CANADA
The biggest Canadian Public Service union has taken sides in the election campaign, urging its members to vote for anyone other than the Opposition Conservatives.
President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), Chris Aylward said Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer (pictured) would pick up where former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper left off with job and spending cuts.
“I don’t want 2006 to 2015 to happen all over again, and I believe Scheer is as bad — if not worse — than Stephen Harper,” Mr Aylward said.
He said everything pointed to him being anti-workers and anti-union.
“How can any worker in the country vote Conservative?” Mr Aylward said.
The PASC’s partisan stand that Mr Scheer is bad news for PS employees and the services they deliver to Canadians ruffled some members who prefer their unions remain non-partisan.
President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), Debi Daviau said the PIPSC would not go as far as to say “Don’t vote Scheer”, but agreed that public sector unions are wary of Conservative Governments.
“The PIPSC is issues-based, not party-based, and will assess all party positions on its key concerns — climate change being number one — to help inform its members’ voting decisions,” Ms Daviau said.
“We don’t know if Scheer is the same as Harper, but Conservatives are already talking about austerity, limiting the size of the Public Service and cuts.”
She said the PIPSC was making the climate crisis a top priority over the bread-and-butter labour and employment issues on which the union historically had focused.
“Canada has some of the best climate scientists, who need more resources to tackle the climate crisis,” Ms Daviau said.
She said a newly released PIPSC survey of Federal scientists found that almost all (94 per cent) said climate change was a crisis, while only one-fifth said Canada was doing enough to fight it.
Ottawa, 2 October 2019
