October 24, 2006

OPENING PRESENTATION NOTES

Wayne Samuelson

Check Against Delivery

WELCOME

I would like to welcome you all to this Jobs Summit.

BACKGROUND

The labour movement has been fighting for a viable jobs strategy, for full employment policies and for sustainable economic development, for decades.

Yet, given the election of right wing governments like that of Mike Harris here in Ontario, the lack of substantive change under the McGuinty Government and the Harper government in Ottawa and all the various campaigns to stop privatization, to keep medicare public etc., it has been a while since we visited the issues of a job strategy.

Yet, today with massive job loss in the manufacturing sector it is essential that we go back and revisit some of our earlier ideas, reassess them, modify them, update them and then go out and fight for them.

Let me begin by talking about the actual state of job loss in the country and in Ontario in particular.

For many people, including many union members, Canada’s economy seems healthy, yet the manufacturing sector is in a state of deepening crisis.  Tens of thousands of jobs have already been lost and many more layoffs and plant closures are coming as company after company downsizes and restructures to meet what they term the “new competitive realities.”

This crisis has very significant long-term implications for workers across Canada and particularly for workers in the more industrialized parts of the country such as in Quebec and Ontario.