No one expected the NDP and Bob Rae to win the election in 1990. This was good news for our local because we had a good relationship with Rae and we were one of the few construction unions which remitted monthly contributions to the NDP. Given the nature of politics at the local union level, we donated based on a candidate-by-candidate choice, according to their merits and their commitment to our cause, which was primarily job creation and social justice. Sometimes it was just because they were candidates of outstanding quality. At election time we sent out a number of union representatives to help campaign.
Rae had been a federal MP before jumping to the Ontario NDP in 1982 and winning the party’s leadership that year. That same year he was elected as an MPP, and in 1985 he was instrumental in helping the Ontario Liberals form a government after the Progressive Conservatives failed to win a majority. In the 1982 election, we had sent two representatives to help Bob Rae’s campaign in York South. One of those was John Colacci who reported back that Rae was in trouble. So without telling Rae or his campaign manager, I assigned a dozen representatives to the riding because, in my opinion, we needed a person like Rae in the Ontario legislature. He won comfortably with 45 per cent of the votes, well ahead of Liberal John Nunziata who took 35 per cent.
In 1990 the coalition’s term came to an end and a new election was called for October. Ten days before the election, Bob Rae invited me to lunch at a Yorkville Italian restaurant. I brought one of our full-time lawyers, Dan McCarthy, a Jesuit priest who had left the order to study law and marry. He was a truly outstanding person. I often enjoyed talking to him on a multitude of political, historical, and social issues.
At the lunch I warned Rae about the upcoming economic crisis. Rae was incredulous but I was witnessing serious cracks in the building industry and I was paying attention to the many warnings builders were giving me. I strongly believe that the construction industry is a barometer of the national economy and that it can forecast good or bad trends. As it happened, once Rae was elected he inherited a mess nobody was prepared for. Many big builders went out of business and the value of real estate fell by half. Few had the acumen to ride out the storm. Those who got out ahead of it included men like De Gasperis and Muzzo who wisely cut loose their riskier investments. They took losses but kept their more promising ventures. Their foresight paid off handsomely while other building giants, such as Bramalea Developments, disappeared.
Among the many new programs instituted by Rae was the Premier’s Economic Advisory Council. It was composed of leaders of industry, academics, labour, and government and I was one of the four labour leaders on the body. The council met once a month and Premier Rae was always present. Before every meeting we took delivery at our homes of thick binders with all the background for the issues to be discussed.
Among those highly knowledgeable financial and economic gurus who comprised the council, I felt like a fish out of water. My knowledge of the economy was superficial but I quickly realized some important things. I learned, for example, that a provincial government, however good its intentions, could not do much to change economic reality. There were too many external factors, not least a global recession at the time. At best, a provincial government can create favourable conditions for business expansion when the broader economy turns around.
Another realization I had involved the public debt. This is different from the deficit. A deficit is a shortfall in a budget year. It is money which is not covered by revenues from taxes and fees and so the government must borrow to cover its spending in that year. The debt is the accumulation of all those deficits. Year after year, deficit budgets add to the debt and that debt carries interest which again, adds to the deficit, which adds to the debt. It is surprising how many citizens either do not know about our public debt, or do not care. Unless it is controlled, government debt is like a cancer that grows year after year and can destroy the economic stability of a nation. We have just to look at a number of European countries, or even Detroit across the border from Ontario, to see the consequences. We are fooling ourselves if we think it cannot happen here.
At the Premier’s Council, I promoted construction projects and in particular the new Highway 407 as an important component of our provincial infrastructure connecting many manufacturing enterprises in the Golden Horseshoe area. It would bypass the congestion of Highway 401 to the south and create thousands of jobs.
Bob Rae’s government was unfairly criticized for the economic recession which hit the province about the time he was elected. It hit hard just at the moment he took power. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it.
I recall an occasion when the advisory council members were asked by Premier Rae to forward suggestions for topics he might include in a live televised speech he was going to deliver. Dan McCarthy and I prepared some ideas we thought were worthy of consideration. McCarthy polished them up and sent them in. As it turned out, some of our ideas made it into Rae’s text. The speech was quite a big deal because it was unheard of for the Ontario Premier to go on television to give what was essentially a “state of the province” address. The following morning, McCarthy came to my office jubilantly claiming credit for some of the content of the premier’s speech. We were thrilled because the Rae government was very important to Local 183. At the time, when there was very little residential construction going on Rae vigorously promoted the building of non-profit and affordable housing which in turn kept many of our members working.
The Rae government also tabled and passed labour legislation which was extremely favourable to union workers. One piece of legislation greatly affected our building maintenance members, including cleaners, who often were the first services that management would sublet to non-union companies. Rae changed the law so that a union was certified for the location and not just for the company. As a result, if work was sublet, it had to be given to a union shop.
The government was generally receptive to our ideas. For example, I remember one day when senior staff at the Industrial Standards Branch of the Ministry of Labour invited me to meet and said the premier had asked for suggestions on how to update and improve the regulations around labour laws. I was caught by surprise but managed to come up with two suggestions. One, compensation for unpaid wages owed to employees in the event that a company folded and went out of business. This happened a lot among “fly by night” contractors in the construction sector. Second, a reduction in the standard workweek for roads, sewer and water-main construction. The director strongly argued against the first idea, saying it would only be more incentive for companies not to pay employees. I countered by saying the government should make the companies’ directors personally liable, and it carried the day. As a result, Ontario has the Wage Protection Act covering unpaid wages up to $2,500. Unfortunately, I did not win over the director on the workweek issues.
Rae was always being accused of being anti-business which I thought was unfair and untrue. While I can only speak for the construction industry, I do have an anecdote which suggests otherwise. Fred De Gasperis called me to meet him at his office when he was part of a development group building a huge residential complex called Springdale between Brampton and Toronto. The development meant thousands of jobs for our members but progress had ground to a halt because of a dispute with the Region of Peel over the building of schools. Without schools, the builders could not build. The root problem was a fight between the region and the province. Peel wanted money from the province to build schools but the province refused, saying if it gave in to Peel it would have to give in to every other municipality. It was a recession and money was tight.
Fred asked me to speak to Premier Rae about the matter and I did. In response, he created a new office called the Construction Facilitator’s Office and appointed to it Dale Martin, a former City of Toronto councillor who was well versed in municipal politics. I still do not know how Dale managed to do it but he resolved the issue and the green light was given to build thousands of homes. The day Rae’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, David S. Cooke, stood up in the legislature to announce the creation of the Construction Facilitator’s Office I was invited to sit in the visitors’ gallery with the president of the Ontario Home Builders Association and then Metro Councillor Howard Moscoe, who was also president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. We were asked to stand and we received loud applause from all the MPPs. That was on April 9, 1992.
The Rae government did a lot for Local 183. I regret that after I left, in the next provincial election, Local 183’s new management supported another political party.