Can someone dumb this down for a dumb foreigner?
Ford, a right wing premier of Ontario, passed a bill limiting wage increases in the public sector to 1%. This was well below inflation, and found to be unconstitutional.
Ford appealed, and lost a second time.
Like a lot of Ford’s austerity measures, this is costing tax payers far far more than it would have saved
Thanks for that. Seems absurd, I’m trying to understand why it’s expensive, is it the legal fees?
Nurses leave the public system because of the wage cap. They go to private agencies that pay double, then the agencies rent out the same nurses back to the hospitals for triple. It works because the wage cap imposed by Ford works on the individual nurses while the hospital budgets aren’t subject to it. In the end the hospitals need the nurses, the public pays 3 times more for them while Ford’s buddies collect a third. It’s a beautiful scheme.
He has a history of trying to privatize services, and other backroom deals. During COVID he froze health staff wages, while helping his buddiea’ private hospital and private nurse agency flourish. So public hospitals are needing to hire contract nurses billed at double what original nurses got. He is dismantling things on ourpose to say “see it isn’t working”