| Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register,
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 TORONTO - Health care, environment, housing, minimum wage, child care — the union that represents Ontario’s 36,000 Catholic teachers has issues going into the Oct. 10 provincial election.
The Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association has launched www.oectavotes.on.ca , a web site to encourage teachers to get involved politically in the upcoming vote. And while the focus goes far beyond the classroom, many of the issues have an effect on the lives of children OECTA members teach, said union president Elaine MacNeil.
“A lot of those societal issues that are concerns for us do have an impact in the classroom,” MacNeil said. “There’s not very much that’s not really connected to the job that we do.”
The union doesn’t endorse any of the parties, but does endorse either NDP or Liberal candidates in individual ridings across the province.
“If some local president had said, ‘We’ve worked really well with this Conservative MPP; he or she listens to us and gets information for us’ and they had recommended that we endorse that person, we would have,” said MacNeil. “As it happens, none of those requests came in.”
The web site includes issue sheets on a long list of education issues, analysis of a number of non-education issues and information about the electoral reform referendum which asks whether voters would prefer a system of proportional representation. It encourages teachers to contribute money and volunteer time to the party of their choosing and to vote.
“There’s nothing sadder than a poor turnout at the polls,” MacNeil said.
MacNeil doesn’t expect her union’s web site will attract a lot of attention from the general public.
“Most times the public doesn’t believe too much in what unions have to say about any issue,” she said.
OECTA has been more active in encouraging members to be involved politically since the Progressive Conservative governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves stirred up the wrath of teachers’ unions in the 1990s, said MacNeil.
“The difficulty we got into back in 1995 was not being aware enough of the various political platforms of the provincial parties,” she said.
The teachers’ union still finds Conservative policies unfriendly.
“We can’t support the Tory platform,” said MacNeil.
The Liberals, NDP and Greens have yet to release their platforms. The Conservatives were the first out with a platform in June.
“There is a preoccupation with reducing taxes. We don’t happen to believe we are overly taxed in Ontario,” said MacNeil.
“We support a strong public service system, not only public education.”
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Michael Swan, The Catholic Register |
| About the author: |
| Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.
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