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In the lead-up to a day-long rally and march in Ottawa Friday to protest Premier Doug Ford’s cuts to the massive debt and deficit left behind by the throttled Wynne Liberals, public spaces at every turn appeared to be littered with union flyers calling everyone to action.

There were hundreds of them.

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They were in foyers and malls, in coffee shops and in transit stops until they eventually made their way to the floor of some transit bus as garbage.

My flyer was found lying on a table in a hospital cafeteria where all the other tables were covered with the same brochure calling for “action.”

Ottawa, first and foremost, is a government town, of course, and the national headquarters of virtually every federal public-service union in the books, as well as home to a strong contingent of provincial civil servants comprising everyone from teachers, to nurses, to toilet-bowl washers.

Under the tribal call of “solidarity forever,” they make for a very large collective — each and every one of them dependent on taxpayers’ dollars to make their living, pad their benefits and fund their vacations.