Change begins on election day.
On June 2, vote NDP to build a better Ontario
Learning more about BuildON
Please reach out to your OPSEU/SEFPO regional mobilizers to schedule an in-person or virtual presentation, ask a question about OPSEU/SEFPO’s platform or to ask for election materials.
Making it easier for you to vote:
By entering your postal code, this OPSEU/SEFPO map will show you:
- Your riding
- Your candidates, with links to their websites and social media
- Your OPSEU/SEFPO region
Check your electoral district with Elections Ontario
En saisissant votre code postal, vous trouverez sur cette carte de l’OPSEU/SEFPO :
- Votre circonscription
- Vos candidat(e)s avec les liens vers leurs sites Web et médias sociaux
- Votre région de l’OPSEU/SEFPO
- Green Party of Ontario / Parti vert de l’Ontario – https://gpo.ca/find-candidate
- New Democratic Party of Ontario / Nouveau Parti démocratique de l’Ontario – https://www.ontariondp.ca/team
- Ontario Liberal Party / Parti libéral de l’Ontario – https://ontarioliberal.ca/candidates
- Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario / Parti progressiste-conservateur de l’Ontario – Team – PC Party of Ontario (ontariopc.ca)
Repeal anti-worker laws
How do we BuildON?
OPSEU/SEFPO members know we can build a better Ontario. That’s why we’re calling our election platform #BuildON2022.
We need to see action on these six core areas and we believe only the NDP can deliver the change we need:
Repeal anti-worker laws
Build the public sector
Reject privatization
Improve health & safety
Fix long-term care
Provide clean water for Indigenous communities
Repeal anti-worker laws
The Ford government delivered a slap in the face to frontline public sector workers who stepped up and answered the call throughout the pandemic, with laws that restrict their bargaining rights, violate their collective agreements, and circumvent pay equity. They were praised by the government as “heroes” as they passed legislation treating them like zeroes.
Bill 124, Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations Act, 2019, denies public sector workers the ability to negotiate fair wage increases through collective bargaining.
Bill 195, Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act, 2020, gives the government and employers power to override the collective agreements protecting unionized health care workers.
Bill 106, Pandemic and Emergency Preparedness Act, 2022, allows the government to override collective agreements by giving increases to some classes of workers, and not allowing tribunals or arbitrators to expand those payments to other classes of workers, even if it would be required to achieve pay equity.
These bills unfairly target the majority-women workforce in our health care system who have been saving countless lives; education workers and social services workers who go above and beyond in already low-wage jobs; frontline workers in LCBOs, who are already employed in temporary and casual positions and aren’t guaranteed hours, to name only a few.
For Election 2022, we are voting to repeal all three bills.
Build the Public Sector
Public services are the pillars that hold up our province in times of crisis, but successive governments have been cutting public sector funding for decades. When the pandemic hit, the damaging effects of those cuts came to the forefront. To ensure Ontario’s public services are strong, reliable, and well-equipped to meet the ever-increasing demand for services, significant investment across all public services is necessary. For Election 2022, we are voting to:- Build more publicly-run and properly funded hospitals to address the severe lack of capacity.
- Create a strong, sustainable long-term plan for recruitment and retention to address public sector labour shortages.
- Address systemic wage gaps in community health care through a comprehensive and inclusive approach that eliminates lower wage rates for the same work performed in community settings.
- Expand community-based mental health counselling services and early intervention.
- Increase base funding to developmental services agencies to transition from a part-time to full-time work model and expand supportive housing and agency-based programs.
- Fund the embedding of equity, anti-oppression, anti-Black racism and Reconciliation programming into all areas of service delivery in the child welfare system.
- Establish a base wage rate of $25 per hour for child care workers to create a stable, qualified and dedicated professional workforce and provide funding for benefits and pensions.
- Establish a fully public and accountable housing system for youth in care.
- Increase staffing in all correctional institutions to ensure there is enough permanent staff to provide proper oversight and programming.
- Invest in stable, full-time jobs in colleges and universities.
Reject Privatization
In Ontario, successive governments have turned to the private sector to deliver public services for decades; however, this increased reliance on the private sector has not resulted in improved access to services or increased value for money. Instead, it has decreased accountability, affordability, quality and access to service. For Election 2022, we are voting to:- Stop handing out contracts for COVID-19 testing and lab services to giant for-profit companies instead of focusing resources on increasing capacity in public labs.
- Stop the contracting out of vital hospital support services such as housekeeping, food services, environmental services, and IT.
- Remove the profit motive from care of Ontario’s most vulnerable people.
- Stop the piecemeal privatization of alcohol distribution and sales.
- Stop contracting out government services, like Service Ontario call centres.
Improve Health & Safety
Many frontline public service workers put their health and their personal safety at risk to do their jobs. COVID-19 has shown the fatal consequences of overlooking workplace health and safety. It must be a top priority of the government and all employers in Ontario to make Ontario’s workplaces safe. For Election 2022, we are voting to:- Increase access to paid sick days for all workers, provided on a permanent basis.
- Provide appropriate PPE for all frontline workers.
- Pass Bill 191 to amend the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act to include COVID-19 as an occupational hazard and cover essential workers who test positive for the illness.
- Increase qualified education support staff and increase quality of training for staff teams to reduce violent incidents in schools.
- In workplaces where risk of workplace violence is high, mandate that no staff member should work alone at one time.
Fix Long-Term Care
All of Ontario witnessed the devastating effects of COVID-19 in our long-term care homes during the pandemic. Long-standing capacity and staffing problems were worsened by the virus, resulting in thousands of deaths in Ontario’s long-term care homes. Residents were four times more likely to die in for-profit homes as in publicly-run homes during the pandemic.
Instead of learning a lesson from this tragedy, the Ford government has doubled down on the privatization of long-term care.
They have given even more public money for new beds to the same for-profit companies who had the worst outbreaks and resident deaths during the pandemic, and they’re selling off valuable public land to private developers to build even more for-profit homes. Ontario’s aging population needs publicly-run, publicly-funded, fully-staffed long-term care homes and beds to meet the growing need for care.
For Election 2022, we are voting to:
- Invest in full-time jobs with better wages and benefits for all workers in long-term care in order to improve staff retention.
- Mandate and enforce patient-to-staff ratios so that long-term care homes keep an appropriate level of staff on duty to provide care.
- Mandate and enforce a minimum of four hours of care per resident per day, evaluated per home and not as an average for all long-term care homes.
- Eliminate ward rooms as quickly as possible from all long-term care homes.
- Remove profit from long-term care. The profit motive is what keeps long-term care home owners from hiring and scheduling enough staff to care for their residents, from paying their staff enough to retain them, and from updating their buildings and providing enough PPE to keep their residents and staff safe.
- Put a freeze on issuing licenses for private, for-profit organizations in long-term care and build new, publicly-funded homes and beds in order to improve affordability and quality of care for residents, and proper working conditions for staff.
- Use public land to build publicly-funded and publicly-run long-term care homes, instead of selling off public land to private equity funds, for-profit developers, and private, for-profit corporations to build long-term care homes.
Provide clean water for Indigenous communities
Under international law, water is protected as a human right. Sadly, corporations and governments continue to treat water as a commodity, or worse, a dumping ground for pollutants. The result is that many communities, particularly Indigenous communities, don’t have clean drinking water. The lack of clean drinking water in Indigenous communities amounts to colonialism and environmental racism. Ontario must have legislation in place that requires the provincial government to consult community-based Indigenous rights holders and set the same standards for safe drinking water on First Nations in Ontario as any other areas of the province, including those living and working on reserves. Political parties need to commit to fixing this injustice and provide clean drinking water for Indigenous communities. For Election 2022, we are voting to:- Reintroduce the Bill, the Inherent Right to Safe Drinking Water Act.
- Ensure that our provincial government commits to providing clean water for Indigenous communities.
- It’s the only major party that supports workers, and workers need change now.
- The Ford government cut our wages, cut our public services and privatized everything they could over the past four years.
- For 15 years before that, we got cuts, privatization and austerity from the Liberal government too.
- It’s OPSEU/SEFPO policy: “OPSEU supports the NDP both provincially and federally.” (OPSEU/SEFPO Policy Manual, 23.1-14)
