And My Answer.
The Question from a Reader:
Galagher, I would appreciate your thoughts on certain teacher advertisements currently on radio / t.v.
One, has to do with kids, in the Ontario Election, with an anti Tory bent and sponsored by the Ontario Teachers Federation.
The other by the Catholic English Teachers Federation promotes all day kindergarten with a positive Liberal bent.
"What really irks me most ..is the fact that we as taxpayers are paying the teachers' salaries and what makes it worse, we do not even have children in school".
The Reader goes on: "In my opinion, this is a classic job of money laundering as the teachers are using our tax dollars to support a political party".
"Is this correct Galagher"?
"Should Elections Ontario or the Province's A.G. look into this"?
And finally, "It is obvious to me that the current Liberal Government has put the OTF and the CETF up to this to save McGuinty a ton of advertising costs".
My Response:
Dear Reader, I did a Blog on this very subject recently and declared this action, on the part of the Teacher Unions and Public Service Unions generally, to be undemocratic.
But the chances of any body, such as Elections Ontario, looking into this are, I believe, nil.
They will simply argue it is a freedom of speech issue.
Which it certainly is not, given, asyou say, it is Taxpayer money being used to fund their self serving ads.
I have felt this way since the late 60s when legislation was first introduced to have Unions represent Government Employees. And when I say government employees I am not only referring to Teachers but to Bureaucrats Generally, and to Police, Fire, Nurses, Doctors, Armed Forces, NGOs, etc. etc. etc.
I say this because the two parties, in any labour agreement with public workers, are their Union and the Taxpayer. Sadly, one party to those agreements - the Taxpayer, is not at the table.
In theory of course taxpayers are supposed to be represented by their Elected Officials but in practice, those self same Politicians - be they Socialist, Liberal, or Conservative, tend to be more interested in labour peace and will pay for that peace via the Taxpayers' pockets , regardless of cost.
It is no wonder then that our debt and deficits continue to grow while Public Servants continue to reap the best pay, have the best working conditions, while all the time enjoying almost total job security to the envy of the private sector.
An analogy was used recently that stated with every Public Sector wage increase, those public workers are consuming their own limbs since, with each increase, the declining private sector is less and less able to fund their feast.
And dear reader, I do not see anyone voluntarily dealing with this issue. People are happy with their entitlements and Governments are content to keep the peace with their workers regardless of the cost to you know who.
But that said, the issue will most certainly get addressed - since as noted above, the Public Sector will soon run out of limbs, (head and body) too.
And, with incredible Government Debts and with the Western World succumbing to Financial Collapse, I do not think that this time will be long in coming.
As I saw it ...
'K.D. Galagher'
