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Decentralized Democracy

Joel Harden

  • MPP
  • Member of Provincial Parliament
  • Ottawa Centre
  • New Democratic Party of Ontario
  • Ontario
  • 109 Catherine St. Ottawa, ON K2P 0P4 JHarden-CO@ndp.on.ca
  • tel: 613-722-6414
  • fax: 613-722-6703
  • JHarden-QP@ndp.on.ca

  • Government Page
  • Sep/27/23 10:00:00 a.m.
  • Re: Bill 131 

I listened to my friends in the government intently, for both of those addresses. Thank you for those this morning.

My major concern as we looked through Bill 131, when it was given to us on Monday morning of this week, is that—the women and men who work in our transit systems do really difficult jobs, and they’re very proud of the working conditions they’ve built up in those jobs over decades. They’ve contacted me this week with concerns that schedule 1 of Bill 131 is an unnecessary intrusion into their bargaining rights; that there is an aspect of their collective bargaining agreement that allows service integration to happen between transit agencies; that the government doesn’t have to go back to this particular provision of making the contracting-out language of their collective bargaining agreements null and void, as it did under Bill 2. So my question to the minister and to the parliamentary assistant is, are you prepared, this week, to work with those transit partners who could help you get to where you want to go without going down that road?

188 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
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