NDP WANTED GREYHOUND TO FAIL
With reports and discussions ahead of time, government’s show of surprise is just spin
Transportation Minister Claire Trevena would like you to know that she was shocked and surprised when Greyhound announced it was cancelling almost all of its bus routes in B.C. a few days ago. The province, she says, was blindsided. Sandbagged. Nobody, according to Trevena, could have seen the cancellations coming.
“We knew Greyhound was facing problems,” she told reporters. “We had no indication they had plans to pull out from the rest of the province.”
Greyhound gave “no indication” it would seem — other than a detailed 20-page presentation to the province’s Passenger Transportation Board seven months ago that revealed it was hemorrhaging $35,000 a day on its passenger business and needed help to maintain its routes in B.C.’s Interior, North and rural areas.
“Greyhound can simply no longer provide this service on its own,” the company told government.
But other than that — other than the repeated conversations with the transportation ministry, updates on its financial problems to the transportation branch and lobbying since 2012 to try to loosen the regulatory rules and minimum route requirements to ease its losses — basically no notice. It takes a special kind of wilful ignorance for a government to know that a company has suffered a $70-million financial loss in the past six years and then be surprised when it collapses a few months later.
Yet, here we are. Thousands of rural residents in the province’s Interior and north could soon be without transportation options because of the Greyhound closure.
Trevena and her government are left scrambling, sending out emergency appeals to the private sector to pick up the slack within 90 days, when Greyhound is set to pull out.
Surprise is how the NDP wants to spin it.
But here’s a better explanation: The New Democrats wanted Greyhound to fail. They let its service deliberately die, while rejecting its pleas for assistance. And from its ashes, the government hopes a better service will rise.
Here are some of Trevena’s comments about Greyhound in the past few days:
“Greyhound had started to put its priority on freight, not on people. We wanted to make sure an operator comes in and prioritizes the need for B.C. people.”
“The model that Greyhound chose to use was not working for the people who wanted to use Greyhound.”
“If this is a ploy by Greyhound to get government to subsidize in Western Canada, it’s not very successful.”
“We did not want to be subsidizing a private operation, and that’s one of the reasons we didn’t want to be subsidizing Greyhound.”
That last comment is apparently government’s rationale for rejecting Greyhound’s proposal for a “Connecting Communities Fund.” The fund would have had government pony up cash that municipalities and First Nations could have used to hire private bus contractors (not just Greyhound) to provide rural intercity service.
The NDP, however, could not stomach the idea of bailing out Greyhound. It felt the U.K.-based company was too big and too unresponsive to B.C.’s needs. Trevena cited the example of customers having to wait at gas stations or side-of-the-road spots in the dark at 4 a.m. to accommodate Greyhound’s schedule, which seemed to put the timing of transporting cargo before the convenience of human passengers.
Ironically, provincial subsidies for private bus companies are back on the table from the NDP, now that Greyhound is on its way out. Likely, some sort of cash will need to be offered for remote routes where passengers are sparse but transportation is a vital matter of public safety. And why not? The province already subsidizes B.C. Transit in urban areas, TransLink in Metro Vancouver, B.C. Ferries on the coast and inland ferries elsewhere. Certainly, a case could be made to financially backstop rural bus service, too.
Even B.C. Liberal MLAs, who want to exploit the issue as part of the narrative that the NDP ignores rural B.C., have heard complaints about Greyhound from their constituents.
“I think people were getting frustrated with it and certainly in our riding, Clearwater was a midnight pickup and things of that nature,” said Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Peter Milobar.
“If all you are doing is running late-nighters, of course it’s going to be a little bit hard to see how people are going to fill the bus up if their only options are obscure hours. That creates issues in itself. And then you look at the potential of all the freight. I question if they weren’t so bent on freight if they wouldn’t have been able to run smaller buses that could have been a little more cost-effective and run on some of those less-travelled routes. Maybe that’s the path moving forward is other private operators may see it as an opportunity.” So, what now?
There are three ways this could all play out. One is the Vancouver Island example. When Greyhound cancelled its Victoria-to-Nanaimo route in February, local company Wilson’s Transportation expanded to fill the void. Clearly, this is the option preferred by Trevena and government.
But if the private sector can’t fill Greyhound’s shoes or only cherry-picks the most profitable routes, then hold on to your wallets. The government could expand B.C. Transit or create a new Crown corporation for bus service to provide transportation in the Interior, North and other rural areas. This could be an extension of the one-year B.C. Bus North pilot program that B.C. Transit operates serving Prince Rupert, Prince George, Valemount, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Fort Nelson.
B.C. Bus North is “seeing good pickup,” said Trevena. There are no numbers to back that up. But it’s not like the service can fail. The $2 million to make it run comes directly from the provincial treasury. Even if the routes lose money, the NDP might keep then going just avoid the political headache. Expanding government control of buses will easily cost tens of millions of dollars and further pressure the provincial budget. The drivers and workers will want to be unionized. A new fleet will need to be purchased. And don’t expect the provincial government to be as nimble, quick or innovative as the private sector. If you thought Greyhound was intransigent, wait till rural B.C. has to deal directly with the provincial bureaucracy for its bus schedule.
There is one other potential glimmer of hope for the NDP. The premiers meet this week in New Brunswick for the Council of the Federation. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has promised to raise the issue of Greyhound’s departure from Western Canada, and the premiers will no doubt want to pressure Ottawa for a financial bailout.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can see a federal election on the horizon. Kinder Morgan has made him vulnerable, especially in B.C. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has seized on the Greyhound issue, and even held an event of sorts last week in front of the main terminal in Vancouver.
Perhaps the prime minister finds an easy and relatively inexpensive win by cutting a cheque to fund rural bus services that will to keep all involved happy, and help cover his rear in B.C.