About 50 protesters waited outside the Grande Event Centre on Main St. this morning hoping to confront Finance Minister Vic Fedeli.
The Nipissing MPP slipped in the back door, avoiding the group.
Fedeli is speaking to a sold-out event put on by the Chamber of Commerce.
He addressed the teacher issue, accusing opponents of spreading a false narrative and called fear mongering "absolutely preposterous."
"That is a flat out lie about the 121 job cuts and 50 per cent cuts.
"How can you trust what teachers union says when they spread misinformation like this?" says Fedeli.
"They are putting fear in minds of children, parents, and grandparents and shows what kind of people we are dealing with," he said.
The union needs to apologize to kids they have scared and their parents he told his audience.
Fedeli says he is proud of the changes the government is making.
President of the North Bay Labour Council Henri Giroux told BayToday that the protesters aren't happy with Fedeli's budget.
"As a concerned citizen of Ontario, there are too many cuts happening and we feel that he's going too fast and he needs to look at trying to get revenue in. That's the problem, It's all about cuts to service."
Speaking about education, Giroux says it's been frustrating.
"The word of the week is fear mongering. Even though they are telling us that nobody is going to get fired or laid off, it doesn't add up, the numbers. Somebody has to go somewhere and it's not the CEO that's gonna go it's one of the frontline workers and it's happening all over."
Giroux referred to Hands, The Family Help Network laying off 10 employees.
"I just found out yesterday. The CEO from Hands was baffled by the fact. 'I don't want to do this but I have to do this.' Those are services that our children need, services that are cut that a student needs, so we are mounting a campaign like this. It's gonna get worse as we go along because once people start realizing what's happening they're gonna see that there's not enough money in their pockets."
BayToday will have full details of Fedeli's speech soon.
