(Montreal) Worried about the financial difficulties of public transit companies, FTQ union delegates are urging the federal and provincial governments to reinvest in them as a matter of urgency.
The delegates of the Federation of Workers of Quebec (FTQ) discussed, on Tuesday, the financial difficulties experienced by transport companies, particularly since the crisis of the COVID-19 which caused a drop in ridership.
Delegates not only from large cities where there is a developed bus network, but also from smaller municipalities, came to the defense of public transit, urging the federal and provincial governments to better fund it, both for environmental and social reasons and to maintain jobs.
A delegate from the union of professionals of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) reported that because of the lack of funding, “we are being asked to delay preventive maintenance,” which affects the reliability of buses and the metro.
“Austerity is what the STM in Montreal has been experiencing for several years now,” lamented Frédéric Collin, of the Regional Council of Metropolitan Montreal of the FTQ, citing the recent decrease in the frequency of passage of buses that used to circulate every 10 minutes.
“After that, it’s just going to be: make the serve worse, make the serve worse. And, after that, they say to themselves “it’s weird, Montrealers are buying tanks, there are more than there were four years ago”. Well yes, when the service is not good and people have to get from point A to point B, they don’t want to take an hour and a half to get there. Every time public transport is defunded, there are more tanks on the roads, there are more greenhouse gases,” denounced Mr. Collin.
A delegate from the Steelworkers union, David Morin, from Chibougamau, made the delegates laugh when he related that in his northern region, “public transit, the rest of us, is when you have two people in your pick -up”.
Despite everything, he came out in favor of the proposals for better funding of public transit. “I understand your urban realities. We too dream of one day having another option than taking our tank. In Quebec, everything is based on the automobile, 90%. What is needed is a will of society. If we had made this choice 50 years ago, we would start to have something that looks good. »
Several FTQ unions are directly concerned, since the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), for example, represents the bus drivers and metro operators of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), and the Unifor union Novabus workers, who assemble buses in Saint-Eustache and Saint-François-du-Lac.