by Laura Lepper
You have probably never heard of a small, rural town in Southgate Township called Dundalk. But its location is significant.
The town is situated at the highest elevation in Ontario, the headwaters of both the Grand and Saugeen rivers, and sits on land deeded to the Six Nations through the Haldimand Proclamation of 1763.
Despite the ecological importance of the region and the outstanding land claim, the Southgate municipal council and Lystek International Inc. are attempting to secretly force through a plan to build a “bio-solids” processing facility just a stone’s throw from the town.
The process and product are banned in much of Europe.
This project would involve trucking Toronto’s sludge – including everything flushed down sewers, toilets, and sinks in homes, hospitals and industry – up to Dundalk to be turned into a “fertilizer”.
This sludge plant is set to be built on land that is practically sitting on water surrounded by wetland.
The sludge would then be spread on farm fields – meaning our food, water and land would be poisoned by sludge.
“Three applications of these biosolids on the land and it’s dead,” says Doyle Prier who lives on a nearby farm.
Lystek and the town council’s plans have been met with powerful resistance from local residents and Six Nations community members alike.
After exhausting the official government channels, concerned Dundalk residents approached Six Nations for assistance in their opposition to the sludge.
Southgate township resident Lori Prier remarks “We hadn’t heard of our council consulting Six Nations … and I became very concerned … because it’s their land.”
Dundalk sits at the very top of the Haldimand Tract, the territory stretching six miles on either side of the entire Grand River, recognized by the British Crown in 1784 as a territory which was specifically granted to the Mohawks and other members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in return for losses suffered for supporting the British side in the war of American Independence.
Sharing concern for the land, the health of their communities and future generations, members of Six Nations have been working together with Dundalk residents to stop construction of the sludge plant.
Because Six Nations people drew a line in the sand saying the construction could not continue on their lands, Dundalk residents were given Haudenosaunee flags to fly on the frontlines of their resistance.
For about 100 days, they held a blockade in the name of Six Nations land rights where they stopped all construction on Lystek. Several organizers are now fighting lawsuits and an injunction.
“As we work to protect the land, in many ways we have a common struggle with Six Nations,” states Dundalk resident Mike Roth.
Echoing many other Dundalk residents, Paul Chatterbull stresses that, “if we don’t work with Six Nations, we have no hope whatsoever.”
This struggle is not only important to support because of the disastrous effect on communities’ health, water and food security this project would have; it is also a living example of the concrete links that are possible between environmental justice and Six Nations land rights, between people seeking justice for non-native and native working class people through the advocacy of Indigenous sovereignty.
Concerned Torontonians should also pay attention because it is our waste products that are planned to be dumped in Dundalk, requiring pending approval of the Toronto Works committee.
Our water and our food will be affected.
Furthermore, this environmentally destructive project would violate both the spirit and the letter of the treaties which allow non-native people to be on this land.
For information on how to get involved with either Six Nations solidarity activities, contact the Toronto First Nations Solidarity Working Group. Email april28info (at) gmail (dot) com. Find out more info at april28.net. Follow @TorontoFNSWG on Twitter.
Julian Ichim is facing a possible prison sentence for political writings published on his blog.
by Julian Ichim
Since I was charged last year for refusing to take down my blog post regarding the piece of shit infiltrator who goes by the name Khalid Mohamed I have decided to do several things with my defense that have irritated some of my close friends. I have chosen to fight these charges on a political basis as opposed to play within the framework of a system designed from the outset to criminalize political people and normalize and justify their repression. Many liberal organizations that work with me on a variety of issues were surprised that I refused to take character references to talk about how much good work I do in the community on the basis that unless they support an end to political persecution of activists they are useless to me.
The reality of the situation is that these charges that I am facing are due to the fact that I chose to write a blog based on my personal experience of being targeted for surveillance and infiltration based on the fact that my ideology is deemed “criminal” by the state because I am a proud Marxist Leninist. Everything that followed afterwards stems from this fact. To play into their game and deal with this as a criminal matter only goes to justify the narrative put forward by the crown, the OPP, CSIS, RCMP and various other police and intelligence services that make up the SIU, a police body who monitored, criminalized, and tried to contain any who chose to dissent against the 2010 Olympics taking place on stolen native land and those who chose to oppose the agenda of the G20 taking place in Toronto.
To fight this on their level means that I must accept the idea that to be political makes one a criminal, and public political people get seen as persons of interests or suspects, something I can’t accept.
To me the issue of refusing to take down my blog was a political decision based on the fact that others were intimidate by the state to shut up and not discuss what happened with the covert ops launched by the state to target, imprison and silence dissent vis a vis the g20. The reason that the state wanted to silence this has nothing to do with the safety of their operatives who testified in open court, but rather so that the people living in this territory would be unaware of the extent in which dirty tricks against political people are the norm, creating the space in which they can continue these attacks.
Every decision on dealing with this case therefore must achieve two things:
1. To expose the extent to which the state will go to criminalize political organizers;
2. Fight for our right to hold whatever political views we chose to hold; and
3. Force the state to admit the political nature of these charges, as well as the fact that those now in jail stemming from G20 related charges as well as others who are incarcerated because of their politics are not hoodlums and thugs but rather political prisoners and should be treated accordingly.
These two goals can’t be achieved in the framework set up by the system and a legal defense that negates the political nature of these charges and serves the interests of the state who has yet to admit that they hold any political prisoners.
While I am expected to play my role in their kangaroo court, holding my head in shame and being fearful and repentant, I instead chose to do the only thing that is politically and logically sound, fight these charges politically, and hold high my bright red banner of Marxism Leninism refusing to be ashamed of my ideology or politics.
When confronted by a state that attempts to criminalize and demonize people due to their politics the only solution is not to water down your politics in an attempt to appease a system whose goals is to uphold power and privilege but rather to take it head on and make the issue the criminalization of politics. I refuse to be ashamed of my ideology and I will win or lose based on that. Tomorrow in court I will show that in the face of state attack the only way forward is to resist, and I will do this as a Marxist Leninist.
McGuinty appointed Tory MPP to WSIB to gun for majority
by Julian Ichim – Kitchener, Ontario
While the Conservatives, Liberals, and NDP struggled to distinguish themselves as they battled it out for control of two ridings in Vaughan and Kitchener that were up for grabs with the September 6 by-elections, less is being said of how the Kitchener by-election was triggered to begin with.
On August 22 at Queen St. Commons in downtown Kitchener, Ralph Gerstenberg, a member of Steelworkers Local 1005 and the Ontario Injured Workers Association, spoke about the plight of injured workers. Gerstenberg described how the latest collaboration between the provincial Liberals and Tories (or at least one Tory) that triggered the by-election in Kitchener is about to make the situation of injured workers much worse.
Progressive Conservative MPP Liz Witmer gave up her seat in late April 2012 at Queen’s Park in exchange for the McGuinty government appointing her as the chair of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (WSIB). This places her in charge of an agency dealing with workplace injuries and compensation pay for injured workers. The plum position in the bureaucracy will pay her nearly $200,000 a year for the job, despite her notorious track record for attacking workers. In exchange, the Liberals now have a chance of returning to their position of majority government.
In her 22-year career as a Progressive Conservative MPP, Witmer served as a senior cabinet minister and Deputy Premier under Mike Harris. As Minister of Labour under Premier Mike Harris, she enacted legislation abolishing the 8-hour work day, attacked unions, slashed basic benefits for workers, and redefined workplace injury to benefit the bosses, all of which hurt workers and their rights and workplace safety.
Participants of the August 22 meeting in Kitchener committed to exposing and opposing the attacks on injured workers moving forward, agreeing to take up door-to-door outreach to explain the need to put the issues of injured workers on the agenda, distributing the newspaper of the Ontario Injured Workers Association, participating in coalition work with other workers, such as the teachers now coming under attack; exposing the blatant opportunism of the political parties; and most importantly, exposing the need for the working class to come up with there own politics and set their own agenda.
By N. Zahra
Teachers protest violation of collective bargaining rights. (Photo credit: Michael Swan)
This month, the Ontario Liberal Government intends to introduce the Putting Students First Act 2012, in order to “provide certainty for students and families that the school year will start as scheduled and will not be interrupted at any time by labour disruptions.” The government’s claims are false.As with other labour disputes, the Liberal government is preemptively choking the right of workers to strike or undertake any political action in order to uphold existing agreements or to ask for changes that would benefit students and education workers. According to ETFO president, Sam Hammond, any claim that the government is making about teachers planning to start the school year with a strike is completely false. As with other public sector employees, the government is trying to malign teachers by claiming that they are not doing their part to combat austerity and take a hit for the team.
The proposed deal being put forward by the Ontario Government includes a reduction in sick days, a two year pay freeze, and unpaid professional development days, where teachers would go to work without being paid. The Province claims that taking unpaid professional activity days somehow benefits young teachers by continuing “to move [them] through the grid according to their experience and additional qualifications.” As a young teacher, not getting paid for days worked and also having a two year pay freeze will not benefit me or my family. All it will do is ensure that my pay does not match my living costs in the coming years. Shame on the provincial government for trampling on workers’ basic rights!
by Marlon Berg
“The place is hot like hell, especially in the summer time at night, bad ventilation, a lot of humidity and of course machines emitting heat doesn’t help.’ said Iain*, a temporary worker at an auto parts plant in the Toronto area. “To top it off I work night shift so there’s the extra stress of not actually functioning like a normal human being. I work for what by most standards are fairly good starting wages but are drastically inferior to the wages of permanent workers. But I’m hardly the hardest done by of the employees that work there, a lot of them have families they never see because we’re given 6-7 days a week. Yes, overtime is paid, but it doesn’t give you much time to do anything else. Theoretically you could turn down the overtime but then you wouldn’t be working there for very long”
These are typical working conditions for auto parts plant workers in the inner suburbs of Toronto and nearby cities. For the first time since the 2008 economic crisis that nearly destroyed the automotive sector, the industry seems to be entering a period of sustained growth. Job opportunities are opening up again at the parts companies that supply GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The three major parts suppliers in Canada, Magna, Linamar, and Martinrea, have all seen slow yet steady growth. Yet, jobs at GM, Ford and Chrysler (the big three) in Ontario continue to decline as these companies persist in closing plants and laying off large numbers of workers to take advantage of the cheaper labour in the United States, particularly in states that have passed anti-union or so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws that make workers’ unions difficult to organize and maintain.
The last Crown Vic to roll off the line at Ford St Thomas, closed Sept 15, 2011. (Photo: CAW Media)
All of the permanent workers at the big three plants in Ontario are unionized with the Canadian Automotive Workers (CAW). However, the CAW has been unable to mount a successful fight against closures and layoffs at the big three and other employers, including some of the parts suppliers that they had unionized in the past. The remaining work is in the parts suppliers and the new hires entering these companies are mostly without any kind of union representation and have often shockingly bad working conditions and the lowest wages in the automotive sector. Some workers, like Ian, are forced to work too much overtime, others work unstable shifts and can’t get enough hours.
“The time I was at Linamar, there was two very serious safety incidents,” says Yelena*, a former employee in Guelph. “In the worst one, someone moved up the line to finish the work they had forgotten, and the component ended up falling 20 feet onto their shoulder.” She explains the reasons behind this kind of accident, “There is a lot of pressure with numbers and forced overtime on Saturdays if the numbers were not met, so people took the numbers very seriously, and it was also one of the hottest days of the summer.” Linamar also “stopped paying him after a week, so he had to go back to work…he also wasn’t getting the extra documentation he needed to see his specialist, and that they were taking a long time to get them to him.” Workers “would have to check off machinery as safe even if it had a problem, and would just have to call in maintenance and wait till they came to fix it while continuing to run.”
“There were also two deaths at Linamar couple years back, one person was electrocuted and another was crushed, and there was another person electrocuted recently too, and he was in a coma last I heard.” Her uncle also works for the company and “his pay has gone down to $16 an hour from $26 an hour a few years ago and he’s been there 17 years. He’s getting older and older, and the work is getting more and more difficult for him, and he’s making less and less money.”
In London, Ontario, at a Caterpillar plant that was unionized with the CAW, the management locked out the workers when they wouldn’t agree to a 50% cut in their wages and then closed the plant so they could move production to Indiana, which has anti-union laws in place. While there was a massive movement against this closure by the workers themselves as well as workers from all over Ontario, who came to London on buses to support the struggle of the London workers against Caterpillar, the CAW was unable to save these workers’ jobs. Herman Rosenfeld, a retired automotive worker and long-time member of CAW, is very critical of the CAW’s approach to the Caterpillar lockout. He believes that rather than just standing outside the plant and setting up a picket around it, they “needed to take it over, and the reason why they needed to take it over was that taking it over would have meant that they would have upped the anti, they would have raised the question of pressuring the government to take it over.” While they did win good severance packages for their members, many good blue collar jobs were lost in London due to the inability of CAW to, in Rosenfeld’s words, “actually challenge capital”.
It seems that across the board, whether unionized or not, auto workers are under attack. CAW is currently in negotiations with the big three automakers and just voted at their recent convention to merge with another big union, Canadian Energy and Paperworkers, to form a new union that will attempt to initiate a massive organizing drive to recruit more racialized workers and work in immigrant neighbourhoods, which they have traditionally failed to do. It seems that the union leadership has realized that auto workers in Ontario and industrial workers generally are at a historic make or break point.
Iain, the temp auto worker, believes “that it has to be an initiative that comes from the workers themselves, and that if there is actually the anger and the will to organize, nobody can stop them, but people can divert them and channel that energy into fruitless enterprises…and as far as unions having halls in immigrant neighborhoods, I don’t know of a single union that has a big presence there, but all of these temp agencies have a major presence in immigrant neighborhoods.”
[*Name changed to protect workers’ identities - Ed.]
By Diamond Wisdom
As various levels of government have moved forward with their austerity agenda, warning bells should be ringing in the ears of low-income people because they are most likely to shoulder the brunt of reforms designed to free up government money for redistribution to private business.
Social assistance “reform” can be defined as a movement that changes government responsibility for welfare policy and cuts benefits.
Previous attempts to “reform” the system failed miserably, since more money had to be spent on dealing with the health and social consequences of the “common sense” revolution.
According to the National Council on Welfare’s “The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty” Report:
We should be rethinking where we make our investments and spend existing funds more wisely to get better results, since the methods used over the past 40 years ago haven’t worked. 1.7 million Ontarians live below the poverty line. More than 830,000 Ontarians currently receive social assistance benefits through either Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program.
Most Ontarians aren’t aware of the Social Assistance Review or its potential impact their lives, but the long-awaited Social Assistance Review recommendations are scheduled to be released in September, 2012. So far reports about its process have marked it as being “disappointing”.
Poverty reduction became law in Ontario in 2009. The government’s pledge to poverty reduction was touted in a government of Ontario announcement of the review as being “key to our economic future and to harnessing the potential of people as our most important provincial resource.” The announcement of the Ontario Social Assistance Review pledged to “remove barriers and increase opportunity – with a particular focus on people trying to move into employment from social assistance.”
People living with disabilities and low incomes should be paying special attention to the Social Assistance Review Commission recommendations; as the labour market conditions and reform in other areas such as employment insurance eligibility are likely to have the most impact on their ability to fully participate in the labour market and to escape the cycle of poverty.
People with disabilities already face significant challenges in finding and maintaining employment. The second social assistance review discussion paper seemed to target them the most for employment reforms without addressing the key areas in which the Ontarians with Disabilities Act falls short in ensuring the education, housing and employment needs of those with disabilities. It is deeply concerning that the review process and terms of reference ignored the need to deal with the flaws in the Ontario Works legislation first. The very flaws designed to keep people trapped in the poverty cycle!
Addressing poverty is not only a matter of economics; it’s a matter of social justice. Poverty is poverty whether your income comes from social assistance or low-waged work. If you don’t have the income to meet the costs of living you are poor! Government and the corporate media will make divisions between poor people in order to suit their reform agenda.
Anti-poverty advocates and low-income Ontarians who are aware of the review are understandably angry that the McGuinty government has undermined the work of the Social Assistance Review Commission by moving ahead with new reforms before the review recommendations are released. This demonstrates a lack of good faith and sincerity on the government’s part. The Community Start-up and Maintenance Benefit and the Home Repairs Benefit were both eliminated in the 2012 budget. The cuts will come into force in January 2013.
Social assistance is the place of last resort that Ontarians turn to when employment insurance benefits have been exhausted and they have been unable to find work. The terms “fairness” and “fiscal reality” have been used to create divisions between higher income tax payers and those who rely on social assistance. This deflects discussion from political choices and structural issues of the current welfare system that undermines the economic, educational and labour market participation progress for recipients of social assistance.
The true “fiscal reality” is that repeating the mistakes of the past is both unacceptable and unaffordable. We can continue to live in denial or we can have an adult conversation about the economic and social justice impacts of growing levels of poverty, which seems to be the direction that the McGuinty crew are leading us in. Is this the kind of society that you would choose to live in?
The personal has no choice but to become political in this context. I want encourage you to respond to the review recommendations. They count on us to believe differently, but we are neither voiceless nor powerless. Don’t let others speak for you. Tell the media and your elected officials how these recommendations will impact your life. Pressure on elected officials works. Toronto saw that through the Core Service Review and 2012 budget process. If your elected officials are not representing you effectively, then collectively “we” have the power to help fire them on Election Day. Tap into what’s going on around you and push back. It’s your right.
Social Assistance Review info: http://www.socialassistancereview.ca/home
There are other groups that you can get involved in who are speaking to the matters that impact the lives of the poor and the community including Poverty Free Ontario
Poverty Free Ontario www.povertyfreeontario.ca
Income Security Advocacy Centre http://www.incomesecurity.org/
Centre for Policy Alternatives http://www.policyalternatives.ca/
Alliance for a Poverty Free Toronto http://www.povertyfreetoronto.org/
Wellesley Institute http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/
by Megan Kinch
Don’t even think about reading. That’s the message prisoners are getting after a bureaucratic maze of regulations effectively cuts off access to printed materials in some Toronto-area prisons. The lack of access to reading material is only one example of the conditions prisons generally, where the institution has almost complete impunity to mess with the daily lives of inmates, which also shows in other areas, such as the lack of respect for fasting prisoners during Ramadan.
Picture drawn by children attending a Prisoner’s Justice Day vigil at the Don Jail. (photo: Sterling Stutz)
In Toronto West Detention Centre, located in Rexdale, it used to be possible to mail books to prisoners directly from the publisher, and there was a small library cart in the prison. But when Alex Hundert (alexhundert.wordpress.com), a political prisoner incarcerated for his role in organizing G20 protests, was sent to Toronto West this year, this was no longer the case. The book cart had not been seen on his unit in 5 months. Alex was told by other prisoners that there had been a raid on his unit a month before and that every single book, including a bible and two Korans were thrown out by the guards. Contrary to official policy, books mailed directly from the publishers were being withheld as well. Even “educational” TV channels such as History and Discovery channel have been canceled. Alex writes: “the less intellectual stimulation there is… the more violence there is in this shockingly overcrowded jail… this place feels like a powder keg waiting to explode.”
When the Toronto Star picked up the story about the lack of books from Alex’s prison blog, the institution claimed that the library cart was not being run due to ‘lack of volunteers’. An executive from the John Howard society told The Star that actually they would be able to find volunteers and that they had never been asked to provide any. Alex points out that inmates do many other jobs in prison including laundry and food and that there is no reason they couldn’t also push the library cart around.
In women’s prison at Vanier, located just west of Toronto in Milton, the situation is slightly better. According to Mandy Hiscocks (boredbutnotbroken.tao.ca/), also imprisoned for G20 protest organizing, the prison cart library has improved slightly since 2010 when only romance novels were available. But the only books that can be mailed to Vanier are if they are officially on the syllabus of a course in which the prisoner is registered.
Alex writes that needlessly cutting essential services like books in jails, or asking volunteers to do it is part of the austerity agenda, “especially when those services are needed by vulnerable and targeted people like prisoners or migrants or the poor. Ironically, it was organizing protests against the austerity agenda that got me thrown in jail in the first place.” Alex has since been transferred to prison in Penetang, where he was punished after asking about his newspaper subscription, which was being maliciously withheld by the guards.
by Natasha Brien
On August 10, 1974, a prisoner by the name of Eddie Nalon died after bleeding to death in the segregation unit of Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in Kingston, Ontario. Systemic issues of unjust prison policy, and abuse of power, were deeply entangled in the cause of his death.
Mr. Nalon initially wanted a transfer to another unit. After officially requesting a transfer, he was instead placed in segregation, and eventually solitary confinement. Mr. Nalon made a written request to be placed back into general population, which the board approved; however, this decision was not conveyed to Mr. Nalon.
When August 9, 1974 arrived – the ninth of the month being the standard transfer date to be released into general population – and he wasn’t moved, Mr. Nalon must have assumed he would be left in segregation longer, and that his request was denied. The following day, Mr. Nalon committed suicide. It was later discovered that the emergency button in his cell was non-functional, thus any attempts to call for help, would have likely gone unheard by prison guards.
Every year since his death, August 10 is the day when Mr. Nalon’s life is commemorated; and has eventually this day coming to be recognized as Prisoner’s Justice Day (PJD). On this day, inmates and their allies in Canada and throughout some U.S. states, protest the mistreatment of men and women behind bars. Supporters of PJD express abhorrence for inhumane prison conditions, as well as mourn the deaths of countless people who have lost their lives while in custody or through conflict with the law. Prisoners remain in their cells for the day, fasting, and refusing to work, while non-incarcerated people hold gatherings in many cities across Canada and the U.S.
The theme of Toronto’s 2012 PJD, was ‘Women in Prison’, which took place at the Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton Centre. Brampton also held a PJD that took place in St. James the Apostle Church with the theme being ‘We Will Be There for You’. At these two community gatherings, loved ones of inmates, ex-prisoners, activists, and concerned organizations partook in fasts, presentations, songs, poetry, viewing documentaries, and readings of stories from former inmates.
What really stood out, was the common theme that most imprisoned people come from various communities struggling to rise above oppression – poverty, systemic racism, childhood abuse, spirit injuries via colonialism, gender injustices etc. – only to enter into further institutional forms of violence via incarceration. Aside from extreme lateral violence amongst inmates, correctional institutions have also been guilty of violating the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) code of conduct.
A well-documented example of prison violence is evident in the case of Ashley Smith – a woman who died in solitary confinement at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in October 2007. Some may say that Ms. Smith killed herself: the immediate cause of her death came through self-asphyxiation, as guards watched the incident take place. But Ms. Smith had been transferred between institutions seventeen times already within the year, having been pepper sprayed, tasered, subjected to full body restraints, involuntarily injected with anti-psychotic medications, and spending most of her last three years in “the hole” (solitary confinement). It’s hard to imagine how anyone could survive such conditions.
During the evening of the 2012 PJD in Toronto, a vigil was held outside of the Don Jail to protest the experiences people like Ms. Smith endure. People took to the microphone to share personal experiences and statistics surrounding these shameful conditions, and the dangers involved in expanding prisons, as well as creating harsher criminal laws. The crowd yelled in unison messages of support for inmates in hope that men currently in the Don Jail – and ghosts of men and women who have passed – would know they are not alone. The vigil concluded with a candle lighting ceremony, honouring our fallen brothers and sisters, and those still in the prison struggle, while putting out a call for the implementation of restorative justice everywhere.
By the May 1st Movement
When he arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport 3 years ago, Santiago Escobar saw a large group of people who caught his attention. From their clothing, resembling the traditional clothing of indigenous peoples of Central America, he assumed they were Latin Americans. Having just arrived in Canada on a work permit himself, his curiosity got the better of him and he went to speak to people in the group.
“It was not easy to strike up a conversation because they were intimidated, one of them told me they are farm workers and they were forbidden to talk to strangers,” said Escobar. “When I asked him who had been forbidden this, he chose to keep walking and our conversation ended there. I felt a lot of mistrust and fear from the worker.”
Escobar now works with the Agricultural Workers Alliance in Virgil, Ontario providing services and advocacy for migrant workers there. Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers from some 80 countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Philippines arrive in Canada on a temporary, seasonal basis. Over the last decade, the number of these workers that enter into Canada has increased from 100,000 to 250,000.
Often working for minimum wage in agricultural fields, hotels, restaurants, slaughterhouses, factories, and households as caregivers, these workers also must pay for their flights, insurance, and housing while most receive no payment for overtime nor rest during the holidays. Moreover, since their job security is primarily at the discretion of the employer, many workers endure further hardships so as to not run the risk of being sent back.
A worker who chose to identified only as Francisco said “fortunately the members of the Support Centre help by taking us to the medical clinics, because if you notify the Patron (master), you run with the risk of being returned to Mexico, as the Patron is not interested in having people sick or not produce what each worker must produce. Here we come to work and if you cannot work then you are on the next flight back”.
In addition, these workers must pay the numerous income, retirement, social security and workplace safety taxes that a regular worker would pay despite the fact that they are often denied access to many of these benefits. Edward, a Jamaican migrant worker who has been participating in the program for almost 2 decades, was denied Parental Benefits because he did not apply during the time required by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. ”I do not understand, why after working 19 years within this program, paying all my taxes, my application is denied, no one informed me about the time required, here in Canada nor in Jamaica”. With this erratic weather, many of the crops have been devastated in southern Ontario. As a result, hundreds of workers have been sent back without any access to the Employment Insurance that they pay into, or any of the compensation that Ontario farmers receive from the government.
Despite these exploitative conditions, these women and men take out personal loans to apply and endure in order to earn money for the families they leave behind. In many of the ‘sender’ countries, the governments have struck these ‘labour export’ agreements with countries like Canada as a way to address high unemployment domestically, as well as a way to bring money into the country in the form of remittances. In the Philippines for example, remittances which come primarily from overseas Filipino workers account for over 9% of the Gross Domestic Product.
In addition, these governments have continued a reckless subservience to domestic economic policies which favour transnational firms over the people and local producers.
“Before the NAFTA treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico - ed.], I cultivated my corn fields and had more work in Mexico” said Magdalena Perez, an agricultural worker. “If you invested $1000 you would at least get back $1800. Currently, you can’t even recover $500 because it is cheaper to buy imported U.S. corn,” said Perez. Heavily subsidized US corn was allowed to enter the Mexican market as part of NAFTA.
Over the past year or so, the work done by the Agricultural Workers Alliance/ United Food and Commercial Workers and migrant advocacy organizations such as Justicia for Migrant Workers and MIGRANTE have raised the profile of the plight of these workers and the conditions of their super-exploitation. Tragically, this has not lead to greater protections as evidence by recent deaths of workers including the 11 killed in Hampstead while being driven in unsafe conditions, as well as the deaths of Paul Roach and Ralston White, two Jamaican workers who died while attempting to fix a pump for a vinegar vat at the apple orchard where they worked.
Currently in Ontario, there exists a legal framework that inherently places these workers at risk and makes them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation as well as injury or even death. In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled with the Ontario government denying migrant workers the rights to join or form union despite the International Labour Organizations ruling that this constituted a breach of labour and human rights.
While labour organizations are beginning a campaign to address the issues of workplace rights and dignity, the May 1st Movement and its affiliates reaffirm that the safety and rights of the most vulnerable set of workers including migrants must be on the top of the agenda. Following the cue from the Fraser Institute’s recommendations to shift immigration further towards this labour import model where citizenship and status are used as tools to divide and discipline workers, the Conservative government are openly floating schemes that would incentivize further exploitation by allowing employers to pay migrant workers 15% less than the minimum wage. Not only is this a brazen attack on what little rights migrants workers have, but it is also setting the stage for a pitting of workers – migrant vs. residents – against each other for the withering pool of jobs. As we sink deeper into this global crisis in capitalism, this will surely feed xenophobic and racist scapegoating in the same way it has in Europe.
We must demand the end to the distinct categorization and regulation of migrant labour designed to keep them in precarious conditions, the guaranteeing of the social benefits that they are entitled and pay into, the right to organize and associate, and clear pathways to residency. By fighting for the rights of these workers, we are also fighting to ensure that no government is able to lower the bar for all of us.
While fighting for these necessary reforms to alleviate the condition of these workers, must also be clear that this international phenomenon of labour import and export – the trading and use of women and men as cheap, disposable labour – is an inhumane practice that lines the pockets of the companies and governments involved, while keeping countries poor and workers subjugated.
by Corrie Sakaluk
Recently there have been serious allegations raised about political editing of research and academic misconduct by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).
A report titled “Student Services at Queen’s University: An Evaluation of the Supported Learning Groups Pilot Program” has had its contents publicly questioned by two of the three researchers listed as the report’s authors: Jennifer Massey and Sean Field. The third researcher, Jeff Burrow, chose not to get involved for personal reasons.
HEQCO was created in 2005 through the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario Act. HEQCO has a mandate to “evaluate the postsecondary sector and provide policy recommendations to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities to enhance the access, quality and accountability of Ontario’s colleges and universities” and claims to be an “arm’s-length agency that brings evidence-based research to the continued improvement of the postsecondary education system in Ontario”.
The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations has contested HEQCO’s description of itself and its activities, saying in a statement issued on April 27 that “it is important to recognize that the Council is directly accountable to the Government of Ontario and has an explicit mandate to provide policy advice to the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities….it is a crown agency. The term ‘arm’s-length’ appears nowhere in HEQCO’s authorizing Act, and the Government of Ontario can alter the composition and mandate of the Council at any time”.
Council members at HEQCO are appointed for two or three year terms by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and they provide an annual report to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, who then presents the report to the entire Legislative Assembly.
HEQCO initiates and conducts research studies, evaluations and reports, often in partnership with post-secondary institutions. Since becoming fully operational in 2007, their website says that they have “published, completed, or have in progress, over 120 publications stemming from research it has conducted or commissioned.”
In 2009, HEQCO contracted Queen’s University as a research partner to produce a report on the value of Supported Learning Groups (SLGs), as reflected in the experience of an SLG pilot project at Queen’s. Massey was employed by Queen’s University at student affairs and conducted research in that capacity, and Field was sub-contracted by Queen’s as a research assistant for the project.
The study used a mixed method approach: “Quantitative data was compiled from student surveys, student records and SLG attendance files collected during the 2009-2010 academic year. Qualitative data was collected through focus groups conducted at the end of the 2009- 2010 academic year.” Five research questions or themes guided the inquiry: factors influencing SLG participation, SLG participation as related to academic performance, drop-out rates, engagement, and study skills.
SLGs are one example of Supplemental Instruction (SI) models that, according to the introduction of the report, have “grown considerably on…campuses in an a effort to enhance student engagement and retention in large undergraduate courses, as well as improve grades.”
“As budgets are squeezed and first-year class sizes increase,” the introduction reads, “SI has become an important component of the delivery of undergraduate education.”
According to Field, the report “went through several months of revisions, like most academic publications. HEQCO asked for changes and many of them were reasonable, so we made them. Then theyasked for a bunch of changes that we said that we wouldn’t make, and we provided rationale for not making those revisions.”
Most at issue for Field was that “they wanted to cut the most critical paragraph of text in our literature review that contextualizes our research in relation to ongoing neoliberal education reforms, and they didn’t give a strong rationale for the cut.”
“They also wanted us to aggregate certain statistics.” Field said. “We refused on the basis that it would provide a less precise view of the results and we didn’t believe that was ethical”.
HEQCO’s executive director of communications Susan Bloch-Nevitte said, “In this and all research contracts, HEQCO provides feedback on draft reports, which the author is free to accept or reject. This is why regular communication with the author is so critical. We take no position pro or con on specific interventions. We are focused on evidence and we take our responsibility for research quality very seriously.”
“By June of 2011, we had submitted our final draft” Field clarifies. “But they kept contacting us and asking us to make the same changes over and over. We said no and that we were done. Then we saw, to our surprise, that the report had been published, and all of the changes we had said no to had been made.”
On April 10, 2012, Jennifer Massey sent an email to HEQCO president & CEO Harvey Weingarten outlining her and Field’s concerns and requests. “We were not made aware of the intended publication date,” reads Massey’s email, and “substantial changes were made to the report without our knowledge or consent.”
“We are concerned because we believe these changes constitute a breach of academic and intellectual integrity by HEQCO” her email continues. “The changes alter the text of the report such that the report no longer accurately reflects the opinions of the authors. Nowhere does the report indicate that the text was substantially altered without knowledge or consent of the authors after final submission, or by whom”.
The changes outlined and contested in Massey’s first email include:
Massey’s email also requested that the report be removed from the HEQCO website, that the original final report be published, and that HEQCO disclose who made the changes and apologize.
HEQCO has placed responsibility for the edits squarely upon Queen’s University, refused to apologize and offered only to remove Massey’s and Field’s name from their version of the report. Weingarten’s email reads, “HEQCO neither wrote nor inserted or deleted any portions of the final report. The HEQCO contract had been signed with Queen`s University, and because the original principal investigator had not satisfactorily fulfilled her contractual obligations, Queen’s University chose to proceed with final revisions, which we subsequently published.”
In an interview with Bloch-Nevitte on April 25, she said “Queen’s University undertook to complete the final revisions to produce a publication-ready final report.” She said, “there may have been changes made that are inappropriate in their view.”
Field said, “The burden of responsibility lies with HEQCO as the publisher, although they’ve tried to lay the blame at the feet of Queen’s University. We don’t know who made the changes. We expected to receive an email or phone call from Queen’s to help clear things up but they’ve been absolutely silent, which is really bizarre. We copied them on all of our communications with HEQCO.”
Massey says that HEQCO has “responded to our grievance by pointing to timelines, contracts, and other parties” and that “these responses are neither sufficient nor satisfactory.” She says that HEQCO “provides a very selective narrative of events as they occurred, diverting attention away from the important issue that HEQCO, by their own admission, published a report knowing it contained material not authorized by the authors.”
“If there was a contractual problem prior to us expressing concern about the report, they certainly didn’t bring it up” says Field. “I’m confused as to why they didn’t contact us about it, as they were in contact with us about other things.”
Massey is more vocal, “the suggestion that the authors were unresponsive or unreachable is ridiculous. We had satisfactorily fulfilled our contractual obligations to HEQCO, and this is evident by the fact that the text of our final report submitted on June 6, 2011 corresponds with the published report. This confirms that the final report we submitted was acceptable for publication.”
Bloch-Nevitte says the situation “appears to be a misunderstanding and it is unfortunate that the researchers involved with this project didn’t contact HEQCO or Queen’s to clarify the facts before making public allegations.”
But Massey is resolute that “The disclaimer printed on page two of the report, poses that the opinions presented in the report are solely those of the authors, and HEQCO accepts this to be a false representation. They admit publishing a report with full knowledge that it contained changes made by people other than the authors. This constitutes a breach of academic and intellectual integrity by HEQCO”.
All HEQCO contracts require researchers to allow the following disclaimer to appear on the completed project: Funding for this research was provided by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.
Field said, “The way the disclaimer reads at the beginning of the report is misleading and false. HEQCO is presenting the report as if has the same weight as peer-reviewed research, which is not true. If HEQCO published the report and said that it was compiled by HEQCO with contributions by the following authors, then this wouldn’t be an issue. But that’s not what they did.”
OCUFA has taken issue with the disclaimer as well, publicly stating that, in this case, “the conclusions were manifestly not those of the authors, at least not those listed on the publication. As such, it was a false statement and should have been removed prior to publication.”
OCUFA also believes that, in general, “the disclaimer suggests that HEQCO has little control over the final product….[and] is misleading as to the nature of HEQCO research”, since “it creates the impression that the research commissioned by HEQCO is disinterested academic research, rather than research conducted by a contractor hired by a government agency”, and since HEQCO contracts “assign ownership, copyright, and moral rights for all research deliverables to HEQCO”.
“We recommend that the disclaimer be substantially revised or removed entirely from future HEQCO research publications”, concludes OCUFA on this matter.
OCUFA also suggests that “the HEQCO contract is properly seen as a consulting contract”, given that they operates as a research and policy contractor for the provincial government, soliciting research from experts and practitioners in the higher education field. The research contract is thus very different from those used by granting councils, independent think tanks, or academic publishers…The complete waiver of moral rights to the completed work required in the HEQCO contract is unusual in academic research, but common in consulting contracts”. As a result of this situation they have warned their members to be aware that “working with HEQCO requires the researcher to surrender all ownership of, and moral rights to, the final product”.
“If HEQCO recognizes the so-called misunderstanding” Massey says that, in this case, “then they have a responsibility to correct it. The resolution to this situation is straight forward.”
“Miscommunications happen all of the time” agrees Field. “But rarely does an organization act in the way that HEQCO did, acknowledging a miscommunication but deciding to publish what they want under the author’s names anyways.”
Field also voices a broader concern that sets off alarm bells regarding the legitimacy of research supporting a massive onslaught of cuts across the provincial public sectors.
“From what I understand” he said, “the Drummond Report drew heavily on HEQCO research, and Drummond’s recommendations are being used to reformulate public policy all across Ontario. The big question is: If this has happened to us, how many other researchers has it happened to? Academic integrity has not been upheld and yet these reports are being used to formulate policy. It’s a very serious issue.”
These concerns have been publicly echoed by the Society of Graduate and Professional Students at Queen’s University (SGPS), the Canadian Federation of Students, and OCUFA.
A press release issued by the SGPS unequivocally stated: “Political interference in academic research is deeply disturbing, endangering the credibility of the researchers involved, the institution that supports them, and HEQCO itself, while throwing the door wide open to ill-considered policy changes motivated by ideology rather than an objective evaluation of the facts.”
The SGPS has supported Field and Massey’s requests to HEQCO, as well as joined the Canadian Federation of Students in a call for the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to “Establish a panel of academics to review HEQCO’s research practices, with an eye towards holding [HEQCO] to the same exacting academic standards, especially including peer review, prevailing within the system that HEQCO purports to serve”.
OCUFA has also stated that ” the revelation that HEQCO published research that contained unapproved changes damages the research credibility of the Council” and has recommended that the Government of Ontario conduct an independent review of HEQCO’s research procedures. Until a research review is completed, OCUFA has advised its members “to exercise caution when working with HEQCO”.
The OCUFA statement goes on to say that ” While we do not believe that HEQCO or Queen’s University violated the terms of the HEQCO research contract…Arguing that no wrongdoing occurred because there was no contractual breach misses the point. It is wrong to change someone’s work without his or her permission, and even more wrong to publish that changed work under his or her name. We are now left with a series of unsettling questions: has this occurred to other HEQCO research reports? What is the motivation behind the changes? How sure are we about the reliability of research published by HEQCO?”
