Post-election debrief

We know the election results were not what many of us had hoped for. But just because Doug Ford has a majority of MPPs at Queen’s Park, doesn’t mean he represents the majority of people in Ontario. The majority of Ontarians still want decent work, good quality social services, and income support programs that allow all of us to live in dignity. 

Ford’s so-called mandate was achieved with just 17.6% of eligible voters. That means the majority of people -- over 80% -- did NOT vote for Ford. Most Ontarians are NOT content with the status quo. But like many of us, they lack confidence about what can be done. Others are angry about the electoral process and its failure to deliver change. 

But this is actually a reason to be hopeful because it tells us there are millions of people out there ready to be organized and fight for change between elections. 

Given how hard we’ve worked, it might be hard to believe that many Ontarians did not know that a $20 minimum wage, 10 paid sick days and other decent work issues were on the table this election. It tells us we still have much to do to build the strength of our movement.

That’s why tonight’s election debrief is important. 

We can assess the new context, share lessons, and develop a plan of action for the summer. Kicking off our discussion will be Deena Ladd from the Workers’ Action Centre and David Bush from the Income Security Advocacy Centre. After their initial reflections, we’ll head into smaller group discussions, where we want to hear from you, about what you learned in your outreach and what things you might do differently going forward. And we want to hear what kind of decent work organizing you want to do over the summer and how we can support each other to do that work.