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And that’s the norm at York. In the last seven rounds of these labour negotiations, four have ended in strikes.

It’s important to understand this history to know why the PCs were right to end this strike with emergency legislation, while NDP leader Andrea Horwath and her party were wrong to oppose it to the bitter end.

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This, even though a labour mediator told the government in May, when former premier Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals were still in power, that the two sides were hopelessly deadlocked and, “free collective bargaining has failed. There is no reason to believe that it will succeed in the future through the prolongation of the labour dispute, and every reason to conclude that it will not.”

Despite this, Horwath opposed settling the strike back then, opposed it last week, and during the election campaign said she would never use back to work legislation to end this sort of strike, one of the reasons why her party is unfit to govern.

To be sure, when labour relations get to this dismal state, it’s never one side that’s solely at fault.

It’s apparent that in addition to the union, York’s administration not only failed its students in this labour dispute, but has failed them over many years in being unable to resolve long-standing concerns centred on wages and job security for these workers, who do most of the teaching at York but are not full-time professors.

In opposing back-to-work legislation, Horwath said the real issue is long-term university underfunding — we suspect it has more to do with long-term university wasteful spending — but in any event, none of that was going to help these students in this impossible predicament they were put in through no fault of their own.

After winning the June 7 election, Ford said he would recall the legislature to deal with a number of major issues, including ending the York University strike.

Promise made, promise fulfilled. It’s the right way to govern.