Of local interest only

Just what do the people decrying the conditions for ending the City of Toronto strike think the realistic alternatives were?

This is public sector bargaining, and it's the Liberals in power provincially, not the Harris Tories.

This means, in turn, that the net effect of not settling would almost certainly have been to drag out the strike until the Liberals finally sent it to binding arbitration.  Arbitrators tend not to look at things like "ability to pay" for a public employer, and it's likely that no award would have been more favourable to the city than the actual settlement reached.