February 28, 2012 - No. 25

Discussion of the Drummond Report

What to Make of McGuinty's Response

• This Week in the Legislature

Discussion of the Drummond Report
• Suspect Paragons of Virtue - Jane Steeple
• What to Make of McGuinty's Response - Steve Rutchinski
• An Assault on Public Service Labour Relations and Compensation - Christine Nugent
• Drummond Out of Step with Ontario
• Drummond's Dehumanizing Public Sector Incentive and Surveillance System - Rob Woodhouse

Stepping Up Resistance to Education Cutbacks
• University of Toronto Teaching Assistants to Vote on Tentative Agreement

Anti-Social Privatization Offensive in Toronto
• Ford's TTC Agenda Results in Service Cuts and Chaos - Jim Nugent

This Week in the Legislature

The First Session of the 40th Parliament of Ontario resumed on February 21. Among the Orders of the Day this past week was discussion on public services which included debates on the recommendations of the Drummond Report on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services released on February 15.

On the opening day of the session, Premier Dalton McGuinty commented on questions from opposition leader Tim Hudak who raised concerns about spending and the growing debt crisis and the need to implement the recommendations of the Drummond Report immediately. In response, the premier said:

"I do want to quote a little bit from the Drummond Report because I think it's always helpful. In particular, he [Drummond] said that 'spending is neither out of control nor wildly excessive. Ontario runs one of the lowest-cost provincial governments in Canada relative to its GDP and has done so for decades.' It also goes on to make some interesting findings. In relation to our GDP, total government spending in Ontario is the third-lowest in Canada, the tax burden is the second-lowest in Canada and per capita spending is the lowest in Canada."

McGuinty noted that in the near future a legislative committee will take responsibility for giving full consideration to the Drummond Report. He also repeatedly said that implementation of Drummond's recommendations would be made through pre-budgetary consultations in the legislature and with Ontarians.

In this issue, Ontario Political Forum continues the discussion on the need to oppose the anti-social, anti-worker aims of the McGuinty government and its Drummond Report.

Discussion of the Drummond Report

Suspect Paragons of Virtue

- Jane Steeple -

With the release of the Drummond Report on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services last week, politicians and the media have been speculating on the measures which will be taken to implement it. Leader of the Opposition Tim Hudak raised the issue in the Legislature demanding swift measures and Premier McGuinty retorted cool as a cucumber. What's the hurry, he seemed to say. A legislative committee will study it; the government will consult with Ontarians; our finances are in great shape. Trust us. We will do the right thing. The media duly jumped on the bandwagon saying that McGuinty "surprised many" with his laid back approach.

What is this about? McGuinty said, "As a government we will not make thoughtless, reckless across-the-board cuts." Then he said, "What Ontarians do not want are the same old tired talking points or ill-considered knee-jerk criticisms or mindless ideology that either says just cut everything or don't cut anything."

From this "same old tired (Liberal) talking point" we get him calling any opposition to the government's nation-wrecking and destruction of the public infrastructure an "ill-considered knee-jerk criticism" or "mindless ideology."

The Liberals usually claim they have no ideology and blame extremist ideologies for everything. Here, once again, McGuinty is suggesting the Liberals represent not "a mindless ideology" but the golden mean, fairness, balance and good sense. They are the neither "just cut anything or don't cut anything" paragons of virtue.

What is surprising is not that after so many months of preparing for the Drummond Report with propaganda about the sorry state of Ontario's deficit and debt and the need to cut whatever cannot be tied down, à la Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, McGuinty is now portraying himself as a paragon of moderation. What is shocking is that he thinks this image fools anyone other than himself.

Nation-wrecking in Ontario was unleashed by the Mike Harris government which did everything in the name of "revolution" and a "Common Sense Revolution" at that. He promoted himself as a worthy champion of the rich on the basis of his declaration that he was not elected to be popular but to do what was necessary. Once this became a spent penny, after a transition under Ernie Eves, we got the McGuinty government which claimed it would be moderate. Under the banner of moderation, it has handed over unprecedented sums of money to corporate interests. Even as jobs have been destroyed much faster than new ones are created, the government says that paying the rich is necessary to attract investments and create jobs.

It is unfortunate that for years the workers' and students' movements did not hold the McGuinty government to account because they said the task was to hold his feet to the fire for his electoral promises. These promises were never discussed nor adopted by the working people but the impression was created that they were "good" and the only problem was to make sure they were implemented.

Now that the results of these "promises" lie bare for everyone to see, and the working people and their organizations are refusing to stand by and see more of the same, our Mr. McGuinty thinks he can get his honeymoon back. He will be "measured, reasonable, fair," he is telling us.

Say NO to fraud! Only the fight of the people to provide their rights with a guarantee will make it so. Step up the fight against the anti-social offensive!

What to Make of McGuinty's Response

- Steve Rutchinski -

The media expressed surprise when Premier Dalton McGuinty responded to the release of the Drummond Report on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services last week, saying: "as a government we will not make thoughtless, reckless across-the-board cuts." He added: "What Ontarians do not want are the same old tired talking points or ill-considered knee-jerk criticisms or mindless ideology that either says just cut everything or don't cut anything."

What should we make of McGuinty's response? Based on Drummond's past record and public remarks there was never any doubt that the reforms Drummond would recommend would be anti-social and retrogressive: cuts to social program funding; downsizing the public service; salary freezes and other concessions; privatization of delivery of public services like health care, etc. McGuinty essentially got the report he (we) paid for so what is to be made of his attempts to distance himself from the recommendations?

We are being set up. McGuinty creates a diversion that he is confronted with forces arguing "cut everything" or "don't cut anything," both of which he characterizes as ideologically driven, while presenting his government's approach as more sober, pragmatic -- "common sense," to borrow a phrase from the Mike Harris era.

March 2003 demonstration against then-Premier Eves Anti-Social Offensive.

What's it about? There are not a few business interests, very powerful ones at that, all demanding to be the beneficiaries of the dismantling and privatization of public services. McGuinty is asserting that as head of the province, he is the one who is going to be in control of those decisions and that he will keep in check all contending interests, especially the workers' movement and the demands for a new direction for the economy.

McGuinty came to power when the Harris/Eves Conservatives could no longer hold on. It soon became apparent however that even with a change of the party in power, the workers and people had no say over the direction of the society. The workers' movement came under pressure not to be political, nor have its own program but instead to keep the Liberals' feet to the fire to deliver on their promises. What those promises were exactly and whose interests were being served was not to be discussed, however.

Under the McGuinty Liberals the anti-worker labour legislation reforms of Harris are still in place and McGuinty has written more of his own. The McGuinty government upholds the right of monopolies like Caterpillar, U.S. Steel, Vale, Xstrata and the forestry and auto monopolies to destroy productive assets, wreck our economy, steal retirees' pensions, etc. while public right is left to the workers' resistance to defend. Privatization of public infrastructure and services from hydro-electricity to health care -- while still publicly funded -- has gone further than Mike Harris even dreamed was possible.

With much less fanfare, the McGuinty Liberals went even lower than Drummond's recommended 0.8 per cent cap for funding increases to government programs. McGuinty actually reduced funding for provincial programs from $94.8 billion in 2008-09 to $91.6 billion in 2009-10 in the midst of the crisis (after "stimulus" spending is discounted). Likewise program spending in 2008-09 increased only 0.76 per cent over 2007-2008.

The Drummond Report takes a slash and burn approach. McGuinty says he has a better way. But this difference is one of method -- both have the same anti-social aim in mind. A new direction is needed for our economy and the society built upon it. The alternative is to turn the situation around by resolving the crisis in a manner which favours the working people, not the rich. To do so the workers' organizations need to develop their independent politics by rejecting the reforms the rich are proposing and advocating reforms which affirm the rights which belong to people by virtue of their being human. This will smash attempts to depoliticize people by keeping them disinformed. All out to affirm the rights of all as the way forward for Ontario!

An Assault on Public Service Labour Relations
and Compensation

- Christine Nugent -

The section of the Drummond Report on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services that addresses labour relations and compensation says: "Any government wanting to change the delivery of services must work with the people who deliver those services and with the unions that represent those people." That has not been the experience of Ontario public sector workers, nor is it what the Drummond Commission is proposing be implemented.

There were three commissioners who assisted Don Drummond: Dominic Giroux, Susan Pigott and Carol Stephenson. According to the report they "brought to this work long and varied experience and keen minds that added enormously to the quality of our thinking." But whose interest does this experience and these qualities serve?

The displaced Ontario and Quebec Bell operators know well the experience and quality of the thinking and work of Carol Stephenson. Ms. Stephenson began her career at Bell Canada in 1973. She rose to a number of executive positions at the company, including Vice President of Bell Canada and President and Chief Operating Officer (Americas) of BCE Media. She left BCE in 1999. The last year of her "quality" work was implementing cuts and attacks on the livelihood, wages and pensions of the 3,400 Bell operators in Ontario and Quebec. She brought the experience of attacking workers' resistance and organizations to the Drummond Commission. Stephenson has brought from the private sector the template for labour relations and compensation to the public sector in Ontario through her role as commissioner. The Bell operators have their experience with her and fought to oppose monopoly right over the years of her reign.

The college part-time workers have recent experience with a government that implemented unilateral anti-worker changes to labour relations and the delivery of services. The McGuinty government is no stranger to these recommendations. College workers continue to fight for the right to unionize. Full-time faculty and support staff, seeking wages and working conditions commensurate with the work they do, are familiar with a government that refuses to work with them, impose offers, squashes collective bargaining and negates their union bargaining committees for months on end over the past three years.

The aim of this government has been to change the delivery of services and alter the labour relations by denying the rights of the workers, doing away with good faith bargaining of collective agreements and undermining the learning conditions of the students by destroying the working conditions of the education workers.

Such is the present experience over the past eight months of the University of Toronto (U of T) teaching assistants who have been facing obstruction by the U of T administration. This administration is pleased to implement the Drummond report recommendations in advance by threatening to unilaterally impose their offer of concessions including cuts to research grants, rather than negotiate. This has been the recent tenor labour relations in Ontario.

When the Drummond Commission says, "Any government wanting to change the delivery of services must work with the people who deliver those services and with the unions that represent those people," it does not uphold public right, neither does it defend the right of workers to a livelihood.

Public Sector Workers Add Value to the Economy

The recommendations on labour and compensation say that labour is a cost. Labour is not a cost. Ontario public sector workers add immense value to the economy without which a modern standard of living would be impossible.

Stating that labour "costs" count for half of the spending, the Drummond report calls for "moderation in the growth of public sector total compensation whether through base wages; premium payments such as overtime, shift premiums, merit pay or movement through 'grids'; or pension costs."

"Modernization" is a code word for denial of rights. It must be resisted.

Mr. Drummond is a representative of the financial oligarchy. In this section of the report, he legitimizes the McGuinty government's wage freeze which has resulted in wage cuts for the majority of the workers it has affected when the cost of living is included in the calculation. He cautions the need to ensure continued restraints on Ontario's 25,000 physicians by locking them into compensation schemes connected to the deterioration of delivery of health care for all and on 200,000 teachers whose contracts expire this year and face increased class sizes and a threat of withdrawal of the non-teaching staff.

A new direction for the economy is being worked out by the workers' opposition to these arrangements and that includes increasing funding for social programs and opposing the attacks on the livelihoods of the public service workers and the services they deliver in Ontario.

Drummond Out of Step with Ontario

The Drummond Report throws open the door for stepped-up privatization of public services. It says: "There should be no ideological or other bias towards or away from public- or private-sector delivery of services, only a consideration of practical logic: what produces the best result for the people of Ontario at an affordable cost."

In opposition to this wrecking trend public sector workers are preparing themselves to resist and organize. A recent parallel commission held by the Public Services Foundation of Canada, a national research and advocacy organization dedicated to defending and promoting the value of high-quality public services, has been holding hearings and town hall forums in January and February of this year across Ontario and will submit a final report in advance of the provincial budget in the spring. Worker after worker has come forward to describe the desperate state of affairs facing public services in Ontario even before the implementation of Drummond's 362 recommendations.

In a timely report issued February 16 by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union entitled Out of Step with Ontario, a case is made that the Drummond recommendations put the people of Ontario in a dire position. It states:

"Drummond says that, to balance the budget, total program spending for the Ontario government must grow by only 0.8 per cent per year overall until 2017/18. This is actually a cut in spending. That's because inflation adds 2 per cent -- or more -- to costs every year. With population growth of about 1.1 per cent a year, an "increase" of 0.8 per cent is really a cut of 2.3 per cent per year per person in Ontario."

It is on the backs of the workers who deliver the services and the people who use them that these austerity measures are to be achieved.

OPSEU's assessment of the Drummond Report's Labour Relations and Compensation recommendations raises a number of issues, including:

1. That workers would have to fight for successor rights when forced to transfer or when services are merged because collective agreements would not be looked at as inherited and could be "bargained differently." For example, consider Minister of Finance Dwight Duncan's recent announcements directing the LCBO to sell its head office property, including the Toronto warehouse and Queen's Quay liquor store. The land sale of the LCBO head office could lead to a denial of "inherited" rights.

2. Drummond advises government to do everything in its power to get rid of bumping rights, expand management rights to support greater powers for management, including moving, disciplining and dismissing employees as they see fit.

3. Drummond proposes to dismantle and revamp the arbitration system with a recommendation to increase criteria forcing arbitrators to accept employer arguments about "ability to pay" rather than need.

4. He calls for a reduction of the number of employees deemed essential. Drummond states that Ontario has the highest percentage of Broader Public Service essential service workers in Canada. He wants to see that number reduced. He proposes to privatize Service Ontario and then broaden its mandate to deliver other programs such as social housing, social assistance and Ontario Disability Support Programs as an example of how the McGuinty government could move essential public services to the private sector, create conditions for the denial of union rights affecting those who deliver these services and the most vulnerable recipients who receive these basic services.

5. He proposes zero budget increases for wages in the Ontario government. Drummond believes that when employers have no budget for wage increases, it creates a "healthy tension" that will "drive out inefficiencies." Examples of "efficiencies" already are in place in our hospitals where nurses are being laid off and hospitals are replacing them with lesser qualified classifications of health care workers. In the public school system, with no funding increases for wages it is proposed to increase class sizes and lay off all non-teaching staff creating a crisis in the classrooms, especially where there are special needs children. And there you have it: "healthy tensions."

Both private and public sector workers in Ontario are resisting and organizing to fight the direction the Ontario government is taking and will continue under Drummond's anti-worker, anti-union recommendations. This direction serves to line the pockets of the financiers that demand that the government eliminate deficits by 2017-2018 and at the same time arrange handouts to the international monopolies and the rich.

Drummond's Dehumanizing Public Sector Incentive
and Surveillance System

- Rob Woodhouse -

In his report calling for severe cuts to the government programs people rely on, Ontario's public sector reform Commissioner Don Drummond had no hesitation in also calling for increased spending on programs that advance the anti-social offensive of the rich. Increased spending was proposed in two closely related areas: incentive pay and bonus pay for public sector administrators at all levels; equipment and personnel used for monitoring, reporting and evaluating inputs and outputs of public services and public sector workers. Masked as measures for "achieving efficiencies," implementing these proposals would result in dehumanized working conditions for public sector workers and in dehumanizing the people using public services.

The McGuinty government has already been developing incentive/surveillance systems in some of its operations. Hospital CEOs, monitored by the watchers at the Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs), ordering the ejection of frail seniors from hospitals to protect their bonuses are an example of incentives/surveillance in action. This approach should be extended and consolidated at all administrative levels across the entire broader public sector according to Drummond's report. Almost half of the report's recommendations touch on such measures.

If incentive pay and surveillance of outcomes are in place, Drummond theorizes, all a government has to do is cut budgets and leave the service reductions to administrators, "Once the financial parameters are set, first for ministries and then for programs, many of the reforms will be handled by people further down the chain." He is advising that a dog-eat-dog system of incentive pay, competition for job security and competition for promotions should be the organizational principle throughout the public sector.

Perfecting the monitoring of public service workers and users would ensure that incentives and competition are having the desired effect of reducing people's claims on government revenue. Every public sector worker would have a private interest that pits the worker against the interests of the people seeking service. It would constitute an assault on the concept of public sector workers serving the public interest and on the right of people to services. Drummond wants the incentive driven hospital CEO who brutally clears seniors from their beds to be the model for the spirit that dominates every cell of the public sector.

Drummond is a long-time advocate of privatization of all government services and has written often in favour of the incentive/surveillance organizational model. He cites the use of this model by Kaiser-Permanente, the largest private health monopoly in the U.S., as a good example for Ontario's public sector to follow. Kaiser was one of the earliest adopters of computer technology and the developer of computerized medical recording. It used this technology on a large scale to monitor "patients' consumption of services" and to monitor "rationing of services by incentive-based health care providers." Because of its edge over competitors through this technical innovation, Kaiser rapidly piled up the profits and used them for aggressive expansion. But along with profits, Kaiser piled up lawsuits and scandals over its severe rationing of care and needless patient deaths.

The Kaiser-inspired incentive/surveillance system advocated by Drummond is not an acceptable model for Ontario's public services. Public sector workers are already resisting the use of this approach by McGuinty and municipal governments at all levels. They will fight the Drummond proposals for dehumanizing workers and service users every inch of the way. To deal with this resistance, Drummond's report also includes proposals for stripping public sector workers of bargaining rights over many work rules and working conditions. But any attempt to impose Drummond's vision of public sector workers fending for themselves as privateers in a competitive free-for-all will meet with determined opposition.

Drummond slanders opposition to his measures as protecting inefficiency, stifling initiative and innovation and threatening the sustainability of public services. But people are starting to see that the real threat is coming from such reckless schemes as Drummond's plan for turning the public sector into a giant dog-fight among the public sector workers and between public sector workers and service users.

Stepping Up Resistance to Education Cutbacks

University of Toronto Teaching Assistants to Vote on Tentative Agreement

On Friday, February 24 at 2 am after 72 hours locked in a hotel room, following a week of intense bargaining, a tentative agreement was reached between the bargaining committee of CUPE Local 3902, Unit 1 representing 4,000 student and postdoctoral teaching assistants, instructors, invigilators and demonstrators, and the University of Toronto administration. Collective bargaining has been taking place for eight months.

The details of the proposed agreement were presented to a membership meeting that same Friday night. Over 800 members were presented the motion to send the tentative agreement on to the wider membership for ratification. After much debate and discussion, the members present voted to send this tentative agreement to the wider membership for a vote.

In the event that the motion to send the agreement to ratification was defeated, the members of the bargaining unit would have been off the job as of 12:00 am on Saturday, February 25. Voting began at the close of the meeting and will continue, Tuesday, February 28 and Wednesday, February 29. The result of the vote will be announced as soon as possible later in the week.

The two outstanding issues remain: the sizes of tutorial classes and research funding.

Research Funding Issue

Graduate students get four or five years of funding for a six-year degree, valued at $15,000 each year. This $15,000 has traditionally consisted of two things: a full-time job being a researcher and a part-time job as a Teaching Assistant (TA). The part-time job as a TA amounted to about $8,400 of this $15,000.The full-time job as a researcher was being paid out at $6,600. This is compensation for the research work that graduate students do on their dissertations. i.e. dissertation/thesis-related research funding. Such money is also called "fellowships" "scholarships" or "research grants."

Over the term of the last collective agreement, the Administration found a loophole in the collective agreement that permits them to stop paying graduate students any fellowship money and have them make up the difference by working on research completely unrelated to their own dissertations, e.g. helping a professor with their scholarly publications, etc.

So, now, $8,400 is given for TA work, $3,400 for dissertation work, and then there is a requirement of an additional part-time job as a research assistant (RA) that will pay $3,200. The sum of $15,000 stays the same, but there is a requirement to work an additional part-time job as an RA. Same pay, more work. And much more work, since the RA job can pay as low as $12/hour (although it usually pays out around $20-$25) and means hundreds of more hours of work outside of working on dissertation research/writing. This extends the length of time one is enrolled in school.

And since this $15,000 of funding is only given for years four and five, in years five or six, one will have to pay full tuition and have no guaranteed funding sources. There used to be a special tuition grant worth 40 per cent of tuition given to these students, called the Doctoral Completion Grant (DCG), but that was changed by the University of Toronto Provost last year.

This was an attempt to create a new normal as promoted by political forces in Ontario and their representatives determined to turn education into a competitive funding framework. The graduate students are fighting to reinstate it as grant which is guaranteed for all and oppose its replacement as a resource that is by design for a privileged few. They are also fighting against having decisions made about their livelihoods without their consent. As a solution to the elimination of the DCG the administration made a pittance offering over two years. It in no way reflects what has been the arrangement since the year 2000.

Class Sizes

According to the Globe and Mail 2011 University report as reviewed on the union website, the "University of Toronto ranks last or next to last in Canada for class size, student satisfaction, student experience and student-faculty interaction. U of T is home to hundreds of giant courses where students seldom see or interact with their professors." In recent years the tutorial class sizes have increased uncontrollably. The administration is not offering to put a cap on class sizes.

The education workers who are also students in our universities do important work in our society. They do not deserve to be treated in such a shabby way. In what is talked about as a knowledge-based economy the paltry offerings of the University administration towards research funding, the adding of more research work for meagre pay and their offer to have a working group on the quality of education rather than accept the just demand of the teachers and the students for acceptable class sizes is unacceptable.

These developments reflect the kind of recommendations of the Drummond Report on education submitted to the Ontario government last week. It is clear that they are not recommendations but are already in practice in our education institutions today, leading to the resistance that teachers and students are taking up.

Anti-Social Privatization Offensive in Toronto

Ford's TTC Agenda Results in Service Cuts and Chaos

- Jim Nugent -

The Ford administration's cuts to the funding of city services are starting to have their impact on people throughout Toronto as services they rely on are cut back. In the week beginning on February 12, service reductions on 35 bus and streetcar routes were implemented by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). Most of the cuts are to off-peak service and their greatest affect will be on workers travelling for late and early shifts. As well, bus loading rates will be increased during rush hours resulting in more over crowded buses and reduced frequency.

These service reductions are a result of city funding for TTC operating costs being reduced by 10 per cent in 2012 compared to the 2011. In 2011, thousands of people from across the city joined TTC workers and other civic workers in large demonstrations against Ford's agenda. Across the city, people opposing service cuts jammed the public hearings on the 2012 budget, with many speaking out against reduced funding of TTC. Despite widespread opposition, Ford and his gang pushed through service funding cuts and now people are suffering the consequences. The opposition to the Ford agenda of privatization, service cuts, user fees and attacks on civic workers is increasing as the consequences of this agenda begin to affect the well-being of more and more people.

Pressure from this opposition has resulted in cracks in the coalition of councillors supporting the Ford gang's minority on city council. Signs of the unravelling of this coalition first appeared in January in the final vote of city council on the draft city budget for 2012. Opposition councillors won majority support for amendments stopping $20 million of the $86 million in cuts proposed by Ford. Ford is also precipitating a political crisis for his minority over actions he took to seize control of the TTC's $11 billion subway/LRT expansion program.

The political crisis broke out as a result of Ford usurping city council's authority when he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty on provincial capital funding for the TTC. The Ford-McGuinty agreement gutted the previous expansion plan known as Transit City, a plan developed by TTC staff and approved by city council. Ford signed the deal immediately after he was elected mayor in 2010 during a private meeting with McGuinty, the same meeting where Ford requested McGuinty take away TTC workers' right to strike. Early in February, city council received a legal opinion advising it that when Ford signed the MOU he had acted without any legal authority and completely outside a mayor's limited executive prerogative.

It was also revealed to council that for almost a year, Ford had suppressed a report by civic professional staff on the changes the Ford-McGuinty deal would impose on the TTC. The suppressed report said Ford's transit plan pushing expensive subway construction was not financially sustainable, would result in lower service levels for many areas of the city and as well, would cost $65 million in contract cancellation charges if the Transit City plan was discarded.

In response to these revelations, a special meeting of city council was called for February 9 to review the Ford/McGuinty MOU on TTC capital expansion. Ford attempted to stop the meeting from taking place, with support from the monopoly media aligned with him and from the provincial transit authority Metrolinx. City councillors in Ford's coalition were also subjected to bullying by Ford hooligans. Despite this, the special meeting was held and council voted 25-18 against the Ford-McGuinty transit deal and for reinstating TTC staff recommendations regarding TTC expansion. Among those speaking out against the Ford-McGuinty transit plan at the special council meeting were Gary Webster, the General Manager of the TTC and City Councillor Karen Stintz, who chairs the TTC.

Immediately after losing this important council vote, Ford launched a vindictive attack on his former ally Councillor Stintz and against Gary Webster. The five councillors from Ford's gang who sit on the TTC fired Gary Webster as TTC General Manager on February 21. Ford also announced plans to retaliate against TTC Chair Stintz by reorganizing TTC governance so he could get rid of her.

Use of such aggressive tactics to suppress dissent deepened the political crisis Ford was already facing over his usurpation of council's authority and fraudulent claims on executive prerogative. Many people across the city also see Ford's entire course of action regarding the TTC as an abuse of power which calls into question the legitimacy of his administration.

Ford and the supporters of his privatization agenda are well aware of the political risks in their aggressive "shock and awe" approach but consider the risks are worth taking because the TTC represents an opportunity to broker big financial scores. The prizes at stake include: control over which private interests make a killing in the $11 billion transit expansion; control over the land speculation opportunities associated with subway expansion and control over the $10 billion in assets accumulated by the TTC over its 100 years of operation.

Another important stake is the very high revenue stream from TTC fares which make it attractive to international monopolies involved in transit privatization. The percentage of operating costs the TTC recovers from fares is 80 per cent, the highest of any transit service in North America, compared to an average of 41 per cent for U.S. cities. Interest in the TTC by transit privateers represents opportunity for which ever bankrupt politician controls the TTC.

While politicians like Ford and McGuinty jockey for position to control billions of dollars in transit funds, the day-to-day service is being starved for funds and allowed to deteriorate as this month's TTC service cuts show. Overall planning for people's present and future transit needs also degenerates into chaos, as the political crises paralyzing the subway/LRT expansion project shows. Deterioration of service and chaos in planning serve the privatization agenda of the rich, since they make the case for calling in the private sector to "save the transit system."

To succeed in their mission of privatizing public interests in transit and other city services bankrupt politicians have to push the public onto the political sidelines, which in the first place means smashing the resistance of workers delivering public services. The first step in Ford's TTC offensive was to collude with Dalton McGuinty to criminalize strikes by TTC workers. Since then he has been viciously attacking other civic workers and their unions. The centre of the resistance to the Ford agenda is the struggle of TTC and other civic workers, who as they defend their livelihoods are defending public services. Stopping service cuts, increased user fees and all round betrayal of public interests by politicians requires the people of Toronto rallying around public sector workers' resistance.

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