For Immediate Release -- March 22, 2012.

Contact: Christy Knockleby

Phone: 705-523-2631

Email: sudburycap@gmail.com

or Gary Kinsman at gkinsman@laurentian.ca

Community Groups and Unions Come Together to Speak Out Against Provincial Cutbacks and Austerity This Friday

As the McGuinty government prepares to release its budget next week that will include some of the austerity measures proposed in the Drummond Report, community and union activists will gather together at Memorial Park on March 23 to speak out against proposed budget cutbacks and to demand the reversal of previous cutbacks. The rally starts at 3:00pm with entertainment and snacks. At 4:15pm people will be marching through downtown before returning to Memorial park for a free meal at 5:30pm. 

Speakers will include: John Clarke of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), author Linda McQuaig, Laurie McGauley on Kimberly Rogers and Justice With Dignity, John Closs of the Sudbury and District Labour Council and Patti Encinas of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions.

This event is organized by the new Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty (S-CAP), and is sponsored by the Centre for Research in Social Justice and Policy at Laurentian University, Occupy Sudbury, the Sudbury and District Labour Council, The Sudbury Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Council, the Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury, and the Graduate Student's Association (GSA) at Laurentian University.

Social assistance rates have lost at least 55% of their spending power since the days of the Harris Tories. The minimum wage has been reduced in real terms and more and more workers are forced into low wage jobs, while employment standards and protection for workers are being steadily eroded. McGuinty has the possibility now of reversing those trends but the recently released Drummund report suggests that the upcoming budget is going to continue them instead. Now is the time to speak out against poverty and austerity measures.

The Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty (S-CAP) is a direct-action anti-poverty organization based in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. We provide direct-action support work assisting individuals in their struggles with welfare and ODSP, housing, employers, and others who deny people what they are entitled to in order to meet their needs. In addition, we mount campaigns against and support educational work about regressive government policies as they affect working people and people living in poverty. We believe in the power of people to organize themselves. We believe in the power of resistance.