Interview Transcript:
Sebastien Sheldon: For this interview, I’m here with Kevin Flynn, who is a former member of provincial parliament and minister of labour. So, Kevin tell me a bit about your relationship with John and how you knew him.
Kevin Flynn: Well, John, John walked into my office with a group of people one day, and I couldn’t give you the exact date, but it was very early in, in my tenure as minister. So I would have guessed it would have been around 2014, 2015. And, it was, I would think there was about five or ten people in the, you know, probably more than five, but around ten people in the group that came to visit me. John was one of them, and it seemed like they were, they looked like they’d been beaten down so many times that they expected me to almost kick them out of the office. Like, there was almost that expectation that this wasn’t gonna go anywhere. Because they talked to so many other people it seemed, and no one would pay attention to them. Their own union, they felt, had abandoned them. GE wanted nothing to do with them. WSIB was being very, sticking to the letter of the law. So, often when you see a group of people like that, there’s a lot of motion involved, there’s a lot of emotion involved, and John was the facts guy though. John was the guy that had the evidence. John seemed to be the guy that had done the leg work. So while everybody was mad and angry and frustrated, and couldn’t believe it was happening, John was a bit of a calm in that storm, where he had the facts, he knew, he knew what some of the chemicals could do. Fortunately, I have a chemical background as well, so when they started talking in terms of, you know, things like trichlorethylene, methyl ethyl ketone, those types of things, I was very familiar with those products and understood what the, you know, what the safety, what the health and safety implications of their misuse was. So John, John, was a resource that I just thought he … it’s tough to do when you’re angry. It’s tough to do when you think, when there’s an overriding sense of injustice, that “the system isn’t treating me right”, “the system’s out to get me”, “everybody just wishes we’d go away”, and it’s tough to be that calm guy that’s just got the facts. You know, just who just comes in with the, “Well this is what was used, this is when it was used, this is where it was used, this is how it was used”, and you really need somebody like that, because if you’re gonna change peoples’ minds, you’ve gotta have some evidence. You can’t just go in with a sob story, you just can’t go in with a, you know, angry “we’re gonna change this”, you really need to go in with some facts and some figures and some evidence behind you, and that’s what John was.
Sebastien: And so, through your experiences with John, and I mean, you’ve mentioned a lot of qualities in John that are pretty admirable, but what was the one that impressed you the most maybe?
Kevin: I think it was his calm, calculating nature. Just the, the approach he brought to things was different. Almost scientific, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. I mean that in a very good way. Very, he was very measured, very calm, very, you know, and I think he thought the evidence should be enough. That all the screaming and the yelling and, you know, the gnashing of teeth, I think he understood that’s not what was gonna change this. What was gonna change this was to have experts in the field of health agree with him. To say “You know what? That health study that was done, maybe that was flawed, maybe this thing’s wrong with that. Here’s some evidence that would make us think that”, and, you know, company records may not show it or they may not be available, but here’s somebody that understands what was used in the plant, and what guys were washing their hands with, and what products were being used on the line by, you know, by men and women, without the safety precautions we’d have for the day. So it really was that, I don’t want to call it cold calculating, because it wasn’t cold. It was definitely calculated, very science… but I think the, calm would be a word I’d use to describe John’s approach to things. Calm and measured.
Sebastien: Yeah, I imagine it would have been very hard to, for anyone to be in that position and stay so calm while fighting for justice like that.
Kevin: Well yeah, I mean, you’re mad, it made me mad. It should make you mad. And, you’ve gotta, at times like that, you’ve gotta resist getting mad, and John was able to do that I think.
Sebastien: And so, with all of this evidence that John had, what impact do you believe his work had on achieving justice for workers that had been injured by exposures at the GE plant.
Kevin: Well you know what, I think it gave them, it put them on equal footing. There was a study that existed that nobody thought was a credible study. May have been, may have been done using the available science at the time, perhaps you could excuse it that way, but in many ways was, you know, proven to be deficient, and I think that there was a lot of John’s work that assisted in that. The proof that the health study wasn’t as robust as it should’ve been. So yeah, I mean, he had the counter evidence. He provided the evidence to the people that went out and prepared the other report, you know, the report that was done by the DeMatteo folks I think. I think a lot of the, a lot of the groundwork for that was laid by John.
Sebastien: Mhmm. Well, Kevin, thank you very much for your responses, with that I will let you go. It was a pleasure getting to hear from you.
Kevin: Okay, nice to talk to you Sebastien, you take care.
Sebastien: Yeah, thank you so much.
Kevin: You’re welcome, bye bye.
End of Interview