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The
Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) is a
trade union that represents about 115,000 employees
in the broader public service of the Province of Ontario,
Canada. Its president (as of 2006) is Leah Casselman.
OPSEU is
descended from its predecessor, the Civil Service Association
of Ontario. OPSEU is affiliated with the National Union
of Public and General Employees (NUPGE).Ontario is a
province located in the east-central part of Canada,
the largest by population and second largest (after
Quebec) in total area.Ontario is bordered by the provinces
of Manitoba to the west, Quebec to the east, and the
American states of Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and Minnesota.It is the world's second-largest country
by total area, and extends from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Pacific Ocean.
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Most
of Ontario's borders with the United States are natural, starting
at the Lake of the Woods and continuing through the four Great
Lakes: Superior, Huron (which includes Georgian Bay), Erie,
and Ontario (for which the province is named), then along
the Saint Lawrence River near Cornwall. Ontario is also the
only Canadian Province that borders the Great Lakes.
The capital
of Ontario is Toronto, the largest city in Canada.Ottawa,
the capital of Canada, is located in Ontario as well. The
2006 Census counted 12,160,282 residents in Ontario, which
accounted for 38.5% of the national population.
The province takes its name from Lake Ontario, which is thought
to be derived from ontarí:io, a Huron word meaning
"great lake" or possibly skanadario which means
"beautiful water" in Iroquoian. Along with New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia and Quebec, Ontario is one of the four original
provinces of Canada when the nation was formed on July 1,
1867 by the British North America Act.
Inhabited first
by aboriginal peoples, Canada was founded in 1867 as a union
of British North American colonies. It gained independence
from the United Kingdom in an incremental process that ended
in 1982. It remains a Commonwealth Realm with Queen Elizabeth
II as its head of state.
Canada
is a federal constitutional monarchy with parliamentary democracy.
Comprising ten provinces and three territories, Canada is
a bilingual and multicultural country, with both English and
French as official languages at the federal level. A technologically
advanced and industrialized nation, Canada maintains a diversified
economy that is heavily reliant upon its abundant natural
resources and upon trade — particularly with the United
States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. |
