Transport committee  If you're looking for some examples, in the Ontario area, Milton contracts out theirs. The City of Vaughan contracts out theirs. A number of municipalities do. The fact is that most people don't know this, because when you contract out, the buses usually are painted with the cit

Transport committee  I think our suggestion is a fairly soft suggestion. We're not suggesting that every municipality has to contract out if they're going to get funding. Again, we're not rigidly ideological about whether public or private is better. Both bring things to the table. Both have strength

Transport committee  No. I think those are the three that jump out the most. On the safety issue, again, I really don't want to get into “we're safer than public transit” or “they're safer than we are”, but I think it is worth noting that the bar is higher for private operators than it is for publi

Transport committee  Yes. Trevor's firm operates—

Transport committee  Right.

Transport committee  Absolutely, and again, we can provide the committee with information on the safety record. But again, as part of our presentation, too, one of the areas of inequity, which I want to touch on just briefly, is that right now many of the public systems operate on lower safety stand

Transport committee  Actually, I would answer that by going back to the accountability issue for a moment. The way you guarantee it is through the contract. The process, to simplify it somewhat, is this. A municipality is currently operating a system that costs them a million dollars a year to run.

Transport committee  Yes?

Transport committee  We can certainly give you information that they are as safe. I frankly don't want to get into a debate about which is safer than the other--

Transport committee  No, actually she started it, by accusing us of being less safe.

Transport committee  Because it has been demonstrated in many other municipalities. I think the answer to the London example you gave us was that it happened in the seventies, when the idea of contracting out was in its infancy. As with any new idea, people made mistakes at the beginning. I'm not an

Transport committee  I want to clarify that. I don't think we asked for a subsidy. We're not asking for a subsidy. We're actually offering to return a subsidy to the government. We would operate it at a lower cost than the currently subsidized system. We're not looking for a subsidy or a break on fue

Transport committee  No, I don't think we're saying that at all. We're saying that we're comparable to the public systems. Safety is always a relative thing. There's no such thing as a perfectly safe system. Today, as we speak, in the city of Toronto a debate is occurring about having mandatory drug

Transport committee  The point is that I don't think there is anything particularly ennobling about being paid out of the public purse or particularly demonizing about being paid by a private company.

Transport committee  No. I think our intent would be to remove the tax on the private tickets, not to increase taxes on public transit.