The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is launching a public call for candidates on Monday to fill the two positions left vacant on its board of directors to represent paratransit users and general users of bus networks and metro.
The candidates sought must obviously be users of the STM networks and have specific relevant expertise in areas such as transport, finance or urban planning, for example, at a time when the largest public carrier in Quebec is trying to defend all of its services in a difficult and uncertain budgetary context. The task promises to be difficult.
The STM is managed by a board of directors made up of 10 people, the majority of whom are elected municipal officials. The board oversees major policy, hiring and funding decisions for a company that manages $ 31 billion in assets. With more than 10,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding 1.5 billion, the STM is the 13e major company in Quebec.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, its bus and metro networks made more than 1.4 million trips every day across the island of Montreal. With the pandemic, however, ridership has melted, fare revenues have evaporated, and all of the metropolitan area’s public transport networks are facing a shortfall of $ 1 billion over three years. Difficult decisions may have to be made in the months to come.
Reprise
“We are in the process of resuming a pandemic,” acknowledges the new chairman of the board of directors of the STM, city councilor Éric Alan Caldwell. “Current ridership is 60% of what it was in 2019, before COVID-19. This will be our main challenge: to regain the traffic before the crisis. The users’ point of view will be all the more relevant as we have to manage in a context of drastic drop in income. We want to maintain current services, but we know that the money is not there. ”
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, PRESS ARCHIVES
Éric Alan Caldwell, new chairman of the board of directors of the STM
The new vice-president of the STM, Laurence Parent, believes that the candidates sought must have “a critical sense, good analytical skills, ease of working in a team”. Until last month, she represented paratransit users on the council. His position became vacant with his appointment as vice-president, confirmed on December 2 by the Montreal agglomeration council.
“Of course we wear a hat and have expertise,” she says, “but around the council table, we are all first and foremost clients of public transit. When you sit as a customer representative, you will be expected to deliver on their word. Despite that, I never felt that people were confined to their title on the board. ”
A first in 12 years
This is the first time since 2009 that the position of representative of general users of the STM will not be filled by… the president of the STM. Indeed, that year, Michel Labrecque, candidate of the mayor Gerald Tremblay, had been beaten in the municipal elections. The administration had then appointed him as the users’ representative so that he could sit on the board as a non-elected person. The scenario was repeated four years later during the election of mayor Denis Coderre, with his star candidate, the former journalist Philippe Schnobb. Appointed president of the STM in 2013, and not elected, he sat on the board until last month as “representative of public transit customers”.
By appointing municipal councilor Éric Alan Caldwell as president of the STM, Valérie Plante’s administration is reviving the tradition of appointing an elected official to this important function. Mr. Caldwell was responsible for transportation and planning on the executive committee of the City of Montreal for the past four years.
The application form, the terms and “the skills profile sought” for these two positions will be posted on Monday on the STM’s website. Applications will be accepted until December 27 and analyzed by the STM Corporate Secretariat. The STM’s Board of Directors will make its recommendations to the Montreal Agglomeration Council, which will have the final decision on these appointments. The announcement is expected at the end of January 2022.