01.13.2013 06:03 PM

Rren Nsella Colum

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14 Comments

  1. Jon Adams says:

    “Absolutely wrong”

  2. Steve T says:

    I completely agree with your column today, WK. I trust the same view will be taken if the Idle No More movement moves into lawbreaking (which would include defying orders to vacate premises, or cease making a disturbance, or encroaching on private land).

    Laws are laws. If you don’t like them, elect someone who will change them. If your candidate can’t get elected, well guess what, that’s democracy. Deal with it. “Civil disobedience” is simply a nice term for criminal behaviour.

    • VH says:

      That’s one of the all time silliest comments I’ve read on this non-blog website.

      If you don’t like the laws then there are other ways of changed them than having “your candidate” get elected.
      You can *also* size up the injustice of a situation, intentionally break the law via “Civil disobedience”, pay the price and go to jail without whining but in doing so also capture the moral suasion of the populace who then in turn demand that the laws get changed.

      It’s been done before in modern times, just ask Martin Luther King Jr’s relatives.

    • ray says:

      Nah, I don’t think so. See Quebec last year. Bill C78, red patches, Charest, students, pots and pans, arrests, etc etc. Had they tried it your way Charest would still be in power and the cops as enablers would be beating people in the streets.

    • Attack! says:

      Seems the Prime Minister doesn’t agree with you: he personally pardoned the farmers who stole their trucks & tractors out of the customs compound that they’d used to cross the border to sell their own grain in protest of the Wheat Board rules. (Just before he made pardons much more difficult for everyone else to get.) http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/harpers-act-of-clemency-hits-at-cwb-165830136.html

  3. blueworld says:

    Wrong on all accounts. First of all it is the opinion of a labour board not a court. The same scenario was put to the courts under Harris and the courts sided with the teachers.

    Second, Mcguinty and his supporters have no answer when they are reminded that in 1997 McGuinty stood with teachers under the same scenario. Shame on him and then for turning their coat. I guess that what’s 9 years in power will to anybody.

    Shame Shame Shame…. I realize McGuinty has no backbone to fix his own mess, but I sure hope the new Premier resolves it as soon as they get in… if not kiss the next election good bye. Every teacher in the province will be pounding the pavement against them.

    If I hear McGuinty again trying to frame himself as an education premier again.. I think I’m gonna puke. He got nothing right in education other than labour peace for most of his tenure. He screwed up with ehealth, powerplant fiasco, and orange. This guy turned out to be a train wreck.. no wonder WK wants out… how the heck is anybody supposed to defend that tainted legacy. I never thought I’d say this but even Harris never left Ontario in such a mess.

    • reformatory says:

      Hear Hear…..

      The OLP has effectively trampled on the rights of teachers. Their rights to collectively bargain were trampled. The fact that they now after using the powers of the bill, want to repeal it is proof that they also know it is flawed.

      For certain… they will argue that they did not trample their rights to collectively bargain because they tried for several months…. but anybody involved knows that the bargaining attempts were set up to fail.. the OLP party under McGuinty did not want to bargain in good faith.. they simply let time pass so that it could appear as if they tried…. only to then use their bill 115.

      Teachers went into negotiations with a fair plan. They asked for no raises, only for their previously earned banked days to remain untouched since they were earned in good faith under previous contracts. They also had a plan to take over their own benefit plan saving the boards and the province a whack load of money. McGuinty wanted no part of it though…. he wanted to ram though his bill. I hope the Supreme Court sees through his futile bargaining attempt and slaps them on the wrist for not respecting the rights of ontario citizens to collectively bargain in good faith.

      Shame Shame is right.

      • Steve T says:

        Then vote against the OLP. That is your democratic right. But let’s not make the teachers into some sort of martyrs.

        • reformatory says:

          Nobody is making anybody a martyr.. I’m just throwin in my 2 cents to stand up for a group that is having their rights trampled on. I would have done the same for the women vote, same sex laws, civil rights…. you know other important cases where civil disobedience was required to make some wrongs a right.

          I think all Ontarians should be standing up to support them. If their rights can be trampled by this gov’t anybody’s rights can.

          As for voting against them… I may just do that.

    • VC says:

      The labour board is a quasi-judicial statutory tribunal: it doesn’t give opinions in the way that you construe it in your first point. Judgments issued by these bodies are not mere social editorials, rather they are verdicts like any other judicial body. Even though such bodies are not defined constitutionally, they do find their authorities in legislation enacted by parliament or provincial legislatures. We can’t just shrug our shoulders at a judgment given by such a tribunal and say, “That’s just, like, your opinion, man,” (quoth the Dude from The Big Lebowski).

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