Ontario’s legislature will reconvene Friday as the government makes another attempt to introduce back-to-work legislation to end the five-week strike by faculty at Ontario’s 24 colleges, including Canadore.

The New Democrats blocked the Liberals attempt to table the bill Thursday evening.

NDP House Leader Gilles Bisson says the government created this mess.

“There’s been five weeks that the government could’ve negotiated an agreement to get people back to work, instead they created this crisis in order to deflect from them being the problem,” he says.

Advanced Education Minister Deb Matthews says this just shows the NDP is prepared to use delay tactics.

“It just delays passage of the legislation, eventually the legislation will get passed,” she says.

The Liberals say if their move is blocked again, the legislature will sit through the weekend.

The PC’s support the back to work legislation.

Meantime, before all the wrangling got underway at Queen’s Park, students at Canadore met with College President George Burton about possibilities with salvaging the school year.

He says they’re trying to preserve reading week and get the school year in by April.

However, there will be some adjustments.

“If we shorten the Christmas Break and if we extend the semester an additional two weeks in April, and then we’ll be looking likely at extended days,” he said during a meeting that reporters were allowed to attend.

Student spokesperson Andrea Pond says the students aren’t taking sides in the dispute.

“Some people may not support a pro-faculty stance and some people may not understand a pro-CEC stance, but in the end we are pro-student. We all want the same thing in the end, to be back in class,” she says.

Yesterday morning it was announced that college faculty rejected the colleges final offer.

Pond says she wasn’t surprised, as the lone remaining issue was academic freedom.

(With files from The Canadian Press and 680News)

Filed under: canadore, college-strike