Some federal services in northern Ontario slowed during strike, others stopped altogether

It is day 7 on the picket line for 155,000 federal government workers, including some 6,000 in northern Ontario.

While some of them work directly with the public processing tax returns and passport applications, others are much more behind the scenes.

Chris Sierzputowski is one of 30 technicians with the federal department of fisheries and oceans based in Sault Ste. Marie who helps to control the population of invasive sea lampreys.

He says they are on the picket line right now instead of beginning the annual poisoning lamprey spawning beds in the Great Lakes. 

"What it will do is it will delay any of our treatment and so we get backed up. And there's only so much treatment time when you can actually do your work," said Sierzputowski, adding that lampreys have been on the rebound in recent years because they couldn't get out to apply lampricide as much during COVID-19. 

A 41-year federal employee, who remembers the last big national strike in 1991, says like their counterparts across the country, he and his co-workers would like to see a pay increase and more flexible remote work policies.

But Sierzputowski says the lamprey technicians are also hoping the new contract will compensate them for the weekends they work during 19-day stretches out in the field, something he says other federal scientists working along side them already get. 

"It's a difficult time," he said of this strike coming in a time of inflation. 

"And it probably doesn't curry much favour with the public because they think government workers are already overpaid."

Mark Primavera, who works at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre run by Natural Resources Canada, is president of the union local for 89 federal scientists in Sault Ste. Marie. 

He says if he wasn't on the picket line, he and his department would be planning their "field season" to get out to experimental plots of jack pine they monitor across the north, which has led to new logging techniques for the forest industry. 

"People don't really know what's going on and what we do. We do our valuable service, but it's nothing like getting your taxes prepared. That's tangible," said Primavera. 

"They're not really aware of the magnitude of what we do. The scientific community does."

In North Bay, among the federal workers walking the picket line are 50 support staff from the Canadian Forces Base.