Storm isn't coming our way...

...it's already here.

My personal role models at ACR show support -

and invite us to do the same.

"[Collective bargaining] has been in this state for a long time, and not having that, there are a lot of unknowns," Leonard said. "When you lose something, it's like a nice comfortable blanket. You take that away, and you think: are we just going to be left out in the cold? How will we be treated from here on out? Benefits are one thing but rights are something else. And that's what we're fighting about."

Harper has been engaging in a similar assault on the rights of unions to bargain, using the incremental approach that allows him to fool some Canadians into thinking he's centrist.

“The Conservative government bullied Parliament into passing flawed legislation that undermines workers' right to free collective bargaining and women's right to equal pay for work of equal value,” says John Gordon, PSAC's National President. “This represents a clear attack on public sector workers and it endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.”

Take note of those words:  endangers the rights of all Canadian workers to free collective bargaining.  These attacks on public service unions and the collective rights of public servants is a way of stomping on the necks of all workers, public and private.  Rather than improve the work situation, the benefits, and the rights of private sector workers, our government constantly points the finger at public servants as being pampered and over paid.

Sources of the attacks other than Harper himself make clear the motivation behind this vitriolic rhetoric.

"What a surprise!" Brown wrote. "Another mean spirited and economically illiterate attack on the public sector, one in a series from the CFIB, this time an attack on the pension plans of public sector employees."


CFIB has been relentless in attacking public services wages, benefits and pensions as pressure increases to provide decent pensions and benefits in the private sector, something Catherine Swift of CFIB would rather not address.  So instead, she seeks to take away from the public service in order to be able to point and say, see?  The gap between public and private benefits and pensions isn't that big!

That Harper is on board with Swift is clear in that she actually met with Day to discuss public servant wages and pensions despite being a rep for the private sector.

So what is going on in Wisconsin is our fight as we face the same push to undermine rights here in Canada.

This is more of the boot stomping down on the face of citizens, more of the violations of rights which occurred at the G20, more Montebello, more whistleblowers threatened and muzzled.

This is another attack on the freedom and rights of two countries which have fought so hard for the rights to protest, to bargain, to speak out without fear.