Claiming to be out of breath, more than 500 community organizations across Quebec will be closed on Monday, in the hope of alerting elected officials to their needs.
This day is the first in a series of actions and ad hoc closures for organizations, which must culminate in a wave of strikes, closures and interruptions of activities during the week of February 20, 2022.
The organizations denounce what they qualify as “a long history of chronic underfunding, poor working conditions and attacks on their autonomy”.
In a press release, the Quebec Network for Autonomous Community Action said it was shocked that no mention of the community sector was made in Prime Minister François Legault’s inaugural speech last Tuesday.
The day after this speech, at the initiative of the government, a motion was adopted to recognize the contribution of all autonomous community organizations to the social and economic transformation of Quebec, but the network wishes to see concrete actions.
“The CAQ government made a commitment during the last election to better support organizations, but we are still waiting. We are an essential link in the social net. Today represents the first whistle for the CAQ and announces a series of closures and actions that will extend until the adoption of the next budget, ”said the coordinator of the Quebec Network of the autonomous community action Caroline Toupin.
Autonomous community action organizations are calling for respect for their autonomy, an additional recurring and indexed investment of $ 460 million to adequately finance the achievement of their mission by the 2022 budget, as well as concrete actions for social justice.
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