The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Who Are Labour Unions Backing in the Ontario Election?

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Traditionally, in Ontario politics the Liberals and New Democrats would fight over endorsements from organized labour, while the Conservatives stood on the sidelines. Those days are gone. In just t first week of the Ontario election campaign Doug Ford's Tories have already received several union endorsements. For insight on why, we welcome: JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union; Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario; Victoria Mancinelli, director of communications at the Laborers International Union of North America; andJeff Gray, Queen's Park reporter for the Globe and Mail.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries in Good Faith,

a TVO original podcast. Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. It used to be a truism in Ontario politics that the Liberals and New Democrats would fight over endorsements from organized labour while the Conservatives stood on the sidelines. Those days are gone. The Ontario election campaign is just one week old,

and Doug Ford's Tories have already received several union endorsements. Not only that, Ford kicked off his campaign in Windsor, which had previously never been Tory territory. What's going on here? Let's find out from JP Hornick, president of OPSU, the 180,000 person strong Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Karen Brown, president of ETOFO, the 83,000 person strong Elementary Teachers Federation

of Ontario. Victoria Mancinelli, director of communications at LiUNA, the 80,000 person strong Labourers International Union of North America. And Jeff Gray, Queen's Park reporter for the 1,000 person strong Globe and Mail Canada's National newspaper. And it's great to have everybody around our table tonight for I think a pretty timely discussion about what's going on out there in the world of organized labor. Victoria, I want to start with you. Your union endorsed Doug Ford. We did, again. How come? Well, we feel that this government has really

stepped up for our workers. We have never in the history of Ontario seen this level of dedication and commitment to advancing skilled trades and apprenticeship pathways like we have with the Doug Ford government and building those collaborative efforts with the Minister of Labour as well. So we now have 120,000 members across Ontario,

predominantly in the construction sector. And they have seen great benefits of investing in their potential, investing in their futures, and investing in their careers. JP, have you made a decision at your union to endorse one of the parties in this election? We don't have an affiliation with any of the parties, but we do have a policy where we endorse NDP candidates.

What I will say though to Victoria's point about the endorsement of Liuna or construction unions, what we're seeing is actually sort of you know individual endorsements of Doug Ford and the Tories and that is noteworthy only because it's so rare. Most of the unions actually don't endorse the Conservatives and, you know, I think we'll have a discussion later on, hopefully, about his record versus what he says. That's what we're here for. Yeah.

OK. But you don't, as a union, intend to endorse anybody? We're not in the business of endorsements, but we are actually supporting NDP candidates across the province. OK. How about for you, Karen? Do you intend to endorse one of the political parties

during this campaign? We're not going to be doing that. I mean in the past we have endorsed a particular party but our members want us to kind of lead them in the direction in regards to the party's track records. Our locals however are going to be looking at candidates in their writing, providing endorsements and we're going to perhaps amplify those endorsements. So it's not a blanket, it's who's serving in communities and whose platform is best provide the quality public education our members are looking for.

Are there any circumstances under which you would consider endorsing the progressive conservatives in this campaign? From what we've heard from our members resoundingly, they have failed in public education under their six years of leadership. Our members have suffered with larger class sizes, increased violence, the constant underfunding and we'll get into that more but right now our members are saying they're not a government that has prioritized public education. How about public service in general? No. So there's no way you would endorse for it? No and similarly our locals are going to be endorsing you know different

candidates and certainly we'll be doing so in different writings. And we believe that the NDP is the workers' party, certainly. Their promises around investments in public education, the colleges, health care, these are the things that our people are concerned about. But under Doug Ford, we've lost 200,000 jobs over the past seven years. Our GDP peaked in 2017 and hasn't recovered since. We're looking at historic and chronic underfunding of every public service.

And I think worse than that, Steve, we're looking at a deliberate effort to starve the public services to pave the way for privatization. So we're seeing expansiveness of privatization or expanding of privatization at the very time that we need direct investments in those services that will actually provide for construction workers that will provide for the future of Ontario. Here's where I need a good analyst to come in here and point out that Karen and JP represent public service unions, Victoria represents a private sector union.

That's not a coincidence, I presume. Yeah, I mean, I think the PCs have made a, you know, they've really made a transformation. They have made this appeal. I dismissed it at first, actually, it's sort of showmanship. But they did a bunch of things behind the scenes and in front of the cameras, particularly with the former Labor Minister, Monica Gnaotton, who we were talking about before.

And they have appealed to, I think it goes beyond just things to appeal to unions or union leadership in the construction trades. And we've now seen a couple of Unifor locals, auto workers, auto parts workers endorse the governing party as well. It actually also is part of Doug Ford's brand, really. What is? So I think it goes beyond appealing to union. If you ask them, have you made it easier to join a union?

Have you made unions more powerful? The answer, of course, is no. But they've done other smaller things that have appealed to union leaders, but have also allowed them to present themselves as on the side of many laborers, workers, construction workers, many of whom are not unionized, too, right? The working class is what term we used to use. That has been part of their appeal,

and it's been deliberate, and it's been strategic. And look at the poll numbers. It seems to be working. Can you just tell us, Victoria, how you came to endorse Ford and the P.E. You did in the last election, too, right? And this one. Yes.

How did that happen? So Leon is not beholden to any party. We will always work with candidates, premiers, parties across all different party lines if they're willing to show up and work for our members. We represent members not only in the construction industry but also in the industrial sector as well and so there's a split there between the NDP and conservatives. But when we are working with the government we want them to show up day in day out the same way our members show

up day in day out to build the province. We have seen a historic investment in skilled trades. We have $200 billion being invested in infrastructure matched by $2.5 billion in skilled trades. We've never seen that level of investment in Ontario in skilled trades and apprenticeship pathways. So when we're working with the government, we want to prioritize policy that, of course, impacts our members and their families

and is investing in their jobs, and that's the Doug Ford government. I'm just trying to think though how this happens. Do they approach you and say we'd love your endorsement or do you call them and say we want to? How does it work? No, it's relationship building. It has to be proven. Nothing's ever going to be handed out on either side.

We have to gain trust and it has to be a genuine collaboration and a lot of that stemmed from the former Minister of Labour which is Monte McNaughton. There was a lot of learning and building that had to come from him when he was our Labour Minister, and he really paved a really strong foundation where we saw workers and unions leaving the left and moving toward the Ford government.

I'll just jump in there because that's really some of my concern because education, we were trying to reach out to the former Minister for Education to establish those relationships to talk about the issues in public education as a key stakeholder And they refused to meet with us. We never had an opportunity. Steven Lecce? Steven Lecce. I met with him a week before he changed a position And so they've had they had how many years in in office to actually address our concerns and they didn't. We were open. We have been stakeholders in education for decades. ADFO has been a leader in education and we we know what the issues are in

regards to class size. We know about the long wait list for special education, the children that are suffering. We know about the mental health crisis. We know about the teacher shortage that's happening now. We know that there's 40,000 people in the province of Ontario that have a teaching certificate that are not teaching because of the undesirable working conditions. This government we saw $1,500 less per people funding since 1998. Is that in absolute terms or after inflation? After inflation. With inflation put into the mix and so we don't see that willingness and they shouldn't be just cherry-picking who they're meeting with. We are key stakeholders.

Public education is the foundation. We're working with the children of your workers who are going to eventually go into the skilled trades. So we need to work on the foundations and we're saying this government has failed in that opportunity. And you're seeing it right there. So the government did this outreach to these private sector unions, construction unions. But it also, at the same time, did a whole bunch of things that really, really got up people's noses

on the public sector union side in particular. Although at one point, it got everybody upset. We remember that thing. I mean, they limited public sector wage increases to 1% across the board, even in the face of what came later, which was a pandemic, and we were losing nurses and everything. And then they tried to use the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to force a contract on an education union and deny them the right to strike. So that got the whole labor movement upset, and eventually the government backed down on that.

Actually, not eventually, fairly quickly, the government backed down on that. Because there was what, like 15 or 20 union leaders at one single press conference all saying, Premier, you've overreached. So you have had this sort of two-faced kind of approach to it, haven't you? JP, can I just get your view on what you think when you, and it's happened with some degree

of regularity, even though we're only a week into the campaign so far, when you see the Premier with unionized workers, often in the backdrop, getting the endorsement going? Well, listen, there's a couple of things on that. And one, I'm not going to, you know, fault any union for wanting to protect their workers that are industry. I think that that is absolutely something that unions are supposed to do. What we're all tasked with is to protect our members,

but to also contribute to the Ontario economy. So I understand where they're coming from. But I would also say that we're being sold a bill of goods. This guy is equivalent to, in the States, we would say, I've got a bridge I can sell you. Up here, it's a tunnel under the 401. Because when you're listening to his rhetoric, it's one thing. But I was raised on the notion that you don't just

listen to what someone says, you watch what they do. And when I look at what Doug Ford is doing, his rhetoric is great for some workers, 90% of whom are men. We used to just call that sexism or misogyny. But when you look at the public service, when you look at health care, when you look at education, when you look at housing starts, he is failing on every single promise

that he is making except putting beer in corner stores, right? We look at the Ontario Science Centre. He shuts out within a day. He's setting us back at least a decade on science education, particularly in poorer communities. You look at the Thurmay Spy. He's setting us back at least a decade on science education, particularly in poorer communities. You look at the Thurmay spy. He's going to spend $2 billion, a taxpayer money, on that for a handful of Ontarians who are wealthy

enough to enjoy it. He's willing to spend tens of billions of dollars on a tunnel that nobody needs and that he doesn't even know what it would cost at the end of the day. And he's not delivering on the promises that are making our economy more affordable for your everyday Ontarian. You got people in Walkerton lining up at 2 AM, 2 and 1 half million people without a family doctor.

But sure, he's good for some sectors. In theory, in practice, we need to see what his record actually looks like. And I'm glad that they can get a meeting with him. We certainly can't. And I got to say, our members are the driving force of the Ontario economy. Victoria, does none of that trouble you?

Sure. I mean, I would agree that I think our job as union representatives is to first and foremost represent our members and their interests. And that is exactly what we are doing. And when we go back to the nonwithstanding clause, Liuna was the first one to issue a letter to Minister Lecce at that time, and that

didn't impact our members. But we stood together in solidarity, which we didn't see when the Wynn government was attacking Liuna's collective bargaining, but that's neither here or there. But when it comes to saying, again, that construction's just male dominated, it's not. We are working so hard to get more women in the industry and I feel like all that work

is just being discredited to make a talking point. We're seeing a 30% increase in apprenticeship registrations in women in Ontario. So construction industry is not just men. Second of all, I think there are concerns when it comes to sure education or healthcare sector and I think the province should be it comes to sure education or health care sector And I think the province should be doing a better job of meeting with stakeholders So that way we can find a collaboration to move forward together Because we know when all of these sectors are strong our economy is strong and we can move forward and build a prosperous future for Ontario

But for us, it's not just rhetoric. They're proving it. It's action Okay, those numbers notwithstanding and you're you're right the numbers of female participation in Your sector are definitely improving. There's no quiz an empirically provable fact having said that I think JP's assertion is also an empirically provable fact Doug Ford does seem to have Jeff Maybe you could weigh in on this he does seem to have more endorsements and better relationships with unions that are, let's call them, male dominated, as opposed to the professions which tend to be female dominated, nurses, teachers, et cetera. I mean, that's a fair observation, isn't it? Yeah, I think it goes back to that split between public sector and private sector unions.

I think that's what's part of that. And to your point, I mean, there have been, there are more women in the trades and the government actually has been trying to help with that. One of the little things they did, they did a bunch of little things, they did some bigger things. Little things like rules around you have to have clean washrooms, you know, on work sites. These things seem like no-brainers, but they actually seem to have made a difference and people appreciate that. Also, the minimum wage, another thing that the government has actually indexed the minimum wage

to inflation. So you definitely have that split between the two sides of the union movement, both between themselves and with the way the government has been responding to them. But Karen, are you prepared to go as far as JP and say that this government is demonstrating under Ford's leadership a misogyny in the way

that it's differentiating between how it treats unions? Well, when you look at education unions, all these ETFOs, 80% women. When we look at the health care sector, which is predominantly women, and when a premier says we should enforce education, stick to our knitting, I think that is a bit of misogyny in regards to that. Stay in our lane and stick to knitting.

It's an insult to our professionalism. It's an insult to the work that we do as educators. And our issues are not at the forefront. And we're not getting the attention that we do need. And we are the caretakers in a sense of the children that are in our classrooms who are going to be the future of Ontario and so the the investments that this government should be making in early childhood education as I said we have over 27,000 children according to the people for education who are on the wait list for autism services and other services and so

that's a failure of this particular government. What are they doing? We know that the level of violence continues to escalate in schools. What are they doing about that? And so we're seeing a rise in class sizes. Parents are putting their children in alternative programs outside of public education because the resources and the funding is not there.

The wait list is not there. People are suffering. And it's important that we see those investments in public education. And this government has not been committed to it. It's been committed to other things. But we're also saying we need a government that's committed to good public services. Because the students that come in our classrooms, their parents are the ones that are in construction.

They're the parents who are going to access the health care system that's failing and the housing that they can't get. We're looking at food insecurities. They don't need beer at the corner store, like a beer. They need to have housing and rent affordable so that they can have somewhere to live that they're not being moved from here to there. In the classroom, our members are seeing the day-to-day impacts and this government has failed to address those concerns that impact every Ontarian,

not just a few. Victoria, what's your take on the suggestion that the Ford government has demonstrated a kind of misogyny in the way that it prefers unions that are male dominated versus those that are female dominated? I disagree. I can't speak for the public sector. I can only speak for ours, but I would disagree because I've seen a level of dedication to working to advance women in skilled trades.

And that is what I'm going to judge them on. Once upon a time, I think it's fair to say, many construction workers would have been very comfortable voting NDP. They did back in the day. Not so much anymore. What are you not hearing from the NDP that you perhaps might have heard once upon a time that's

not allowing you to feel more comfortable endorsing them? I think we're stuck in this ideologue kind of way of thinking when it comes to the NDP being the workers party. Not allowing that to transition and kind of open the doors to working with other parties as well. You know, a union endorsing a conservative shouldn't be this big cause for concern or nefarious or anything that's going on online, on social media if you read some of the comments. It's working with parties and candidates at work on behalf of your members.

Liuna was never a big proponent of the NDP. We've found that a lot of the times they're anti-development, which hurt our members. Anti-infrastructure, we're still seeing it today. Anti-investing in our workers. Anytime the Ford government makes an announcement regarding skilled trades, it's corruption, it's rich buddies.

Those are our members. Those are our members that show up every day. So it's not that they've left the NDP. They strongly feel that the NDP have left them. JP, can you comment on that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a fair comment to say that many of the political parties have lost their ability to connect with the working class

and with the workers movement. My role as an elected union leader, while it's to represent my members, I feel like we're participating in something much larger, which is trying to build that solidarity to engage in these types of conversations. Huge fan of clean washrooms. Come from a college that has done a lot of work

on building women in trades, for example. And I applaud that work. But what I worry about is that larger conversation that needs to happen about the choices they're making around funding. So this is a government that has systematically underfunded the trades in colleges and that has stripped money out of those communities.

OK, but more to the question, what is the NDP not saying today that has enabled many people who work in construction to say, they don't represent me and my interests in the way that they used to. Yeah, no, I think that's a fair question. So what we're looking at with the NDP is that message is not getting out there. It's not that they're not saying it. It's also that it's not being heard.

And I think that we have a lot of work to do both within the labor movement in supporting the NDP and getting out in the community and connecting with workers in ways that matter and ensuring that those messages get heard. Because we do have a party that is committed to policy changes on all the right things. We have a party that was committed to working with the Ford government

on the threat of tariffs when it existed in the immediate. Everybody came together and said, we'll be willing to work together around the pandemic. Everybody's working together. But in this moment, rather than continuing that work, this government with 15 months left in its mandate called it unnecessary snap election in order to shore up their own power. And I think this is an opportunity where we can say, okay, if we're going to

want out to vote, let's talk about policy. Let's talk about the party's platforms. And let's talk about why the conservatives are more interested in shoring up one man's job than dealing with the threat to 500,000. I've been to a lot of your conventions in the past. Not as many as you, but I've been to a lot of them. And I think it's fair to say that when a conservative politician shows up, they don't get quite the nice reaction than, say, the leader of the NDP gets when he or she shows up to give a speech. And yet, we're seeing more unions nowadays endorsing the conservatives.

What are you not hearing from the NDP that would enable more of your members to support them? I don't think our members are not in position to not support the NDP. Basically what we know is that the NDP, the Liberal and the Green parties, have actually consulted with us in regards to our education platform. So we've shared information and we're optimistic that we'll be seeing some of that information and that input in their platforms. The PC government hasn't come to us, hasn't said, hey, let's talk about education. What should we be incorporating to have a good public education system?

They didn't have an education platform. So we're not a priority, and that's a concern for our members. There has nothing been rolled out by the PC in regards to what is their plan to succeed, to help the students of Ontario, to help the educators of Ontario create a great system. And that's where they're failing, our members, and that's what we need to see. We have not seen that from them. The other parties are committed to dialogue and are committing to putting our input in regards to class size, specialist

teachers, things that, the supports that are needed so students can thrive. That is failing and lacking from this PC government and our members are saying why should we vote for them? They're not investing in us but yet they want to hold accountable when the system is failing, when students aren't doing well. That's a shortfall. I just want to point I think we should also make the distinction between union leadership and union members. Political scientists will tell you that union membership is not actually a great predictor of how people will vote. So there's all sorts of people who support all different political views. These are very large. Union endorsements get you activists and some help. It's supposed to get you a lot of

boots on the ground. But it necessarily, it doesn't always translate into one-to-one votes. The other thing, of course, that has happened in Ontario is when we talk about the NDP, you have to talk about Bob Ray and the social contract and the sort of what the detachment of the labor movement in many cases from a formal, you know, automatic link to the NDP because of that rupture. You're not old enough to remember it. Well, I was just going to say, that was 35 years ago. And for our younger viewers who don't know what that's all about,

when the NDP were in power from 1990 to 95, they brought in what they called the social contract, which forced people who had collective agreements to, it allowed the government to unilaterally open those collective agreements and, I guess, deny people what was it, 10 days or something like that? Make them work. The Ray days. The Ray days.

But the idea was to save tens of thousands of people from having to be laid off in the face of the worst recession since the Great Depression. So that was the social contract. And are we saying that the NDP still has a problem with organized labor 35 years later because of that? Well, I think, and of course, I would defer to all the union leaders you have here, rather than the journalists that be a reporter here. But what you did see, I think, over the ensuing decades is a sort of more transactional approach to politics on the part of many labor unions.

So what can you do for me? And often, what you can do for me was an answer, the NDP had that answer. But as we've seen in the current situation, that's not always the case. Can I ask you, are public servants still mad at the NDP for the social contract of 35 years ago? Oh yeah, I mean it's a wound that still rubs raw. There's some that are, but I would say that like frankly the big lesson that we should take away from that is that it's not ever about E-Day. It's not about the election. It's about everything that happens afterward. No matter what government is elected,

if there's anything we learn from that moment, is that we have to remain in solidarity. We have to remain in conversation. And we have to pressure whatever politician of whatever stripe is in power to do the right thing for workers. So what I think happened there was why you see the PCs being able to make the inroads that they have. I wouldn't say the entire private sector is on board though. If you look at the press conference for the OFL had a week ago, we

had 30 union leaders out there from private, public and trades. Now that said, you know, as Jeff pointed out, it's the locals that are doing these endorsements. It's not broad scale unions outside of Leone, necessarily. And so what we're looking at here is the workers on the ground are looking for something else. And it is our job, whether we're union leaders or politicians, to figure out how to reach those folks,

develop policy and consultation. Our experience is the same as Karen's. This government has not reached out to have a conversation even though we are their largest group of employees. Well just to amplify what you were just saying, yes Unifor, which was, Unifor is the creation remind me here of what unions in the past that all came together, It was the Canadian auto workers. And CEP, Communication Energy Professionals. Right, right. So they came together, created Unifor, and a local of Unifor endorsed Doug Ford, well,

at some point this past week. And we just want to say in the interest of full disclosure, the people taking our pictures right now are represented by Unifor. Jeff is represented by Unifor as well. The public sector unions almost uniformly are against Ford with one significant exception this past week. And that took place in Etobicoke North,

which is Doug Ford's writing. And we've got a clip of that. Sheldon Osmond, our director, if you would, let's hear from the firefighters and the Premier. Roland. I'm honoured to have the endorsement of the Ontario professional firefighter

association. Their first endorsement in nearly 15 years and their first endorsement ever of our PC team. Thank you.

From the bottom of my heart. I appreciate it. That's a public sector union endorsing the conservatives. What do you

make of it? Can I just it. That's a public sector union endorsing the conservatives. What do you make of it? Can I just say two things about that? Sure. Okay. I represent the wildland firefighters in Ontario and they would not make that endorsement. So because Doug Ford has systematically not negotiated in good faith with them and given them what they need. But I would also say the clip that you didn't play out of that was where he also endorsed Donald Trump and wished he, you know, was hoping that he would be president right out of the gate. I think that commercial's had a lot of play in the last couple of days.

You know, it's worth saying again that this is a guy that when the mic is on is saying one thing and when he thinks the mic is off is back there saying another. And this is what I mean. Watch what he does, not what he says. So we'll see what happens with those firefighters. That's great, the professional firefighters. You're talking about one small group. When you're talking about Unifor, you're not talking about Unifor as a union.

You're talking about individual locals. And one of the beautiful parts of unions is that we are democracies, which means that our locals often have an autonomy, that they're able to say things that we would not say as as a union in its entirety. I love that my members have different opinions. My job is to try and remind them of who is supporting their rights on the ground and instituting policy and legislation that will ensure their jobs are secure on the go forward. Victoria, the, I, we should talk about it for a moment here,

since it has come out. There was the premier getting caught on a quote unquote hot mic just the other day, in which he said he was 100% supportive and happy about the fact that Trump had won. He's described himself in the past as being very supportive of the Republican Party in the states. However, the next line also was, and yet this guy effed me by sticking a knife in me.

So he did say that as well. I wonder, how troubled would your members be about the fact that the premier who, in front of the mic, is taking Trump on, but behind the scenes, we know they're both populist politicians. I mean, his personal politics, it's his personal politics. I think the way that he is stepping up to lead Ontario and a Team Canada, while our federal government is really nowhere to be found, is commendable.

And so that is what I am looking at, is what he's doing every day to stand up to protect Ontario jobs and protect us against the threat of terrorists, invest in our energy sector that has been left derelict by previous governments as well. And when we go back to the NDP, I think a big fault on their part is still their stance on our nuclear energy and all of the jobs that they would create there. So again, a disconnect between our members and the NDP.

But his personal politics, okay, he said that, followed up quickly by, and he stabbed me in the back. And that's what I think is missing, right? They like that hot mic moment, but I'm going to be judging the Premier on what he's willing to do to step up for Ontario against Trump. Jeff, is the hot mic thing a... The hot mic thing, two points. One is, I mean, just this gets a bit away from the union issue, but the fact that the

Premier of Ontario, who has taken on this Captain Canada kind of mantle, fighting so vigorously against the threat of tariffs and all the stuff he said about the president, that as recently as this fall, when the president won the election, the Premier was still a fan of Donald Trump, even though we know so much about Donald Trump, January 6th, the criminal convictions, the threat of this kind of thing, the tariffs was already on the table. So let's put that in a box for a minute. The point that was kind of creeping into my brain there while everyone else was talking

was when you mentioned Trump, look at the United States and look at the unions, the large unions in the United States that had members that were mention Trump, look at the United States and look at the unions, the large unions in the United States that had members that were supporting Trump, but the leadership was caught kind of between wanting to endorse Harris or didn't endorse as strongly as they might have. The leadership wanted to endorse the Democrats, but the members were for Trump.

Right. You have that dynamic happening. When you mention Trump, that's immediately what came into my mind, separate from the politics of this hot mic moment, which may or may not impact the campaign as we go forward, as people point out the contradiction between the premier's previous support for Donald Trump and what he's been saying lately. We've got a few minutes left here.

Let me put one more item on the table. And that is, you know, we've had this conversation, certainly the last American presidential election was overwhelmingly focused on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It became a huge issue in the campaign and quite a disconnect between, for example, much of the leadership of the Democratic Party and then what you might call ordinary Americans who, for a bunch of different reasons, are not enamored with the policy. Is that playing out, Karen, up here in the union movement? First of all, I want to go back a bit before I answer that. I'm actually disappointed that the premier would be outwardly supporting Trump,

and that's the kind of leadership that he thinks that Ontarians want. Well, he wasn't outwardly supporting, he was privately supporting. Well, privately, but... He got caught supporting. he was privately supporting. Well privately, but he got caught supporting. That's the kind of leadership that Ontarians would even want to see us aspire. We pride ourselves on equity and diversity when members of designated groups, when our members of our LGBTQ community are basically can't enter the United States if you identify on your passport with an X. There are

things that we value as Ontarians that we would hope that our Premier would privately or publicly be supporting. As educators we try to create safe and inclusive schools and environments for our students to thrive in. So we're talking about what's happening here. We're seeing, yeah, we're seeing people feeling a pushback and feeling empowered to push back in regards to the progress we've made around equity. And that's not the way we want to go. That's not the Canada we have strived for,

being inclusive and having as many voices, because we're stronger in our diversity. And what we're seeing there is people being scapegoat for things that are happening and going back to a time, a very colonial time, a time where many people who are now in Canada wouldn't be welcomed and I don't think that's good for the Ontario that we're trying to build. And I think unions in general are trying to push back. There are some unions who are not looking at the bigger picture and we need to look at that bigger picture. We are asking our members to look at the platform of the NDP,

look at the platforms of the liberal, look at the platforms of the Green P, look at the platforms of progressive conservatives who are looking at things like health care, housing, affordable housing, education, things that are important to you, that are important to build a strong Ontario, and what has been the track record of those governments towards making that happen.

We don't see that with the progressive conservatives and I think our union members need to be looking at that, not just their own working environment, but because we don't live in silos. It's going to impact our neighbours and everyone else. JP Hornig from Opsu, Victoria Mancinelli from Liuna, as her dad calls it, or Liuna, as you call it. Karen Brown from EFPO, and Jeff Gray at the Globe and Mail on the other side of the table. Thanks everybody for coming into TVO tonight. We're grateful.

Thank you so much. Thank you.