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Five of Ontario’s Education Unions representing over 250,000 workers have served notice to the province to begin bargaining ahead of next school year, in a move some are calling “unprecedented.”

Union leaders involved in the announcement have described this announcement as an opportunity for a quarter of a million education workers to say “enough is enough” regarding the chronic understaffing and underfunding of public education.

Joe Tigani, president of the Ontario School Board Council of Unions (OSBCU) joins PressProgress Ontario reporter Eric Wickham to talk about what is at stake for public education ahead of this next round of bargaining.

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"The homeless are not Other. They are Us," Ontario's Superior Court declared last month.

In a ruling that had advocates cheering, Justice Michael Gibson affirmed that unhoused people are entitled to the same Charter rights as any other Canadian — and that a bylaw targeting a specific encampment for removal had therefore amounted to anti-homeless discrimination.

This left Doug Ford fuming.

But this isn't about the premier. Not mostly, anyway. It is, as our story explains, about the people who have nowhere else to go.

On this episode of Sources, Eric Wickham travelled to Kitchener, Ont., to meet residents of the encampment at the centre of the landmark case, and spoke to Ashley Schuitema and Shannon Down, two of the lawyers who persuaded the court to recognize the dignity of their clients.

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A wave of changes is hitting Ontario, including one that is going to make finding things out about the province more difficult for reporters and the public.

In March, Doug Ford announced that his government was going to change Freedom of Information Laws to exempt correspondence from himself and his cabinet ministers.

These changes come after a court ruled that Ford’s personal cell phone records were subject to information requests. It’s been known for a long time that Ford conducts provincial business on his personal phone, so obviously - reporters have been trying to get to those records.

Now - if these new rules are put in place, they can’t.

The Trillium’s Queen’s Park Reporter Jack Hauen joins Ontario reporter Eric Wickham to talk about these proposed changes.

Note:

This interview was recorded on Wednesday April 1, so there is no mention of the province’s most recent proposal to change regional government by slashing councils in Simcoe and Niagara and giving an appointed regional chair “strong chair powers.”

This new development was announced Thursday afternoon before the long weekend.

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