I think that there are many advantages to be gained from relying on a public model. The first is that we eliminate the prioritization of profit and we focus on other considerations that are quite important, like thinking of mobility as a human rights issue.
When you think of public transportation as a tool to the achievement of a number of goals beyond profit, it opens up opportunity for Canada to take on a certain kind of leadership in how we think about public transportation. For example, think about climate change. I just gave the example of 50 people in a bus; with that, you are saving 50 cars from being on the road. If you make these things private, if you think of transportation with a private approach rather than a public approach, the thing is that there are often communities that end up being left out because they don't make enough money on those routes. I think the STC example is a very good one of moving from serving 253 communities to picking the communities that you think are the most profitable.
Again, if we use a public model, we start to think more carefully about the possibilities of making sure that people can have access to goods and services in a way that private providers may not necessarily consider. In some cases they might; I'm sure that there are private companies that may have the interest in running a route even though the route doesn't bring the profit that is needed, but for the most part, that cannot be expected of most private companies.
The reason I keep pushing for a national public transportation system is that we get out of that problem of people refusing to run certain routes because they believe that the route is not profitable. We can start to prioritize equity. We can start to make sure that particular groups or people with disabilities, indigenous communities and racialized communities that are often excluded are able to be prioritized. Those groups can then have the ability to access goods and services in a way that is fair and guided by human rights principles.