Labour reps ordered off Health Centre parking lot

The labour organizations that built Sault Ste. Marie's innovative Group Health Centre were ordered to clear out of the centre's parking lot this morning by members of Prime Minister Paul Martin's RCMP security detail.

A group of demonstrators representing the United Steelworkers of America, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and other organized labour groups was instructed to move off the lot by plainclothes officers who insisted they were on private property and the event was only for invited guests.

Some in the group protested that they were GHC members whose donations had built the trend-setting health care institution.

They inferred they'd remember this day when GHC launches its next fund-raising drive.

GHC president Dave Murray rushed out to stand with the demonstrators as SooToday.com photographed them (that's him at the left of our photo), insisting that the decision was made by the Prime Minister's RCMP detail and was entirely out of his hands.

Health Centre signed over control to RCMP

Yesterday, the RCMP required him to sign a document that effectively turned over control of the centre to them for the day, Murray said.

The purpose of the document, Murray told SooToday.com, was to give police sole discretion over who was allowed on the property and who was trespassing. Sault MP Carmen Provenzano also visited the picketers on Willow Avenue.

Walking back to the building to await his party leader's arrival, Provenzano told SooToday.com he wouldn't have recommended that the labour group be barred from the GHC property.

Protesters asked to move to grassy knoll

"The steelworkers built this place," Provenzano said during a later scrum with reporters.

"They're certainly entitled to say whatever they want in a protest .... nobody would restrict that right," Provenzano said.

An RCMP official said the protesters weren't kicked off the property, but were offered two alternative locations on the GHC site.

One was a grassy knoll to the south of the parking lot.

The other was on a side lawn north of the parking lot, facing Willow Street.

Board member forced to leave parking lot

The group decided instead to use the Willow Street sidewalk, despite RCMP attempts to persuade them to use the grassy knoll instead, for their "own safety."

One of the demonstrators being ordered around by police was John Shiels, a member of the Group Health Centre's board and financial secretary of Local 2251 of the United Steelworkers of America.

Also kept away from the parking lot was Mike Da Prat, president of Local 2251, which four decades ago spearheaded the founding of the membership-based health organization, now considered a model for the future of Canadian health care.

CUPE was also integrally involved in the founding of the GHC.

Tom Bonell allowed inside

Tom Bonell, the former Local 2251 president who chairs the Group Health Centre board of directors, entered the building around 8 a.m., just as the protestors started to gather in the parking lot.

The Prime Minister arrived promptly at 9 a.m. for a tour of the building.

Outside, the demonstrators chanted "Liberals out, Health care in!"

SooToday.com will be posting additional photos and text coverage later today.