TORONTO - Premier Dalton McGuinty says all public-sector workers need to do their part to eliminate Ontario's massive deficits, including municipal police and firefighters.
In an exclusive interview with The Canadian Press, McGuinty says police and firefighters want to be "part of the solution" and should ask themselves what they can do to help.
Last week's budget froze the wages of non-unionized public sector workers and warned that compensation for unionized workers will be capped for two years after their contracts expire -- a move that affects more than a million employees.
Even if the economy improves by the time the contracts expire, McGuinty says it won't change his mind on the wage freeze.
Municipalities were excluded from the government's wage edict, but McGuinty is urging them to freeze salaries too as Ontario struggles to balance the books by 2017-18.
He says given the options his government considered and rejected, such as layoffs, workers will understand that a wage freeze is "the right thing to do."
