TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ -

Visual Note: participants will be positioned behind speakers, wearing matching shirts and holding signs against a backdrop of Union Station's historic facade

BACKGROUND:

Labour and community leaders from across Ontario will join the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents 30,000 transit workers in Canada, to demand that Metrolinx immediately end its backwards policy of favouring private, for-profit corporations over local public transit agencies when selecting who should operate and maintain new transit builds in the province. Together, they will launch a province-wide Keep Transit Public campaign on Metrolinx's doorstep.

Organised in Hamilton earlier this year to demand public operation of a Metrolinx Light Rail Transit LRT) project, the Keep Transit Public campaign gathered over 6000 signatures and successfully lobbied Hamilton City Council to change course. Council overwhelmingly passed a motion in August requesting that the province and Metrolinx make the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) – Hamilton's public transit company – the default operator and maintenance provider for the new LRT being built there, instead of a private consortia as planned by Metrolinx. Despite this, neither Metrolinx, the Ministry of Transportation nor Premier Wynne have responded to Hamilton's request.

ATU Canada has made several attempts to meet with Transportation Minister DelDuca, or Premier Wynne, only to be given the runaround.

The debate in Hamilton sparked concerns among transit riders and workers in their own municipalities over local Metrolinx projects. Now, ATU leaders in Hamilton, Toronto, Mississauga, and Brampton are joining forces with other unions and riders groups to launch the Keep Transit Public Campaign province-wide. They say they have two clear demands:

1. That Metrolinx immediately stop the privatization of operation and maintenance of transit in Ontario and remove those services from all current and future tenders.
2. That Metrolinx instead invest in modernizing and strengthening existing public transit companies so that they may operate and maintain all new LRT, BRT and other related transit expansions in Ontario.

Driving their concerns is the history of public service privatization failures across Canada and around the globe, especially in public transit. Many regions have experienced a decline in quality, safety, and reliability of service. For example, British Rail and the maintenance of the London Underground were both privatized. In both cases, despite rosy promises on paper, projects costs rocketed out of control and contractors simply abandoned the contracts, leaving the public to pick up the pieces and foot the bill.

Metrolinx insists that these new transit expansions should still be considered 'public' because Metrolinx will own the trains and equipment.

Public ownership of equipment is hardly public control. Public services like transit are delivered by the public employees who operate and maintain the system. When these jobs are handed over to a private company, there's another name for it: it's called contracting out. For contractors to turn a profit, they do so by reducing service levels, cutting corners on maintenance, and driving down the compensation of transit workers. Public-private partnerships also obscure democratic accountability, with elected leaders and private companies both refusing to take responsibility for issues raised by riders and workers.

By and large, public transit in Canada is cost effective and extremely safe. Metrolinx's privatization scheme is a solution in search of a problem that simply does not exist.

Metrolinx claims that doing these projects as P3s mitigates risks and reduces costs for municipalities.

In 2014, Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk examined 75 Public Private Partnerships and came to the conclusion that there was no evidence at all to support the claims that they were more cost effective. She was quoted then as saying, "When these risk evaluations are done, there isn't any empirical evidence to support it," she said. "We can't find proof to support the fact that if the public sector did it, it would cost so much more."

The lesson here is that no matter what a contract says, when something goes wrong, the only way to enforce it is in the courts. Large private companies get involved in these projects in order to turn a profit. If the project becomes unprofitable, they walk away and leave their lawyers to fight the costly legal battle. One way or another, the public ends up paying for it.

SOURCE ATU Canada

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