Dalton Days for Ontario Public Service Employees?

November 15, 2009 by Ontario Works
Filed under: Recession

Just how fast can the Ontario Government completely reverse its position on a particular course of action? Apparently, it takes just a few months.

After declaring in February 2009 that the governing Liberal Party of Ontario would not be instituting “Dalton Days”, Premier Dalton McGuinty has been gradually preparing the public service to concede that they will be mandating some form of vacation-without-pay scenario.

If you read the first Toronto Star article, you will notice that it was not the Premier that is “doing damage control” during the bitter month of February. At that point, it was Finance Minister Dwight Duncan that stood in on behalf of the province’s leader to declare, “We’re not doing them… I’m saying right now we will not be doing anything like that”. Not known as particularly partial to telling the entire truth, it was very convenient the Premier sloughed off this task to someone less hefty on the political scale. Pun certainly not intended. We can only assume that while the Finance Minister was telling the public one thing, the party leader was actually weighing alternatives in the background.

It is difficult to determine in advance how this will effect Ontario Works offices across the province.

Although they administer provincial legislation, Ontario Works staff are actually employees of their local municipal government. The Harris government is responsible for this arrangement, having argued at the time that it puts control of social programs in the hands of the communities that will be overseeing them; after all, they would know best how to meet their own needs. However, that move was executed purely to cleave the large, powerful, and influential Ontario Public Service Employee Union into several smaller bargaining units, all represented by different unions.

Now the province is only a money supplier, giving communities the funds to administer OW and pay staff. During the course of the workday, the statistics the Ontario Works employee generates using the Service Delivery Model Technology provides the province with the data it needs to determine if more funding for staffing is necessary. Of course this is flexible during uncertain periods such as this recession, but generally this is how the system works when the economy is stable.

Which leads one to believe that the province, if it decides to do anything about Ontario Works, will simply cut the cash transfers. The local political class will then be forced into the choice of either laying-off staff or instituting some form of Dalton Days. It would be interesting to know if the provincial government made a conscious decision based on the number of collective agreements that are going to expire across Ontario next year.

If anything, Premier McGuinty will likely continue to follow in the footsteps of Mike Harris, enjoying the benefits of municipal downloading while simultaneously condemning it as a failure. Failing to take advantage of the opportunity by shifting political responsibility to others appears to be his adopted style. How he implements Dalton Days will show his true colours, and will reveal his true approach to poverty.

Tags: Dalton Days, Dalton McGuinty, Mike Harris, Ontario Works, SDMT