Ontario in the early 1990s was in a deep depression and the government was deeply in deficit. In 1993 the deficit ws up to 12 billion annually and looked like it would soon grow to 17 billion. The government of the time was the socialist NDP lead by Bob Rae. Rae asked for 2 billion dollars in wage cuts in the civil service, and asked the public sector unions to work together with the government to implement the cuts. The two largest unions, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the Canadian Union of Public Employees both boycotted the talks, however. This left the government to act unilaterally.

A major part of the government's initiative was to allow the civil service employers to force their employees to take up to 12 days of unpaid leave. This included every worker from teachers, to nurses, to accountants, but only workers who earned more than $30 000 dollars per year. The initiative was extremely unpopular and lead to a long war of words between the NDP and their former labour allies. This contributed a great deal to the NDP's defeat in 1995 to the Progressive Conservatives under Mike Harris.