Northern government workers vow to fight job cuts

Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada march through downtown Iqaluit June 18. Northern labour leaders urged their members to get ready for a four-year fight against what it predicts will be widespread cuts to public services by the federal government. (PHOTO BY CHRIS WINDEYER)

Union members from across the North marched in Iqaluit June 18 to protest what they say is an impending wave of cuts by the new Conservative majority government.

Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union that represents most federal, territorial and municipal workers in northern Canada, vowed to fight job cuts in the federal public service following a meeting in Iqaluit.

“Take your vitamins and let’s get ready to go to battle,” said Patty Ducharme, PSAC’s national executive vice president, to a crowd of around 100 who marched through downtown Iqaluit June 18.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is trying to figure how it will balance a $36-billion deficit while following through on tax cuts and declaring transfer payments to the provinces and territories off-limits for cuts.

Jean-Francois Des Lauriers, PSAC’s executive vice president for the North, said public sector workers will take “the brunt of the Harper agenda.”

He pointed across the street to Iqaluit’s post office, where business has slowed to a trickle because of a lockout by Canada Post of striking members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Iqaluit postal workers are members of a different union, but the lockout has virtually frozen all mail coming into Nunavut.

The lockout is “a defining moment in the history of labour in this country,” Des Lauriers said.

And he slammed the Conservatives’ corporate tax cuts, coming as they are ahead of potential cuts to public services.

“It’s a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in this country,” Des Lauriers said.

Mary Lou Cherwaty, president of the Northern Territories Federation of Labour said public sector workers do the best job of delivering public services.

She urged union members to spend the next four years pushing politicians to defend public sector jobs, which she said Harper is intent on slashing.

“Today is the first day of our four-year fight,” she said.

But what precisely union members will be battling against remains unclear.

In its budget last month, the federal government pledged to find savings of $4 billion per year to help bring down a $36-billion deficit through what it calls a strategic and operating review.

“The review will place particular emphasis on generating savings from operating expenses and improving productivity,” the budget document states, “while also examining the relevance and effectiveness of programs.”

But so far, the government has been vague about what that actually means.

During interviews after the budget was tabled, Nunavut MP and federal health minister Leona Aglukkaq refused to say what programs might be on the chopping block.

Instead she repeated the government’s line that the Conservatives won’t cut health and education transfer payments to the provinces and territories.

And she took a shot at the Liberal Party — out of power five years and reduced to just 34 seats in the May 2 election — for slashing transfers to the territories and provinces when the Grits balanced the budget in the mid-1990s.