Media Advisory: Community-Labour Coalition joins education worker fight against Bill 115; hosts assembly to challenge cuts to services and rights

For Immediate Release

December 6, 2012

(TORONTO, ON) ─ Hot on the heels of a nationally recognized report exposing Ontario’s growing income inequality, the Ontario Common Front is expecting hundreds to attend a general assembly this weekend where plans to challenge government cuts to public services, good jobs and democratic rights will be hashed out.

“The Ontario Common Front is a coalition of over 100 community and labour groups  was born early this year in response to the Ontario Government’s deep budget cuts,” said Common Front Steering Committee Chair Nancy Hutchison. “We organized a mass rally before the budget vote in April that helped to shift the budget debate and led to several key changes. In August, we put poverty and inequality onto the ballot in Kitchener-Waterloo. Now we are coming together to challenge the draconian Bill 115 and to make income inequality a top issue in Ontario’s next election.”

In August, the Ontario Common Front released a comprehensive report demonstrating that Ontario had fallen to dead last of all the provinces by nearly every measure of equality and social program support. The report, found at http://weareontario.ca/index.php/falling-behind-report/, revealed that 40 percent of Ontarians (some 600,000 families) are currently struggling with incomes that are either stagnant or declining. Now this broad coalition of community members is determined to turn these statistics around.

What:          Common Front General Assembly

When:         Saturday, December 8 from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm

Where:        Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (252 Bloor Street West – Auditorium)

Who:           Hundreds of community and labour activists and featuring Keynote Speaker, Josephine Grey from Low Income Families Together (LIFT)

“Across the province, we are breaking down the silos between civil society groups, labour unions and concerned community members,” said Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition. “The cuts to jobs, services and democratic rights are affecting all of us and together we are demanding a major shift in provincial priorities. We are going to bring these demands to neighbourhoods, to the streets and to the polls.”

The Ontario Common Front is a coalition of over 100 community and labour groups that has launched the “We Are Ontario” campaign to challenge cuts to jobs, services and democratic rights. Visit: www.WeAreOntario.ca.

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For further information:

Joel Duff, OFL Communications Director: 416-707-0349 (cell) or jduff@ofl.ca