As part of a province-wide week of anti-poverty action against the Liberal provincial government’s policies community and union activists are coming together tomorrow, Thursday, October 16th in Sudbury at 1:30pmin Memorial Park. They are demanding the full restoration of the Community Start Up and Special Diet Funds that provided crucial support to people on social assistance; raising social assistance rates by 55% to bring them back to where they were before the Mike Harris cuts; raising the minimum wage to $14 an hour indexed to the cost of living; stopping the unfair ODSP ‘medical reviews’ that are pushing people off of ODSP; and for living wages for all. “Despite the claim to ‘social justice’ by the Wynne government both low-income workers and people on social assistance are being forced by this government into deeper poverty. Real justice demands major increases in the social assistance and minimum wage rates now” said, Valerie Trudeau, President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Sudbury Council and member of the Raise the Rates campaign. Similar events are being held tomorrow in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Guelph. On Friday events take place in Ottawa and again in Toronto and Guelph.
Starting at 1:30pm in Memorial Park there will be a free meal including chili, pasta, vegetarian curry, stew, bread, and hot chocolate. Music will be provided by John Newlands. The rally at 2pm will hear from Marcel Charron Vice-President of Mine Mill Local 598/Unifor, Laurel O’Gorman on women, poverty and violence and from people on social assistance and those advocating for low-income workers.
The rally will be followed by a march to the Provincial Building where demands for raising the social assistance and minimum rates will be made. The event is organized by the Sudbury Coalition for Poverty and supported by the Sudbury and District Labour Council, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) Sudbury, Mine Mill Local 598/Unifor, the Sudbury CUPE Council, Labour Studies at Laurentian University, and the Centre for Research in Social Justice and Policy.
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The Sudbury working-group of The Media Co-op was formed to create independent media in the North, to speak to our issues and outlooks on our communities as well as the world around us. Independent media provides an avenue for people who are wishing to gain critical perspective on the issues that matter most to us, and to give a voice to those people and stories that you won't find in the mainstream media.
The Sudbury working-group site is no longer being updated and has been archived.