Saskatchewan's 70-year old provincial bus service to shut down

Employees cried and passengers were angry when they learned last Wednesday that the provincial government of Brad Wall had decided to shut down the 70-year-old bus service.

The Saskatchewan Transportation Company is a provincial crown corporation:

The Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) is a Crown Corporation of the Government of Saskatchewan, created in 1946 by an Order in Council. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan, with a mandate to provide bus services carrying people and freight between major centres and to as much of the rural population as possible.Freight services will be terminated on May 19 and passenger services by May 31. The closure will see 224 people lose their jobs and hundreds of rural Saskatchewan communities without any bus service. The province of Manitoba to the east already faces that situation. There is no service on highway 16, the Yellowhead, that runs from Winnipeg to Saskatoon, through much of Western Manitoba. Our main bus service is Greyhound Lines with offices in Austin Texas and owned in Scotland by FirstGroup. Any service that is not profitable is discontinued. The idea that a bus service might be operated to serve all areas of the province is a non-starter. This was the case even under our former supposedly socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) government. We now have a Conservative government and the issue will not even be discussed. The Saskatchewan Party government of premier Brad Wall in Saskatchewan is also conservative. Now they too will enjoy Greyhound as their main bus service. There is no money to be made providing transportation to the small towns of Saskatchewan except on a few main highways so they will all be without service.

Norquay resident, Cara Severson, said: "I can't believe this. I don't know what I'm going to do, I won't be traveling any more. It's going to be quite a nightmare. You guys don't know what you're doing to small communities. Think about the little people." She hoped that Premier Wall could reconsider the decision. A Nigerian immigrant did not know how she would bring her daughter into Saskatoon for medical treatment. An elderly Saskatoon woman who took the bus to the Manitou Springs Resort and Mineral Spa near the small town of Watrous said she will simply not be able to go there anymore.

Tareq Sunny of Yorkton takes the bus every month on business and said: "It's shutting down forever? My life is shutting down." While the decision is estimated to save the province about 17 million a year it also ends over 200 jobs and deprives many, in rural Saskatchewan especially, of a valuable transportation service. Only two of STC's 27 different routes are profitable. No doubt carriers such as Greyhound will service these routes while the 25 other routes will simply be without service.

New Democratic Party critic Cathy Sproule said that the loss of STC would have a negative impact on seniors in rural areas and people who depended on the bus service for medical appointments and deliveries. Sproule said: "We have a minister who promised a year ago that they wouldn't be touching STC because of the valuable service it provides." A survey of customers in the STC's latest annual report showed that 93 percent of customers were satisfied and 95 percent of parcel customers.Jennifer Campeau who was minister in charge of STC in 2016 said: "By linking communities, people and businesses, STC serves the customer and the shareholder. STC provides citizens with access to essential services in larger and rural communities. Entrepreneurs across the province have access to shipping services that can supply parts or distribute products, expanding markets beyond their local community." Even though the passenger service is to continue until May many routes were cancelled just hours before the announcement of STC's termination was announced in the budget. Apparently the cancellations were made to allow management to meet with STC staff, a move that shows no concern about customers.

Toronto District School Board cancels all new trips to the United States

The Toronto District School Board is canceling all new planned school trips to the United States until further notice due to the uncertainty with respect to whom could be affected by Trump's latest travel restrictions.

The Girl Guides of Canada and other school boards have halted travel to the U.S. The Windsor School board implemented a ban back on February 11th as reported in a Digital Journal article. The new ban replacing an earlier one bans travel to the U.S. from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen unless the travelers have already been issued valid visas. However, as with the first ban, the new version is suspended pending several court challenges. The ban is to last 90 days.

In a statement released on Thursday, March 23rd, John Malloy, Director of Education said that the board faced a difficult choice: "We strongly believe that our students should not be placed into these situations of potentially being turned away at the border. For the planned trips that will be continuing, should students with the appropriate documentation be denied entry to the U.S. for no legitimate reason, the entire trip will return to Toronto and will not proceed." The board has 246,000 students in 584 schools throughout Toronto.If the U.S. travel restrictions are fully implemented, the school board said that even pre-approved trips would be cancelled.

A few individuals from the countries on the ban list will still be eligible to enter the U.S. if they are dual nationals travelling on a passport from a country not on the list or if they are legal permanent residents of the U.S. Iraq has been removed from the second list of banned countries. The Ottawa-Carleton District school board sent a letter to parents asking them if they thought upcoming trips to the U.S. should go ahead.

Roy Bird, spokesperson for the Toronto board told the Canadian Broadcasting System (CBC) that the ban would be in place until further notice. When asked whether the ban was a political statement he said: "I think this is about the information that we have in front of us. I think it's about the equity and inclusion angle. I'm not naive to say that it doesn't make a statement, but the decision is not being made as a statement." He said the main concern of the board was that students would not be turned away at the border even if they had the necessary documentation. Bird noted: "We have heard anecdotal stories of the executive order, in some cases when it was in place before, preventing people even with the appropriate documentation from crossing the border, and we don't want to put our students in that position. What we're saying is if this executive order is fully implemented, it could cause problems."

Toronto District School Board (TDSB) chair, Robin Pilkey said that there were 25 previously organized trips involving 900 students that will go ahead as planned. He said if any students with proper documentation are turned back the whole group will return. Pilkey said: "We're committed as a school board to equity, inclusiveness and fairness, and it's not appropriate that some students would not be able to attend based on their country of birth." While some families are asking why all trips were not cancelled, others are anxious planned trips go ahead. Bird said: "Hundreds of kids have been working months in some cases, fundraising, planning, working hard on competitions to get to where they are, and we don't want them to miss out on those opportunities."