Just when we thought we had seen everything from the Harris Tories', a leaked cabinet document revealed another round of devastating cuts.
The planned cuts were massive -- an additional $800-million from education in the province.
They were also mean-spirited and punitive. The plans involved:
€ Gutting special education programs for deaf and blind children as well as those with attention deficit hyperactive disorder and severe learning disabilities.
€ Cutting $5-million from training programs, including those which provide literacy and basic skills.
€ Cutting $81-million over three years from heritage language and adult English as a second language programs.
€ Cutting another $160-million from universities and colleges.
The list goes on and on.
There was outrage in the legislature the day the document was leaked to the press.
Students and trade unionists heckled the Tories, and were ejected from the gallery.
The actual cuts, when they came, were very close to those leaked to the press.
The Tories have indicated that they will go further.
They are openly toying with the idea of vastly expanding the private-delivery of education in the province.
They are such blind believers in the virtues of the market, that they think that greed is a better basis for education than a belief in public service.
The Tories have to be stopped.
The Ontario Federation of Labour is meeting this week in Toronto.
The OFL leaders need to come up with a plan of action to challenge the ongoing misery being created by the Harris Tories.
We had a magnificent anti-Tory movement -- the days of action.
Those days of action should have culminated in a province-wide general strike.
But the OFL leadership, and the heads of the principal unions in the province, dropped the ball.
They refused to submit to the democratic voice of the OFL members, who had voted for a province-wide general strike.
In refusing to call a province-wide genral strike, they killed the days of action.
We need to put pressure on the union heads to put forward a real plan of action to challenge the Harris cuts.
But we can't afford another drawn out scenario of dithering and fretting and passivity, while our services are cut to the bone.
We need to begin now, at the local level, pushing for the demonstrations, strikes and occupations that are the only real way to challenge these market-mad Tories.