School bus crash info kept secret
Board says privacy legislation prevents naming contractors
Toronto school buses have crashed more than 1,500 times since 2010, but the public isn’t allowed to know which bus companies are the most collision prone.
According to a database obtained by the Star, Toronto’s student transportation fleet has been in 1,557 collisions, causing 20 injuries, in the last five years.
Nearly 80 per cent of those crashes were deemed preventable, the figures show.
But the number of crashes each bus contractor has been involved in remains a secret.
Some bus firms employed by the Toronto school boards appear to get into accidents more frequently than others. A chart provided by the city’s student transportation consortium shows that one bus company division has had 414 collisions since 2009 — proportionally more than any other, relative to the size of its fleet.
The school boards say they are prevented from naming the company because of privacy legislation.
“They’re not our vehicles, they’re not our drivers, so that’s not our information to provide,” said Kevin Hodgkinson, general manager of the Toronto Student Transportation Group, which oversees the school bus fleet for both the Catholic and public school boards.
Ironically, the law they say demands secrecy around collisions is the same one journalists often use to uncover government secrets: the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA).
“In my opinion, everything from a public body should be open and transparent. If we’re contracting out and we’re a public body, why wouldn’t the same rules apply?” MARIA RIZZO CATHOLIC BOARD TRUSTEE
A section of that law makes it difficult for public bodies to disclose information related to the business of third-party contractors. The public and Catholic boards say this prevents them from giving out the crash record of individual school bus carriers.
But Ryder Gilliland, a lawyer with Blakes who represents the Star in access to information cases, said the legislation contains a “rarely invoked” clause that allows public bodies to disclose third-party information if it’s in the public interest.
“If they really wanted to, they could invoke that override,” Gilliland said of the boards.
Yet the boards continue to say the privacy legislation stops them from identifying the companies that had crashes.
“Whether or not they permit to have their name revealed is up to them,” said John Yan, spokesman for the Toronto Catholic District School Board.
“We’re obligated as a public organization to comply with all the regulations under MFIPPA.”
TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird, meanwhile, declined to comment on Gilliland’s interpretation of the law.
Some trustees say their school boards should provide collision information even if contractors are in- volved. “In my opinion, everything from a public body should be open and transparent,” said Maria Rizzo, a trustee with the Catholic board.
“If we’re contracting out and we’re a public body, why wouldn’t the same rules apply?”
TDSB Trustee Gerrie Gershon, who until recently sat on the governance committee of the student transportation consortium, said that requiring school bus companies to disclose their crash records would “hold them accountable.
“Perhaps at our next contract, we can see if we can negotiate the ability to state those facts,” she said.
Toronto’s student transport group contracts out to five firms: First Student; Stock Transportation; Attridge Transportation; McCluskey Transportation; and Wheelchair Accessible Transit.
They are on the final year of a seven-year contract.
None of the companies provided details of their collision records despite multiple requests.
“Any tracking of incidents is done strictly for internal purposes with the goal of continually improving our safety processes,” said Chris Kemper, spokesperson for FirstGroup America, the parent company of First Student, in a statement.
No other company provided comment.
School buses are not the only publicly contracted vehicles with secret safety records. GFL Environmental Inc., the private company whose trucks have been collecting garbage west of Yonge St. since 2012, does not disclose the crash rate of its Toronto fleet.
Advocates say that school buses are an unusually safe way to travel. The Canada Safety Council that taking a school bus is 16 times safer than taking the family car.