Evidence of meeting #7 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was services.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
Well, it costs about $125 an hour to run a bus. The driver usually gets paid about $25 an hour. The cost savings come in the other hundred dollars.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Okay, but that said, I don't think we should be discriminating against operators that are non-unionized--
Conservative
October 19th, 2011 / 4:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
No, we're not suggesting that. We're just saying that's really not legitimate criticism of contracting out.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Next, a private operator should be treated in the same way that public transit is with respect to certain taxes....
Oh yes, on your last point in your brief, you say, “Finally, we would suggest that it is unnecessary and wasteful of taxpayers’ dollars for publicly funded transit systems to expand their” operations in direct competition with...private operators”.
Can you give examples of where this has occurred?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
Sure. In Ontario recently, GO Transit proudly expanded their service to the community of St. Catharines by running GO buses from St. Catharines to Toronto. There was already an existing Greyhound bus service. Again, it's a case of them literally opening up across the street from the Greyhound terminal, and they started cannibalizing Greyhound's business.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Would you suggest, then, that the federal government require that there be an examination of whether there are existing or potential private sector alternatives prior to considering a federal capital investment in a public transit market?
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Right on that line, I notice that in 2009 you threatened—I'm sorry, Greyhound, not you—to pull all bus routes out of Manitoba, and most of the bus routes in northern Ontario. That' was 30 jobs in northern Ontario and 200 jobs in Manitoba.
Then, in January 2010, there was again a cut to 60 communities across eastern, central and southwestern Ontario: Barrie, Orillia, Alliston, etc. Is the Greyhound business shrinking or is it growing? It sounds like a lot of those more remote communities are losing their bus services.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
Is it because you can't cross-subsidize them or is it because they're just not making enough money? There used to be a lot more services in northern Ontario. I've taken many of those Greyhound buses. Now some of them either don't show up for a long time or they don't go there at all—
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
—which cuts off all the services and makes it really difficult. It's not as if they're replaced by GO buses that go to Wawa, for example.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
I know the Wawa bus was saved, but that seems to be the trend. I also notice that there's consideration of cutting bus services in Alberta, Saskatchewan, B.C., Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. I was speaking to folks in Yukon and they said, “My gosh, there's no way for us to get from one community to another because Greyhound is not running their services”. So.... You're shrinking your service.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
That's probably true. There's a couple of different issues there. What we're talking about now is the provision of transit services, which are government-funded transit services, to support communities--
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
No, I know you're not. In those cases, I guess that really the answer then is that they are private sector companies. They need to operate to make money. If there are not enough people who want to take that service, then they cut the service.
But if it's important for the government to have that service there, perhaps it should be taken over as a transit service with a subsidy paid to the bus company to keep them operating that service, just as there are subsidies for transit systems.
You're right. In remote communities, it's hard to maintain bus service to all points if there isn't the ridership to justify the service.
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
But bus ridership, say in Toronto, even though the density is higher than in Whitehorse, let's say.... Even in the city of Toronto, most of the bus routes, with the exception of the Spadina streetcar, are subsidized by somebody, because the fare box itself is not enough. Even though it's 80 cents per dollar in the fare box, which is the highest you can possibly get, it still takes the 20 cents to subsidize them.
So really, you are asking that the federal government and/or the provincial government subsidize some of the private operators in order to continue to run services in the remote communities. Am I correct?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Motor Coach Canada
No, not really. I don't think we're making—
NDP
Olivia Chow NDP Trinity—Spadina, ON
So how would you be able to continue the services? Because in the last 20 years, it's been shrinking.
