Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today. I have had some issues with being heard, but it sounds as though you can hear me.
I'm grateful to have this opportunity to speak to you from the traditional territories of the Anishinabe, the Ininew and the Métis people governed by the promises of Treaty 1.
It's fair to say that this territory, where I've lived as a settler for a little over two decades, is currently in a crisis of accessible, meaningful and appropriate long-distance or intercity public transit. In many respects, it has not always been this way. Manitoba did not develop the provincial system of bus transit that our provincial neighbours to the west did, but Manitoba did develop a network of overlapping bus and rail transportation that connected people to different communities and to leisure options. The shift toward automobility that occurred throughout the continent made its mark here too, and many of the smaller bus lines and passenger train routes closed in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
However, the near collapse of intercity bus transit that occurred in Manitoba in the 2010s is particular. Of course, Greyhound withdrew from its western Canadian routes in 2018. In the same year, though, Jefferson Lines cancelled its bus running between Winnipeg and North Dakota. A year later, the third company to try running a Winnipeg-Selkirk bus route ceased operation. Five years later, it is clear that the mixture of market subsidies and programs that are currently available is not sufficient to maintain reliable fixed-service bus routes within the province. There is a shifting patchwork of operators covering some routes at some times. Only two offer daily service: a van shuttle running between Brandon and Winnipeg's airport, and NCN Thompson Bus Lines, owned by Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, covering the Winnipeg-Thompson route.
You can take Maple Bus Lines from Winnipeg to Thompson five days a week, Mahihkan from Winnipeg to Flin Flon five days a week and Ontario Northland eastward six days a week. There is only one bus currently travelling from Winnipeg to Regina, which leaves weekly at 11 p.m. on Saturdays. A few weeks ago, you could book a trip to Vancouver, though it would take three transfers, cost $419 and take about 37 hours. When I checked last night, that route was no longer available.
The highly limited and confusing possibilities of intercity bus travel in Manitoba affect some communities and people more than others. As previous speakers here have said, we have too little data on who exactly depends on the bus in the age of automobility and air travel. We know that women have greater reliance on public transit in urban centres. The reduction in intercity transit options has particular implications for indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people, a point that was made very powerfully in the wake of Greyhound's shuttering. The Native Women's Association of Canada explained that it was “deeply concerned for the safety of Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people”. Policy analyst Emily Riddle argued that indigenous women “deserve to travel our homelands free from violence, and while transportation is only a small component of the changes needed for that to happen, it is an important one.”
“Reclaiming Power and Place: the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls”, which was completed in 2019, offered an important analysis of public intercity and urban transit, one that I think deserves more attention than it has received. Chapter 7 explains, “A lack of safe and affordable transportation can mean that people may be forced to rely on other methods, such as walking or hitchhiking, not only to escape dangerous situations but simply to travel for education or employment.” In this way, “Inadequate infrastructure and transportation, or transportation that itself becomes a site for violence, punish Indigenous women trying to ‘make a better life’”.
Two of the calls for justice in the national inquiry's final report directly concern transportation. In particular, 4.8 says:
We call upon all governments to ensure that adequate plans and funding are put into place for safe and affordable transit and transportation services and infrastructure for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people living in remote or rural communities. Transportation should be sufficient and readily available to Indigenous communities, and in towns and cities located in all of the provinces and territories in Canada.
Effective transit policy of the kind that this committee is considering must consider at its core the needs and lived experiences of its users, who are not undifferentiated black boxes of human beings, but people whose lives are shaped by gender, by indigeneity, by race and by socio-economic class.
At a moment when Canada is again being forced to reckon with the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirit plus people, I urge the committee to consider the impact that the real crisis in intercity bus transit in the prairie provinces—and more particularly Manitoba—may have played in this, and how better transit policy that puts its users at the centre might make meaningful change.
Thank you.