Good day.
I didn't get the interpretation of the previous speaker, so I'm going to go with what I have in turn.
The bus situation in Canada, as one of our speakers said before, is very binding in terms of bringing areas of our province and our country together with the outlying areas and the rural areas. For me in Newfoundland, we call it the Trans-Canada from Port aux Basques to St. John's. St. John's is our major hub. Most of the major activities that happen in someone's life will take place in St. John's, be it medical, be it at the largest airport, or be it the full gamut of whatever takes place.
For me, I've been at this for 27 years, operating from St. John's to Port aux Basques. After a Crown corporation gave it up because they were losing so much money, we decided to buy it.
I think one of the biggest things I want to really stress to everybody here is the out-migration. The numbers are coming down, but even with the numbers being stable right now.... They are pretty good right now in terms of the number of people who are using transportation. It's always very interesting to me why we, as a carrier going to the major centres and back and forth to all the other towns and cities in between, are treated differently from our metropolitan areas. They get this great big subsidy to operate their service. Where do we stand?
I can use our Metrobus service in St. John's, Newfoundland. Between Metrobus, the hub and Wheelway, which are three different divisions of the city transit, they receive a subsidy of approximately—I'm going to stay on the safe side—$16 million a year to operate the service. They service around 200,000 people. We service 250,000 people and we get no money—none.
There was a comment made yesterday on the news in Newfoundland about how the province would love to see more intercity and rural transit available to help with pollution or to help with whatever, with greenhouse gases and the whole gamut, but to me, just leave the greenhouse gases and treat society equally. That's the way I look at it. We want equality of some degree across the province of Newfoundland and across the provinces in Canada. We need it. I don't care who does it; I'll give it up to the government. If they want to do it and subsidize it, it doesn't matter.
The reason that I've kept going and that we've kept going is that we feel it's detrimental if we don't. It's one more thing gone out of our society that will never be there if people like us don't keep it going, always living for the brighter day. I'm living for the brighter day when there's going to be a little more people and a little more availability of some funds to help with capital infrastructure.
It just amazes me; there was a big announcement in St. John's yesterday about electrifying the Metrobus buses, but we still have to go and pay our price for our nice Prevosts to go up and down the road there, and we get nothing. It really makes me wonder about the full picture. How can this not be fixed so that we're treated with a little more equality across the full country? How can we not make this happen?
We're the only operator running this route. When we stop, it's over. No one else is going to be crazy enough to do it, I can promise you. Thank God I'm operating some other business. I'm still looking for the big day and for this to really earn its own way, but after 27 years, no. It still won't happen.
I've been promised and committed to for umpteen years, for 15 or 20 years, that there's money that's going to come available. There's infrastructure money available. Newfoundland got $111 million for infrastructure funds for transportation, but guess what? We're not included in that. It's just the City of St. John's and the City of Corner Brook. They don't know where to spend it. They got so much funding they don't know where to spend it. It's going to go back to the federal coffers. What better place to put some of that?
I would operate three times a day, right across the island, if I had per capita for the people we're serving in comparison to the city with its subsidies. I would offer service that would blow you away with what you can do in Newfoundland by getting on public transit. It would really make.... It would give us interest to know that someone really cares, but right now, I don't think anyone cares. Leave it; let it die, drop, go away. When it's over, it's done and gone and it's forgotten about.
I can promise you that we're not going away yet. We have to keep going because we have people who depend on this. I ran through COVID, and there were days that I ran two motor coaches 2,000 kilometres for as little as $800 in a day, with no conversation whatsoever—none whatsoever. There were people who needed to get to that doctor and had no other way to go.
I feel a bit of commitment to society and to try to keep this going as long as we can, but believe me, some subsidy, some help.... I don't care how it's done. I don't want to make money; just make me break even. I want to keep it going. It's a bit of our culture. Our company has been in business for 102 years. This is our 102nd year. This is something we took on 30 years ago, and we don't run away from things easily. Mr. Rogers there, he's from Newfoundland. He knows we don't run away.
I really think that there's some way, or some shape, to make this happen.
Thank you.