Liberals Restrict Debate on TTC Strike Ban in Rush to Pass Legislation

Debate on the Liberals TTC strike ban was cut short by the Liberals, who imposed a 6.5 hour restriction on debate on the Bill.  You can read the very short debate on the Bill here. Some NDP members objected to the Bill, but the Tories and Liberals supported it.  Here is the Toronto Star article explaining what happened. It will likely pass shortly, since the NDP don’t have the numbers to stop it.  The labour movement is pissed at the Liberals, but the Liberal Party obviously is not too worried about that.
Here’s a fun game.  Find how many times you can find reference to the “statistic” that a TTC strike costs $50 million per day in the debates and the Toronto Star report.  I noted the other day how this magical number is now treated as a statistical “fact”, even though none of the people citing the number have any idea how the number was calculated or what it is based on.  [By the way, I asked the City Department that apparently made up the number to send me the study over a week ago.  I’m still waiting…]   My point is that in labour policy debates, statistics are routinely thrown around in support of one argument or another, and those numbers should always be questioned and subjected to scrutiny, since all statistics are based on a set of assumptions.  Without knowing what those assumptions are, the resulting statistics are largely meaningless.  But meaningless statistics can nevertheless influence public policy debates, as we have seen here, given the magical, mystical $50 million number that has played so significant a role in the debates surrounding the TTC strike ban.