UPDATE:

Ontario NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, says it’s her understanding that Ontario colleges are calling their teachers back for Monday and students for Tuesday of next week.

Horwath says she now has the back-to-work legislation that was tabled this afternoon at Queen’s Park by the Wynne government. She and her MPP’s will look it over tonight, debate Saturday and Sunday before being possibly passed Sunday.

“This kind of legislation can’t be passed without a look at it. You wouldn’t buy a car without having a look at it first. We need to look it over, and I hear there are already a couple of items in it that are a problem.” said Horwath.

Ontario’s Advanced Education Minister, Deb Matthews, says the NDP is hurting the students with this delay.

“It’s unconscionable that they are doing this when students are in danger of losing their semester. We could have had this passed Thursday evening in 10 minutes if they had co-operated, and that would have sped up the back-to-class process.” said Matthews.

OPSEU union leader, Warren “Smokey” Thomas, was unhappy with both the Liberals and the NDP, calling these tactics “political theatre.”  

 

ORIGINAL:

The Ontario NDP only has 19 seats, and is the third party at Queen’s Park, but it plans to exercise its right to debate the back-to-work legislation being tabled by Premier Kathleen Wynne today.

“The NDP does not support anti-worker legislation that leaves a broken system in place. By doing nothing for five weeks, it’s become clear that’s what Kathleen Wynne wanted all along.” said NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson.

“Kathleen Wynne wanted to ram this through Thursday night and go home for the weekend. The NDP will force the parties to return to the house and give this bill, at least, its due diligence and debate.” Said Bisson.



 The NDP says it plans to raise issues like student compensation during the debate, as well as fixing what it calls “the structural and funding problems at colleges. “

Meanwhile, union leaders say teachers will not be ready to resume classes by Monday, as they will need time to prepare and re-adjust schedules and assignments in the wake of the five weeks missed.

“It’s not just a matter of coming back and looking at your course outline and saying ok…I’ll condense these five weeks.” said J.P. Hornick of OPSEU.

“I mean we’re looking at nursing programs, apprenticeship programs; and if the colleges, as they say, need to maintain academic control, then it’s really up to them to provide the direction on how we’re supposed to make up this work in each of those courses that we teach.” said Hornick.

Here is the agenda the Wynne government will likely have to follow to get back-to-work legislation passed, and send teachers back to their jobs next week.

  •  First reading:  Friday, Nov. 17
  •  Second reading:  Saturday, Nov. 18
  •  Third and final reading, passage of the bill:  Sunday, Nov. 19