Law to protect bus drivers needs public support: MP
Ralph Goodale wants government to adopt his private member’s bill
OC Transpo bus driver Steven Parent suffered a cut on his nose when he was punched in the face by a passenger while driving his route in Barrhaven in 2009.
The man who walloped him — a repeat offender who has attacked other bus operators — received a 120-day jail sentence. That punishment is not justice, said Parent, who told his story Tuesday during a roundtable discussion on Parliament Hill.
The talk was organized by Ralph Goodale, the MP for Saskatchewan’s Wascana riding who drafted a private member’s bill designed to protect on-duty bus drivers against assaults. Goodale said Bill C-533, which is designed to stiffen penalties for anyone convicted of assaulting transit operators, will survive the potential prorogation of Parliament, but he is more focused on getting the government to adopt the bill before this latest session even ends.
Establishing new laws that protect drivers is an important part of reducing the violence drivers face. In 2011, the number of attacks reported across the country reached 2,061, according to statistics from the Canadian Urban Transit Association.
“I believe this bill would increase the punishment and it should be more of a deterrent for future assaults,” Parent said. He described his experience to Goodale, who sat alongside nearly a dozen bus drivers and union representatives, saying the impact of an attack stays with the victim for much longer than people think.
“Most of the physical ... injuries heal, but it’s the psychological part that stays and it affects you probably for the rest of your career because every time somebody gets on that bus, you look at them in a different way.” Parent said.
‘Most of the physical injuries heal, but it’s the psychological part that stays ... ’
STEVEN PARENT OC Transpo driver
Goodale referred to CUTA’s statistics as staggering. He urged drivers and their unions to lobby local governments, transit providers and MPs to create a groundswell that encourages the federal government to pick up the private member’s bill and make it government policy.
“It’s not a partisan appeal in any way,” Goodale said in an interview. “There’s support for this measure, in principle, in all political parties. It’s just a matter of getting the momentum behind it so that it gets moved up on the agenda and it actually gets done.”
Even without that support, however, Goodale says, because this is a private member’s bill, it will survive prorogation and they can take another shot at it during the next sitting.
But bus drivers would rather avoid postponing this any longer, considering similar bills have been proposed before and failed. Goodale’s latest version is, in part, the result of lobbying from the Amalgamated Transit Union, whose members pushed to resurrect the bill put forward by Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber in 2011.
The catalyst for that move was the well-documented assault on Edmonton transit driver Tom Bregg, who was beaten into a coma by a passenger in 2009. The bill died when the last election was called.
ATU Canadian director Mike Mahar attended Tuesday’s discussion, and also stressed the need for bus drivers and unions to rally their local MPs to make sure the bill survives this time.
“There are so many stories, it brings tears to a person’s eyes when you interview some of these victims, who end up being off for months and months and months, and many of them career-ending (injuries),” he told Goodale.
Parent was also involved in the push to get OC Transpo to install video cameras on its buses. He said he is disappointed the city will wait to buy new buses before installing the security devices. The transit commission in June decided to wait until it buys new buses over the next five to six years to slowly spend $16 million for cameras on its fleet.
Changes to the Criminal Code and cameras could go a long way to protecting drivers, Parent said. OC Transpo recorded 62 incidents of violence against drivers in 2012, including one driver who was splashed with a cup of urine, another who had his crotch grabbed by a drunken passenger and many others who were regularly punched and spat on.
In recent weeks, a bus driver suffered a broken nose when he was punched by a passenger.