellations - how much they cost and how the Progressive Conservatives say the Liberals are dancing around the issue.

They're party will meet in an emergency session to discuss the issue on Monday.

Claiming the Liberals mislead the public, PC finance critic Peter Shurman says his party has lost confidence in the Liberals and so have the people of Ontario.

Slamming his fist on the podium, Shurman says the Liberals are only interested in protecting themselves, pointing to how they answer questions about the gas plants at the legislature.

Shurman says house leaders from all three parties will meet to discuss how and if this will be tabled.

Premier Kathleen Wynne caved to pressure from teachers, Tories say
The Tories says it was money not goodwill that got the teachers to drop their ban on extracurricular.

By: Richard J. Brennan Provincial Politics, Queen's Park, Torstar

Premier Kathleen Wynne was accused Monday are bowing to “labour terrorism” by promising to sweeten a contract deal for public elementary and high school teachers to get them to drop their ban on extracurricular activities.

“You caved in to labour terrorism,” Tory finance critic MPP Peter Shurman (Thornhill) told the legislature.

The Progressive Conservatives say they have learned through education sources the recent deals — still to be approved by the rank and file teachers — with the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) and Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) cost $63 million in order to enhance the payout for discontinued sick days, among other things.

Wynne has refused to say how much it cost to win the teachers over, but insists there “is no new money.”

Shurman said renegotiating the contract imposed on the two teachers union under Bill 115, in effect opens the doors all of the other public unions.

“Your message to unions is this: peace at any price,” Shurman said.

Tory Education critic MPP Lisa MacLeod (Napean-Carleton) reminded Wynne she told everyone it was goodwill that won the day.

“When you ran for Liberal leader, you promised you would not reopen the collective agreements imposed in this House because there was no new money in the wage envelope. Then you had secret talks with union leaders, and you promised parents around the province that those talks only revolved around process, not more entitlements,” MacLeod said.

“You also started talking about the ministry envelope, not the wage envelope. Then, last week, you broke not one, but three promises to parents. You opened up the legislative contracts, you caved on union demands, and your secret talks weren’t about process at all,” she said.

The two unions hammered out a deal with government officials that boosts sick day payouts and reduces unpaid days off.

“There were changes that needed to be made, and that the money could be moved around. There is no new money in that collective agreement. There’s no new money in those contracts. The money has been moved around,” Wynne told the legislature.

“We have reopened our respective dialogue with the education sector. And I know that there are schools in the member’s riding where extracurriculars are back on track, where kids are having the opportunity to take part in extracurriculars,” the Premier said in a response to the question from MacLeod.

Highway 7 gets its own sign of urbanity: a transit fight
The coming bus rapidway may take the same route as current Viva buses, but some residents are convinced it’s the road to destruction.

AMY DEMPSEY, TORONTO STAR

Highway 7 is changing. When the road was designated a provincial highway in the 1920s, it was a gateway for city dwellers. For the next nine decades, the road grew with Ontario, from its rural routes to industrial highway. Now, with major investment in public transit, Highway 7 is becoming an urban thoroughfare.

The Star brings you seven tales of the people and places that are a part of the highway’s story. This is Part 6.

“Stop me if I talk too fast,” says Gila Martow, interrupting herself to shoot me this warning as I climb into her enormous black SUV.

We’re in the parking lot of a Thornhill shopping plaza and Martow is about to take me on a tour of the planned dedicated bus lane route she believes will destroy her neighbourhood.

“I have four kids,” she says, explaining the size of her vehicle as we buckle up. “Boy, boy, boy, girl.” Aged 15 to 25.

The route in question is only a small part of the Viva bus rapidway that will stretch across Highway 7, connecting the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre with town centres in Richmond Hill and Markham.Martow and a contingent of local residents who have taken up the cause are not against the rapidway itself, but rather the planned route of the dedicated centre lanes through their neighbourhood — from Highway 7 south down Bathurst St. and west across Centre St.

Martow, 51, an optometrist who ran for council in the last municipal election, calls it a “detour” that will disrupt the flow of traffic, force cars onto residential streets and cost more than it’s worth. She has been comparing it to the controversial St. Clair streetcar project, which prompted struggling businesses along the midtown corridor to launch a lawsuit against the City of Toronto.

She and her supporterswant the rapidway to continue along Highway 7 instead of cutting south, and they argue the money would be better spent on the Yonge subway expansion.

As we head east on Centre St. toward the Promenade bus terminal, Martow throws out a scenario she’s been using lately to illustrate her frustration: Joe Bus Rider gets on the rapidway in Markham to head west for work, but is baffled when the driver makes an unexpected turn south into Thornhill.

“I can just picture this poor guy, yelling at the bus driver and saying, ‘What are you doing? What are you getting off the highway for? We’re on Highway 7, what are you doing?’ And the (driver’s) gonna say, ‘Well, we have to go to the Promenade Mall, there’s two old ladies there that want to get on the rapidway.”

Transit officials with YRT-Viva and the local councillor take issue with her position — in particular, the word “detour.”

“That’s a misrepresentation of the facts being tossed about,” Dale Albers, spokesman for YRT-Viva, told me this week when I used the apparently loaded word in an email. “That route has been operational since Viva first launched in 2005 and serves thousands of people every workday just in that stretch alone,” he wrote back. “The alignment is not new, nor a divergence from an existing route — thus not a detour.”

The route plan is based on an environmental assessment that showed the demand for transit — and the projected future demand — is along Centre St., where there is a great deal of development potential. Along the section of Highway 7 the rapidway will bypass in favour of the Thornhill route, there is very little room for intensification and a lower demand for transit, the assessment found.Albers also points out that the rapidway makes similar diversions off Highway 7 through “residential/commercial urban corridors in Markham and Newmarket.”

At the heart of this dispute is a fundamental disagreement over the identity of this little slice of York Region. Is Thornhill-Vaughan a city or a suburb?

“This is a suburb,” Martow says. “We’re getting way ahead of ourselves if we think that in Thornhill, in York Region, people are going to do grocery shopping and take their kid to hockey by bus. Who are we kidding?”

In an effort to get people excited about plans for the new urban streetscape and development that will come with the rapidway, at least one developer called it “the next Yonge Street” and officials have likened it in other ways to a downtown Toronto streetscape. That comparison hasn’t gone over well with some Thornhill residents.

“We don’t want a downtown Toronto,” says Mark Milunsky, a 19-year-old aspiring urban planner. “That’s why we live up here.”

Milunsky, a recent high school graduate, is the newest member of the Beverley Glen Ratepayers Association executive. Together, he and Martow, who is the association’s president, have been pushing to have the route changed. They recently convinced local Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman to voice his support for residents.

But it seems unlikely they will get their way. The project is already funded by the province, with construction on Bathurst and Centre Sts. set to begin in 2015 and last two years.

“I appreciate the suburban dream, but the reality is — look around, this a very urban place,” says Alan Shefman, councillor for Vaughan Ward 5, which includes Thornhill. “I guess people really hang on the mythology of the suburbs, but I’m very practical and very pragmatic when it comes to where we live here, and this isn’t suburbs. This is an urban municipality.”

Though Shefman has no official say in the plans for Centre St. because it is a regional road, he supports the rapidway route.

Here’s some context: Shefman and Martow are political foes. Martow ran against him and lost in the 2010 election. He believes she has taken up this cause for political gain;she says it’s because she cares about her community.

Martow has been highly critical of Shefman for supporting the project when, according to her, nearly all local residents are against it.Shefman says he’s spoken to many residents who have voiced their support.

Martow is not against development of the area altogether — in fact, she agrees that Centre St. needs a facelift — but her concern is that the rapidway, which will be transformed into light rail in decades to come, will pave the way for density not suitable for the neighbourhood.

“If there is a rapidway being built down here to look like Highway 7, the OMB (Ontario Municipal Board) will say, ‘Whoo, future light rail? Almost a subway? Rapidway? Sounds really rapid. Yeah, build! Thirty storeys, 40 storeys!’”

For his part, Shefman says he is adamant about limiting density along the large chunk of Centre St. between Dufferin St. and New Westminster Dr. The councillor’s vision for the street is something similar to Disera Dr., a new and well-designed promenade adjacent to the contentious bus route that features, among other things, a Marble Slab Creamery. It has quickly become a popular strolling destination for locals.

But here’s an interesting thing: when asked about her own vision for Centre St., Martow’s answer is the same — Disera. In fact, she drives there to show me the street, raving about how great it is. “We’re so thrilled with it even though it’s one block — they say two blocks but it’s really only one block — we walk up and down here all summer long going to Marble Slab.”

Same street. Same vision. Different ideas on how to get there.

Thornhill MPP against rapidway bus route

Thornhill Liberal by Simone Joseph, Metroland Media Group

Thornhill’s MPP has come out against a portion of the rapid bus lanes planned for Hwy. 7 that will take a detour through a residential neighbourhood.

“We want to avoid another divisive, unsafe and expensive St. Clair disaster in our own neighbourhood,” MPP Peter Shurman said this week in reference to a contentious downtown Toronto streetcar line.

Mr. Shurman decided he had to support residents after receiving many letters from those opposed to having the rapidway service running through their Thornhill neighbourhood. He held a press conference Monday at The Promenade Mall’s York Region Transit and Viva bus terminal.

“This project is not warranted, even with future intensification,“ he said in an interview.
VIVA’s east-west rapidway line — which will allow buses their own lanes across the region — detours from its Hwy. 7 route, down Bathurst Street, along Centre Street to Dufferin Street before linking up again with Hwy. 7.

The rapidway is part of York Region Transit’s rapid transit plan to introduce a public transit system that provides fast, frequent service. It is meant to ease projected road congestion caused by population growth.

Beverley Glen Ratepayers Association president Gila Martow joined Mr. Shurman at the press conference and pointed to the failures of the St. Clair Avenue light rail project in opposing the Centre Street portion of the rapidway.

“After four years of construction, it decimated business and lives,” she said.
The busway route would be faster if it stayed on Hwy. 7, she added.

She believes the money should be reallocated to funding the Yonge Street subway extension.

Other residents have said they are concerned the rapidway will lead to extra traffic and the dedicated bus lanes will pose a danger to pedestrians and cyclists.

“Centre Street and the Beverley Glen area are home to many families and children. Keeping a rapid transit way above ground is a recipe for disaster,” Mr. Shurman said. “Subways are faster, safer and have greater utility than this project. I hope that the local councillors, who have heard the concerns of our constituents, will listen to their wishes and do what they were sent to City Council to do, fight for their constituents and get busy on Yonge Street.”

Rapid bus service is coming to Thornhill’s Centre Street. It’s just a matter of time, Vaughan Ward 5 Councillor Alan Shefman insisted.

“It is funded, it is happening and it will be built,” he said. “People should be focused on design, aesthetics. There is no question it is going to happen.

“People have really been misled if they have the impression they can stop it. Direct your energy where change can have an impact,” he said.

“We can work to ensure the rapidway fits nicely into the community. The net benefit to the streetscape will be better than today.”

He cautioned that residents opposed to the rapidway do not represent everybody.
“Many residents are dying to have it in place. We need transit everywhere or we will die with congestion everywhere.”

He said when the bus rapidway is finished, riders will be able to take the rapidway from The Promenade Shopping Mall to the new subway station at Jane Street and Hwy. 7 in 11 minutes.

He also said the rapidway needs to go through Bathurst and Centre streets. because this area is densely populated.

Mr. Shefman is hopeful critics will come around to his way of thinking.
“People will start to see the value of the busway. We desperately need transit.”

LCBO to launch grocery store alcohol sales
Jon Liedtke — The Lance (University of Windsor), Canadian University Press

WINDSOR (CUP) — Outgoing Ontario Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan used New Year’s Eve day— the busiest day in the province for alcohol sales— to announce a new pilot project for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO).

Within 12-18 months, 10 LCBO Express stores will be opened within grocery stores and certain LCBO stores will be renovated to include VQA Destination Boutiques.

According to a news release published by the Ministry of Finance, the LCBO Express stores would offer Ontario wine, spirits and beer, while the VQA Destination Boutiques would offer an expanded selection of VQA wines than traditional LCBO’s provide currently.

“[The announcement is] in response to customer demand,” said Aly Vitunski, a spokesperson for the finance minister, adding that, “People are talking about a need for greater access, a bit more convenience … we’re answering what the people have asked for.”

While the 10 LCBO Express stores could potentially be placed within 24-hour grocery stores, Vitunski emphatically made clear that they would be managed and staffed with LCBO employees and abide by local LCBO hours.

When asked if there was a demand for an expansion of hours, Vitunski responded, “Nope.”

In 2011-12, the LCBO generated $4.710 billion in revenue (up $218 million from 2010-11), and the Province is hoping to generate additional revenue from the new store formats.

The proposal is being welcomed from individual craft beer brewers from across the province. In Windsor, Walkerville Brewery owner Chris Ryan commented that he would welcome the pilot project if it provided craft brewers and local wineries better access to market.

Matt Janes, the owner of St. Thomas’ Railway City Brewing echoed similar sentiments.

“What we would like to see … is [for] those stores to focus on Ontario craft beers, so that we have a higher profile in those stores than the conventional or major breweries,” said Janes.

Essex Pelee Island Coast Wine Country president Tom O’Brian believes that the LCBO Express stores will focus on selling low cost alcohol “that most people will buy while just casually looking for groceries” instead of Ontario wines. But he’s excited for the VQA Boutique stores because it demonstrates a commitment from the Province to help “support for the growth of the Ontario wine industry.”

Not everybody is eager about the proposed expansion, however, with Progressive Conservative finance critic Peter Shurman describing the announcement as “absolute and utter nonsense.”

“In what I can only describe as a cynical move, [Duncan] used New Year’s Eve day, arguably one of the highest volume days in the liquor stores, to say to consumers, ‘I’m going to help you,’” argued Shurman. “But I don’t believe he’s going to help … he’s going to launch a pilot project of 10 food stores and five wine boutiques to see how it works.”

Shurman touted Tim Hudak’s latest white paper, “A New Deal for the Public Sector,” which calls for the privatization of Ontario’s retail monopoly on alcohol sales.

Shurman sees two problems with the system currently, saying there’s no competitive aspect to the LCBO.

“The selection at the LCBO is what the LCBO decides it is going to be,” he said. “We want to treat people like adults."

Shurman also argues the LCBO “locks away tens of billions of dollars that are equity that are owned by the taxpayers” while it engages in a business which should “arguably be run competitively in the private sector.”

While privatization would likely result in a significant loss of public sector jobs, Shurman had little to say about the possibility.

“I have a feeling that if they know the liquor business as well as they suggest that they do, there would be that number of jobs and more in the private sector looking to hire them,” stated Shurman.

Many have questioned whether or not the government’s proposal was a reaction to Hudak’s plan, but Vitunski made clear that was not the case.

“We’re the government, we don’t just make knee jerk decisions, especially when it comes to alcohol,” said Vitunski, adding, “This is something that’s been in the works for quite some time … it happens that it came public now. There’s a ton of thought [which] was put into this … well over a year worth of work behind the scenes, so this is definitely not a reaction.”

While Hudak and the PCs may want a fully privatized liquor system in Ontario, the craft brewers themselves are both wary and full of trepidation.

“If the LCBO was completely disbanded and we had to market through independent corner stores and grocery stores, that would be a huge disadvantage for the craft brewers in Ontario,” said Janes. “We would have a very difficult time getting any shelf space because we believe that Molson and Labatt would just go in and so overwhelmingly dominate the shelf space available; there would be very little left for the small brewers.”

While Walkerville brewer Ryan acknowledges that the LCBO limits consumer choice, he concedes that he’s not sure if being fully privatized is the right thing either.

“I guess you’d have to look at the big picture and ask, ‘How is it going to change?’ and ‘How is our access to market going to be better?’” commented Ryan. “Sure, it’s going to be available in more places, but are we going to have access to those places that are going to be selling it, or is it going to be limited?”

Shurman doesn’t share the same concerns as Janes and Ryan, but has a few suggestions for the Craft Brewing Association and its membership if, as a body, they wish to be taken more seriously.

“You guys have got to get on the same page,” said Shurman. “You can talk to 10 craft brewers and you can get 10 opinions. These guys want an association … [well] take that association and put forward a united opinion about how things should be done, and we’ll be the first ones to look at it.”

Conservatives "don't know" if private liquor sales would increase revenues
By The Canadian Press


TORONTO - A proposal from Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak to privatize liquor sales in Ontario may not generate more revenues for taxpayers, the party's finance critic admitted Thursday.

"You ask about how we know we’d make more money, I can tell you frankly we don’t, but we don’t know that we’d make any less money," Peter Shurman told reporters.

"We believe that it’s essential to sit down with people who are specialists and come to a conclusion on, as Tim says, what the appropriate model should be."

Earlier this week, Hudak announced he would not cut taxes on alcohol, but he would consider selling part or all of the LCBO, which brought in $1.65 billion to the province last year, excluding taxes.

Standing beside Shurman at a news conference Thursday, Hudak insisted any sell off of the LCBO would be different than the sale of Highway 407, which the last Conservative government sold in 1999 in what many consider to be a fire sale.

The Tory leader said Alberta never saw any drop in revenues when it privatized liquor sales, and pointed to a 2007 study done for Ontario's Liberal government that showed privatization could increase revenues for taxpayers.

"We’ll be careful and thoughtful," said Hudak.

"If you look at cross jurisdictional experience and you look at our own study here in Ontario as recently as five years ago, they had a net increase of revenue to the province of $200 million."

The Liberals pointed out that Hudak used to oppose privatizing the LCBO, and dug up old quotes from former Conservative premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves saying they'd considered the idea and rejected it as a bad deal for taxpayers.

Hudak's proposal to sell the LCBO is among several trial balloons the Tory leader floated this week, including one to have the province get out of the gambling business and Thursday's release of a white paper on a new deal for the public service.

That new deal will mean a smaller public sector, with thousands of jobs cut, and new government positions would have to be open to everyone, said Hudak.

"The reductions in the size and cost of government and positions on the payroll will be significant. I’m not going to mislead anybody by saying we can keep the same size public service," he said.

"I think we should open up government job openings to all those who are qualified, not simply because they hold an OPSEU (Ontario Public Service Employees) union card."

Hudak also wants to reduce the size of cabinet from 24 to just 16 members, and open any government services and labour contract worth more than $10,000 to competitive bidding from the private sector.

"I’ve been at the cabinet table, I’ve seen the inertia of government as cabinets grow larger, and...the more politicians you have around the table the more proposals you bring forward to spend money to expand the size and cost of government," he said.

"I believe a streamlined cabinet can focus on actually reducing the size and cost of government and get our economy moving again."

Conservative insiders say Hudak's right-wing ideas are meant to show a clear difference between them and the Liberals and New Democrats in advance of an election expected sometime next spring.

Vander Doelen: Ontario’s Radical Makeover

Chris Vander Doelen, Postmedia Network


Ontario’s Tories unveiled a long list of almost shocking campaign promises this week, but all the media seemed to notice was the latest pledge to break up the province’s liquor and beer monopolies.

How radical? In a newly released white paper called A New Deal For The Public Sector, the Progressive Conservatives propose doing away with a host of monopolies – not just the Beer Stores and the LCBO – and putting a virtual herd of sacred cows out to pasture.

“Everybody wants to talk about the glitzy stuff” like privatizing booze sales and the province’s gambling empire, Peter Shurman, the party’s finance critic, acknowledged when I talked to him Friday. “But this is not a white paper on the LCBO.

“This is a pretty broad-ranging attack on spending,” he said. “We think we need to go across the board” with widespread cutting, culling and rethinking of government services. Ontario has to undergo radical change if it hopes to pull out of its debt-fuelled financial death spiral, the Tories say.

Even the Liberals seem to agree these days on the need for spending cuts – although they have a devil of a time doing anything but talk about it.

The Tory plan – if elected, which is a rather big “if” – includes killing off the wasteful local health bureaucracies known as LHINs and CCACs, and a wholesale cancellation of outdated regulations, agencies and services.

It makes for pretty thrilling reading, actually, if you’re into radical government makeovers. (It’s posted online on the party’s website.)

Did you know, for instance, that we still employ 19 people to staff the Ontario Film Review Board? The New Deal would dump them and kill off the board.

The Tories say Ontario should also get out of the casino business – we don’t need “unionized government employees serving drinks and spinning roulette wheels,” is the way the white paper puts it.

They also want to eliminate a third of the province’s 24 ministries, institute a two-year wage freeze for every member of the 1.3 million people in Ontario’s vast public sector, blow up the irreparable provincial contract arbitration system, do away with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of public bodies and agencies and slash public payrolls by thousands.

The necessary staffing cuts can’t be achieved just be through natural attrition, Shurman says, which “is not enough” to fix an annual deficit of $14.4 billion.

Buried amid all the cutting and slashing was an interesting promise to throw open the most coveted government jobs in Ontario to everybody, rather than reserving them for insiders. “We’ll ensure all Ontarians can apply for government job openings – not only those already on the government payroll,” the New Deal says.

When was the last time that happened? “We don’t ever remember it happening,” said Shurman, who is 65. Government jobs have always been awarded to insiders already in a closed shop. “The public service is almost a new elite. It’s unfair. We want to fix that.”

While fun reading for us libertarian skeptics, the New Deal could be downright terrifying for some unions and union members, from casino workers to construction trades. The Tories also want to throw open the bidding on government contracts to all companies, not just approved union shops.

That could cut billions off the cost of building schools, hospitals, sewers, subway lines and other public infrastructure. But construction trades unions will fight it tooth and nail.

Won’t the party feel some push back against these proposals, I asked, from the vested interests whose livelihoods will be affected? “Oh, we already are,” Shurman told me happily.

“But this isn’t anti-union. I don’t have a problem with unions – I was a union member for 40 years,” he said: ACTRA, the performers union. Shurman was a radio tech, then a reporter, announcer and finally president of Standard Broadcasting’s radio division. He got into politics in 2007, winning the riding of Thornhill in his first try.

Another New Deal pledge I liked: posting virtually all government business and paperwork on the Internet, doing away with decades of operational secrecy and Freedom of Information requests.  “If the people own the government, the people deserve to know what it’s doing,” Shurman says reasonably.

Could the New Deal prove to be as transformative as the 1995 Common Sense Revolution, former premier Mike Harris’ equally radical checklist for remaking government?

Shurman and PC Leader Tim Hudak clearly hope so. But it’s so wide-ranging you wonder why they don’t also propose to break up the one monopoly that everybody seems to hate right now: the education system.

With teachers’ unions currently on everyone’s naughty list, that could be a political magic bullet even more powerful than putting beer in corner stores.

McGuinty hasn't pursued promised wage freeze compromise: PCs
JONATHAN JENKINS, QMI AGENCY,
ANTONELLA ARTUSO, QMI AGENCY

TORONTO — It was one of his stated reasons for proroguing the legislature, but Premier Dalton McGuinty hasn't followed through on his claim he would seek a public sector wage freeze compromise with the Progressive Conservatives, Tory finance critic Peter Shurman said Wednesday.

"The premier and his finance minister misled the people of Ontario when they said that (they would seek a legislative deal with the Tories)," Shurman said.

"It's never going to happen — it was never planned to happen. This (proroguing) was always about the Liberal party retrenching."

McGuinty had said when he announced his resignation Oct. 15 he was proroguing the legislature to allow the government to pursue direct talks with public sector unions on freezing wages -- and at the same time deal with the PCs on coming up with legislation forcing a freeze should the unions balk.

The government’s previous effort to draft such a bill was dismissed by PC Leader Tim Hudak as lacking any real teeth.

Since that time, the government has announced a deal with the Ontario Medical Association but it’s not yet clear what progress -- if any -- have been made with other public sector unions.

Talks with Tories have never materialized in any substantive way, Shurman said.

He said he has written to Finance Minister Dwight Duncan seeking to meet and outlining what the PCs would require for an agreement.

That includes a framework for bringing back the house, a guarantee any deal would be honoured by whoever should succeed McGuinty as Liberal leader and premier in January, and an assurance the legislation would be a “meaningful” freeze.

“He wrote back a three-page flowery letter that didn’t address anything we asked for,” Shurman said, adding he responded Nov. 7 asking for a meeting with Duncan and his parliamentary assistant Yasir Naqvi but hasn’t received a response.

“I’m really worried about Ontario,” Shurman said. “We’re in an economic crisis and the legislature is not sitting.”

Duncan said the government is simply dealing with the most pressing issues first and hasn’t felt the need to open discussions with the Tories -- yet.

“We haven’t needed to,” Duncan said. “We don’t like their approach on these things. Our first priority is to deal with the parties at the table.

“We’ve got the doctors -- we’re very proud of that. We’re working with OPSEU.”

Meanwhile, New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath marked Wednesday as the one-month anniversary of McGuinty’s shutdown of the legislature and repeated her call for rules restricting what she called political prorogations.

“I would love to have a conversation with the other two parties about how we take the politics out of prorogation,” Horwath said.

McGuinty misled public on prorogation: opposition
The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- The opposition says Premier Dalton McGuinty misled people when he said he prorogued the Ontario legislature to allow time to negotiate with unions and the Progressive Conservatives on a public sector wage freeze.

It's now been a month since McGuinty's surprise resignation and prorogation of the legislature, and Tory finance critic Peter Shurman says there have been no talks at all with the Liberal government on a wage freeze.

Shurman says the real reason McGuinty prorogued the legislature to avoid hearings into the cancelled gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan says the Liberals haven't negotiated with the Tories since prorogation because they haven't had to, and because they don't like the opposition's approach to things.

The Conservatives want the government to legislate a wage freeze for nearly 1.3 million public sector workers, but the Liberals fear that would be over-turned by the courts.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says people across the province are angry that the legislature has been shut down until sometime next year and know that's where the government can be held to account.