‘Enough is enough’

Kitchener labour council calls for change during Day of Action expo

They’ve had enough.

The provincewide Enough Is Enough Day of Action, spearheaded by the Ontario Federation of Labour, took centre stage Saturday at Carl Zehr Square.

The Day of Action has five demands, according to Jeff Donkersgoed, first vice-president of the Waterloo Regional Labour Council.

“Real wage increases, affordable goods, keeping health care and education public, making sure the corporations pay their fair share and then affordable housing and rent controls,” he said in an interview Saturday.

The Day of Action was marked in 30 Ontario cities. In Kitchener, the labour council organized an expo in front of city hall.

“We wanted to do something a little different,” Donkersgoed said. “Marches and rallies are fantastic, but our fear was, as soon as they’re done, people just go home, so we thought: Let’s have an expo.

“So we invited groups from across the region — social justice groups, charities, community organizations, unions, student groups — to come here and have a table.”

Many groups handed out literature to visitors.

When people left the expo, they likely remembered the message: “We’ve got to keep lobbying people in power to make positive change,” Donkersgoed said.

His message to the Ford government?

“Listen to the people,” Donkersgoed said. “Stop gutting our healthcare system. Put funding into education, stop shortchanging it.”

Many Ontarians are feeling the pinch from steep hikes in grocery prices, Donkersgoed said.

“I’ve got a well-paying job as a teacher, but we’re feeling it,” he said. “And I look at my students. We’ve had challenges this year in the classroom with behaviours and social norms because of three years of the pandemic

“I look at them and think: ‘How many of them are struggling at home right now? Do they have enough food to eat? Are their families having to work three or four jobs to make ends meet? Is that what’s causing some of these behavioural issues?’ ”

The Day of Action was designed to “bring awareness around the frustrations that many workers have and to clearly articulate that enough is enough,” said labour council president Jeff Pelich.

The expo was “the start of something, bringing community together, getting people to talk again after COVID, seeing what all of these groups do,” Donkersgoed said.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “This is just sort of a launching point to what follows if (politicians and others with power) don’t listen to the people.”