Raw audio of a teleconference with The Ontario Minister of Training Colleges and Universities Brad Duguid and journalists with the student press in Ontario. Recorded Jan. 17, 2014 

Brad Duguid campus media scrum teleconference.MP3

GBC clubs co-ordinator Cameron Wathey speaks about the GoFundMe fundraiser he launched to help his family after they lost their house to Hurricane Irma.

Full story: http://dialognews.ca/2017/09/09/hurricane_irma-destroys-st-martin-family-home-of-recent-gbc-clubs-coordinator/

Produced by Lidianny Botto / The Dialog

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Hurricane destroys GBC clubs coordinator's family home in St. Martin

JP Hornick, the chair of the faculty union bargaining team (left in photo), talks to The Dialog's Lidianny Botto on Monday, Oct. 16, the first day of an Ontario-wide college faculty strike.

Transcript of Interview with JP Hornick

Q: how many days are you planning on striking?

JP: That's up to the colleges actually. We will be willing to go back to the table the minute they call us back and are willing to talk about the faculty issues. One of the things that have happened is that they have said absolutely no to everything the faculty had on the table. They maintained that position the whole time so we had no choice but to eventually say we have to withdraw our services.


Q: is there a deadline to go back to the table?
JP: That deadline is up to the colleges. We'll remain in contact with the mediator through the ministry of labour and actually try and figure out when they're willing to move. We've moved three times, very significantly, and in each case they've just told us no.

What I can say is that there's only been three strikes in the history of the colleges and in none of those strikes have students lost their year and I have been incredibly impressed with the amount of support and solidarity that students are showing for the faculty issues. But also for the students who are organizing around the tuition reimbursements and things like that. That's amazing work and I wholeheartedly support that.

Q: What are the no-cost items?
JP: The no-cost items that we had on the table is who makes academic decisions, so we proposed a model where faculty, administrators and students work together to make decisions around academics for the college. This already exists in almost every post-secondary system in Canada and even one college in Ontario. We thought that was a best-practices that should be spread out across the system. Also, we proposed longer contracts, one-year contracts for the contract faculty so students have the stability they need and the faculty can plan and concentrate on their teaching.

Q: The college did their final offer and the OPSEU didn't accept it and are asking for the OPSEU members to vote on it and they are saying its better if you do it volunteer.
JP: It's so misleading what they've been saying on that, because honestly since September 15 they've had the opportunity to bring that directly to our member and we've told them we will not stand in your way, if you want them to vote on this please bring it to them directly. Instead they keep putting it back on our court. If they want to take that offer to our members they need to take that offer to our members. As a bargaining team we are tasked with only taking something to our members that we can recommend and we cannot recommend an offer that would gut the system. 

Q: How have you tried to maintain the members together and engage them? If they are asking to vote.
JP: Absolutely, if they ask for an offer vote we'll talk with our members about what's in that offer, whatever they have on the table, and what we think the consequences of that offer will be and where the problem spots are. I believe our members have the right to vote on an offer and we will, as soon as we get one settled that is something we can recommend we can bring it to them ourselves. But if the colleges want to take them a bad offer they can take them their offer.

We want to be back in our classrooms working with our students, we want to be back in the libraries, providing those counselling services, we don't want to be out here anymore than students want to be outside of their classes. We understand and sympathize with that and we are doing our best to stand up for the learning conditions and the quality of education that we think our students deserve.