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Big Impact Stories: Local activists, labour union hit the streets

Newmarket residents protested labour reform rollbacks, cuts to French-language services, and local Canada Post union members shut down mail delivery

These are the stories that created change that resonated far and wide within our community in the last four months of 2018. The issues and challenges raised will continue to have impact in the year ahead.

With change comes protest.

From labour union pickets to political protests against Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government, Newmarket in the last half of 2018 has seen its share of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, two rights guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The fledgling Ford government’s rollback of several labour reforms, including nixing the minimum wage hike to $15 Jan. 1, saw local activists from the York Region chapter of Fight for $15 and Fairness confront Newmarket-Aurora MPP and Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, and take to the street in protest.

Even former Newmarket deputy mayor and regional councillor municipal candidate Joan Stonehocker got in on the action.

Stonehocker, who is executive director of the York Region Food Network, said part of her work is providing education about the need for people to have adequate incomes so they can afford to buy food.

“There is a research project based at the University of Toronto called PROOF that has identified increased income as a necessary part of the solution to the complex problem of why people are hungry in our communities,” she said. “Other important interventions are affordable housing, access to affordable child care and adequate social assistance rates. ...Increases in the minimum wage are an important part of reducing food insecurity and improving public health. That is why I was standing with the group fighting for $15 and Fairness.”

But not everyone threw darts at the province. At least one local farmer welcomed the government’s move to replace the former Liberal government's Bill 148 with its own Making Ontario Open for Business Act, and in the process reducing red tape and regulation.

Members of Newmarket’s Franco-Ontarians also participated in a provincewide protest against the Ontario government’s cuts to French-language services outside York-Simcoe MPP Caroline Mulroney’s office in Holland Landing

Possibly the biggest issue for those protesting was the cancellation of a French-language university, which had been set to open in 2020. In cancelling the university, the provincial government specified “the fiscal realities of our province's finances prohibit a new stand-alone French Language University right now.”

“It’s bringing back a lot of old hurts from a long time ago,” said Sylvie Lessard, a Newmarket resident and local organizer. “Franco-Ontarians have had to fight for their rights in the past. We’re just trying to survive as a culture. We’re a founding nation of this country, and we’re just trying to be here and be proud.”

And, finally, rotating strikes nationally that shut down Canada Post in late fall hit Newmarket in early November, stopping mail delivery as members of Newmarket Local 573 hit the picket line.

The federal government legislated an end to job action by postal workers on Nov. 27.