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- March 24, 2012: Help get our public library re-opened
Contract talks between library workers and the City have stalled because the City's negotiators would not budge from their demand for the right to fire librarians and staff anytime they want, for whatever reason they want. In all good conscience, it is a demand that we cannot accept. For if we did, the door would be wide open for Mayor Ford and his allies on Council to fire the staff that run your neighbourhood branch, then close it.
- March 21, 2012: Toronto library workers vs Rob Ford: why this strike matters, David Camfield and Monique Woroniak
Toronto library workers, members of CUPE Local 4948, have been forced to strike by the Library Board's demands for concessions. The City of Toronto's cut of library funding by 5.9% has led to the loss of 107 full-time positions, resulting in heavier workloads for library workers and a reduced quality of services.
- March 19, 2012: Join Striking Library Workers - Noon Monday
Labour Council is calling on union activists across Toronto to come to the support of Library Workers forced to strike against the concessions demanded by the Ford Regime. There will be a solidarity rally at noon on Monday at City Hall, and many opportunities to join CUPE Local 4948 on the picket line this week.
- February 23, 2012: Why can't voters fire Toronto Mayor Rob Ford?
During the 2010 election, Toronto mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi pledged that if elected he would ask the province to approve legislation to allow voters to recall -- or fire -- the mayor or a city councillor.
- February 14, 2012: An in-depth look at the fight to save social housing in Toronto
The Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) voted in October to sell more than 700 of its most valuable housing units. The TCHC is the second largest provider of social housing in North America.
- February 12, 2012: The poor in Toronto
They're working but not getting any richer.
- February 12, 2012: Working poor numbers way up in Toronto
The legions of Toronto area workers pouring coffee, cleaning toilets and otherwise toiling for low wages in office towers and factories is growing dramatically.
- February 1, 2012: The Problem with Public-Private Partnerships, Toby Sanger, Corina Crawley
If there is one thing that the current financial and economic crisis has shown, it is that the neoconservative economic model of deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, free trade and unequal growth is bankrupt. And yet, incredibly, Canadian governments and corporations are using the economic crisis to push more of the same policies: tax cuts, the sale of public assets, and, especially, more privatization through public-private partnerships (P3s).
- January 26, 2012: Don't be a strikebreaker for Rob Ford!
Rob Ford and his friends on City Council are out to wipe out public services in this City and to attack the workers who deliver those services. Thousands of members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees face the threat of being locked out by the City.
- January 24, 2012: Toronto Mayor Set to Lock Out City Workers
On a scale never before seen in Canada, the mayor of Toronto seeks to privatize city services and is taking on the largest public sector locals in Canada to do so. Counting down to a lockout February 5, city workers' unions are scrambling to make their case to city residents.
- January 23, 2012: People care about the kind of city they live in: Toronto City Budget
Thanks to the powerful interventions of many groups and individuals across the city, Toronto has a municipal budget that preserves many critical programs and services that had been targeted for deep cuts by the Ford administration. However, these programs and services should never have been on the chopping block in the first place.
- January 21, 2012: Winning the battle, losing the war?
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was dealt several major losses during Tuesday's budget meeting, as Council's 'mushy middle' rejected a radically conservative, anti-government budget and joined forces with opposition councillors to save a host of City services.
- January 20, 2012: Wait lists hit new records, Exec Committee schemes to sell-off 740 affordable TCHC homes
Toronto City Council's Executive Committee meets on Jan. 24th to consider an unprecedented recommendation from Toronto Community Housing Company (TCHC) to sell-off 675 buildings that include 740 affordable homes.
- January 20, 2012, Bullet No. #587: Tax Cuts, Privatization and Deregulation Disguised as Public Policy, Paul Kahnert and Sam Gindin
Where are we going as a society? We once proudly invested in our schools, pools, libraries, daycare, healthcare, roads, electricity, water and sewers. Today we're busy slashing social services and letting our infrastructure crumble.
- January 18, 2012: Is privatized transit to blame in York Region strike?
Three months after most of York Region's transit drivers went on strike, riders and labour groups are trying to figure out who is being served by the region's privatized transit model.
- January 18, 2012: City Council Reverses Many Key Ford Cuts
After months of debate, Toronto city council has passed its 2012 budget.
- January 18, 2012: A Majority of Torontonians Want to Continue Funding Public Services
A majority of Toronto residents want city services maintained, even if it means increased fees or taxes, says a new poll by Environics research. The poll shows 64 per cent in favour of continued funding for public services.
- January 18, 2012: Toronto: Tactics and Timing
Interview with Carolyn Egan from 'Respect Toronto'
- January 18, 2012: Toronto Stop the Cuts Rally, People vs Millionaire Mayor Ford
Stop the Cuts in Toronto, grassroots community organizations and individuals who are concerned about Millionaire Mayor Ford's looming cuts to essential services. January 17 final budget decisions will determine how many services will suffer from his cuts.
- January 18, 2012: Ford's budget fails
Made-in-the-middle council solution saves raft of services from cuts, delivers stinging rebuke to mayor's agenda.
- January 17, 2012: CUPE members unanimously support Toronto action plan
Hundreds of members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario voted unanimously in favour of an action plan to support Toronto city workers yesterday. Members of the union's locals across Toronto met at the Sheraton Hotel on Queen Street to map out their support.
- January 16, 2012: It's crunch time and Our Public Library needs you
The final vote on the library's budget is scheduled for City Council's next meeting on January 17 - 19. Despite a massive outcry by Torontonians, and a new report that shows the city will have a 2011 surplus of more than $150 million.
- January 15, 2012: Toronto: Final Budget Showdown, Stop The Cuts
Toronto Stop the Cuts has been organizing in neighbourhoods across the city to build powerful resistance against Ford and his cuts. On January 17th, we are all coming together for a Final Budget Showdown - a rally and actions to oppose the cuts and demand an expansion of city services for all!
- January 14, 2012: Rob Ford's high stakes union gamble
For a split second at the Thursday, January 5, meeting of council's Employee and Labour Relations Committee, it seemed councillors couldn't believe what they were reading on the agendas in front of them.
- January 13, 2012: Toronto Municipal Workers Under Attack: An Interview
Over 25 000 unionized workers at the City of Toronto, members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Locals 79 and 416, are under attack by right-wing mayor Rob Ford, along with Toronto Public Library workers in CUPE Local 4948.
- January 13, 2012: The Fight for Jobs and City Services: CUPE vs Rob Ford, Yen
The contract for Toronto's municipal inside and outside workers expired last year. Members of CUPE 79 and 416 are facing a lockout and strike in 2012 as Mayor Rob Ford seeks deep concessions from its members including the removal of job security provisions as well at the elimination of 2,300 jobs.
- January 13, 2012: Why Toronto Doesn't Have a Fiscal Crisis, Yen
Community organizing has saved 58 student nutrition programs and 12 school-based recreation programs from Mayor Rob Ford's chopping block. Last Friday, it was announced that these services will be covered by a property assessment growth that is not included in the current surplus.
- November 11, 2011: Toronto: The Crisis Invented
Every person who has gone to Toronto City Hall to speak out against cuts to services has been challenged by the Ford crew to help find $774-million shortfall. The number has been repeated ad nauseum and picked up by the media as if it's real. We all know its fiction - put up to help 'create a crisis' to further the real agenda of privatization and job cuts.
- September 28, 2011: Funding crisis in Ontario threatens professional emergency medical services
In recent years, Ontario has improved emergency medical services (EMS). Years ago, even for-profit funeral parlours ran local ambulance services. Now we have a highly regulated, public EMS service staffed by highly skilled, professional paramedics and dispatchers.
- September 26, 2011: Toronto Cleaners: The Hidden Cost of Budget Cuts
You probably don't have the same emotional connection with cleaners that you might have with libraries, firefighters or police. Cleaners' jobs are not glamorous; but cleaners are the unsung behind-the-scenes workers that keep our city clean and safe.
- September 20, 2011: Ford backs down from cuts, for now
Mayor Rob Ford has talked the talk on the need for budget cuts. He declined to walk the walk when he had the opportunity on Tuesday morning.
- September 15, 2011: Budget mess finally lands in Ford's gravy-free hands
First, they hired a corporate assassin in KPMG to do their dirty work, a futile attempt to distance themselves from the planned sacking of Toronto.
- September 14, 2011: TTC proposes fare hike, job cuts and longer wait times
TTC officials will reveal a series of controversial budget proposals on Tuesday, the Star has learned.
- September 14, 2011: Trading tax cuts for service cuts in Rob Ford's Toronto
After months packed with a weak, barely-heard consultation process and a maddeningly non-specific communication strategy employed by the mayor's executive committee -- who told us that nothing, specifically, was on the table for cuts, except everything --, today we finally received, by way of the city manager, a list of concrete recommendations for service cuts in the 2012 budget.
- September 13, 2011: Final Recommendations on City Service Cuts Released
A first look at the set of budget cuts Toronto City staff are recommending. High on the list: environment, child care, snow clearing, and affordable housing.
- September 13, 2011: Ford cuts will devastate already struggling Toronto communities
Sarah Vance's daughter has been going to the Brock Early Learning Centre, a non-profit licensed child care located in Brock Avenue Public School, since she was five years old. Now ten, she attends morning and afternoon programs during the school year and full-day programs during the summer months.
- September 13, 2011: Toronto: Sell zoos and theatres, cut daycare, think about closing libraries
City council should consider cuts to the library system, eliminating late-night TTC buses, selling or closing the Toronto Zoo and Riverdale Farm, and cutting the number subsidized child care spaces, Toronto's top bureaucrat says.
- September 12, 2011: Stop the Cuts: The Toronto Declaration
We, the People of Toronto, declare: All public services are vital to communities. We reject the attempts to divide and conquer by pitting community groups against each other in a battle for funding. We demand access to services for all irrespective of immigration status.
- August 21, 2011: Poverty Protest at Loblaws in Toronto
On Saturday afternoon, in a protest organized by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), dozens of people, many directly affected the Province's cut of the Special Diet program, converged on the Loblaws grocery store, at Jarvis and Queen's Quay, to send a message that poverty and hunger are growing and will be challenged.
- August 8, 2011, Bullet No. #533: Selling the City: Rob Ford's Toronto, Carlo Fanelli
As the immediacy of the financial crisis fades from public scrutiny in Canada, its aftershocks continue to strain public finances. The public treasury bailed-out banks and corporations by taking on their bad debts, supplying subsidies and increased spending to counter a sharp recession.
- June 17, 2011: Service Review 'consultation' shuts out most of Toronto
The only way Toronto residents can express their views on the City's Core Service Review 'consultation' is through an online survey, with a response deadline of June 17th.
- June 17, 2011: Toronto Women Respond to Core Service Review
TWCA put together a feminist response to the Core Service Review.
- June 15, 2011: City Moves to Sell-Off Toronto Community Housing, OCAP
The Rob Ford Regime in Toronto City Hall is moving to step up its attacks on poor and working people at top speed. One key part of this is the attack on the people who live in Toronto Community Housing (TCH). Today, Council will vote to sell off 22 single family homes.
- February 25, 2011: Toronto: A Budgetary Debate Fit For Kafka
In what is best described as Kafkaesque theatre, for the last two days Toronto city council debated the capital, operating, water, and waste budgets for 2011.
- February 10, 2011: Toronto: Mayor Ford's Budget Committee Shut Down
**Legal Update: 2 arrests were made today at City Hall. Both are being held over and will be appearing in court on Friday, Feb 11th.