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Protestors welcome Premier Wynne to Sudbury

A group of protestors welcomed Premier Kathleen Wynne with screams of “shame!” as she entered Alexandria's restaurant in downtown Sudbury on Friday for a meeting with Sudbury MP Glenn Thibeault, Gerry Lougheed Jr.
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Protestors with the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union welcomed Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne with screams of “shame!” as she entered a Sudbury restaurant to meet with Sudbury MP Glenn Thibeault, Gerry Lougheed Jr., and other prominent members of the community. Photo by Jonathan Migneault.
A group of protestors welcomed Premier Kathleen Wynne with screams of “shame!” as she entered Alexandria's restaurant in downtown Sudbury on Friday for a meeting with Sudbury MP Glenn Thibeault, Gerry Lougheed Jr. and other prominent members of the community.

“Wynne is here to deal with the crisis within her local Liberal party here in Sudbury,” said Gary Kinsman, a member of the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty, one of the groups that came out to protest the premier Friday afternoon. “She's imposed a crisis on people living in poverty and homeless people all across the province, including here in Sudbury.”

Kinsman said the premier has imposed austerity measures on the province's poorest citizens. He and his fellow protestors asked that the province to raise basic social assistance rates by 55 per cent, to return them to 1995 levels.

They also asked the government to reinstate the Community Start Up and Maintenance benefit, raise the minimum wage to $14 an hour, and end what it calls unfair medical reviews for people on the Ontario Disability Support Program.

Kinsman said Thibeault's decision to leave the NDP, and instead run for the Liberals provincially, points to the “hypocrisy of the political class.”

“In the context of imposing austerity on people, and neo-liberalism, there's not much difference between the Liberals and the NDP,” he said.

Several members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) were also outside the restaurant to protest Wynne.

Nathan Aubin, president of OPSEU Local 617, said 88 per cent of his members – at the Sudbury Jail – have voted in favour of a strike after receiving a “less than satisfactory” offer from the province during contract negotiations.

“They're tearing apart our collective agreements so we can end up paying for their scandals,” Aubin said of the Liberals. “I hope she heard us loud and clear that we're not happy and we're not going to stand for this.”

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Jonathan Migneault

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