Thanks for the question.
It would be several years and ongoing discussions with every level of government, provincially and federally, about the issues specifically in western Canada on the decline in ridership in rural B.C., Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. There's lots of documentation about Greyhound. Specifically, I was personally involved in several meetings over the years. I'm not sure why the announcement at the provincial level indicated that there wasn't some information provided in advance. I would be happy to share with you many documents that say just the opposite.
To get to the real issue, if you want to talk specifically of B.C. and most of the provinces in western Canada, the so-called monopoly of historically operating the high-density corridors and maintaining the rural routes, that worked 10 to 15 years ago. It stopped working when you started to see a decline in some of the rural populations. People were not riding the bus. When you rely on the fare box, that's how you pay your bills. You have lots of fixed costs and variable costs.
You've seen some money spent between Prince George and Prince Rupert and money spent on addressing some of the rural transit. It was all about the connectivity. That money at the time and the northern health connectors and some of the interior health connectors was money well spent. But was it enough to allow Greyhound or a competitor who was coming in who had to run those routes to really remain? It all came down to fare box revenue.