Quebec’s public transit agencies could save around $350 million per year, according to a report by an external consulting firm made public today.
Subcontracting bus drivers from the private sector, expanding transit-on-demand models and shrinking vehicle reserve rates are among the top recommendations made by the firm Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault hired the firm at the beginning of the year after she announced the government would absorb only 70 per cent of public transit deficits for 2023. Last year, Quebec’s public transit corporations projected a $2.5 billion deficit over five years.
“It doesn’t pretend to fix everything,” said Guilbault at a news conference Thursday, referring to the potential $346 million in savings outlined in the report.
“We need it. Every dollar counts,” she said, adding that “the government can’t fix this issue by itself.”
Guilbault called the report a “call to action” to work collaboratively and hopes it will break the cycle of public transit agency deficits.
Montreal’s transit agency, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), was ranked seventh of Quebec’s 10 public transit corporations, for its optimization. The Sherbrooke public transit authority was ranked first while the Société de transport de l’Outaouais (STO) is in last place. Quebec City’s transit authority is ranked ninth, with high operating and maintenance costs listed as its main challenges.
In a statement, the STM says it was already planning to retire 155 buses to reduce its reserve rate and “has already committed to reducing its expenses by $100 million over the next five years.”
Among the challenges faced by the STM are high maintenance costs and salaries for drivers, according to the report.
Report blames rigidity of collective agreements
Several recommendations made by the report can’t come to fruition because of certain clauses in the various collective agreements protecting public transit’s labour force. Notably, the agreements across the six unions representing STM workers forbid the subcontracting of jobs held by union members.
Subcontracting could result in $72 million in savings, according to the report.
During a technical briefing, Nicolas Plante, the lead on the report, explained the goal was to outline why the different transit corporations might not be performing as well as they could. He said the firm didn’t analyze the economic effect of specific clauses in the labour agreements.
The various collective agreements governing the STM’s labour force are set to expire in early 2025.
Quebec Transport Minister Geneviève Guilbault commissioned the audit after agreeing to cover 70 per cent of the public transit corporations’ deficit last year. The sector said last year they were looking at $2.5 billion in deficits until 2028. (Jean-Philippe Hughes/Radio-Canada)
The Conseil provincial du secteur transport terrestre du SCFP-Québec union, which represents Quebec bus drivers, among other transport workers, called out the idea.
“It’s not up to the employees driving the buses to make restructuring costs when public transit is needed more than ever to reduce greenhouse gases,” said the union’s president, Simon Mathura, in a statement.
The union also suggests that reducing reserve rates would essentially mean reducing preventive maintenance work on bus fleets.
The report also recommends public transit be recognized as an essential service which would even out bargaining power between unions and employers.
Lancelot Rodrigue is a graduate researcher in the school of urban planning at McGill University. He says it’s true that modifying certain collective agreements could result in greater flexibility, especially since most of the changes proposed by the report are administrative in nature.
“But again, these types of unions are necessary to be able to bargain for better conditions for the drivers [and] it’s especially important in the labour shortage that we’ve been going through for the last few years,” he said.
Guilbault says it’s up to the municipalities to prove why public transit is an essential service on a case-by-case basis, saying the matter had already been decided by Quebec’s labour tribunal.
Rodrigue says that, overall, the audit is a good exercise to make sure everyone is on the same page.
“But it’s not going to solve all the issues of the current budget shortfalls that have been in place,” he said.
For him, the important thing to do after reading the report is re-framing how we think of public transit so we’re evaluating it on the basis of its purpose rather than costs necessarily.
He also said some services can look financially inefficient on paper, but that cutting them could deprive users with lower incomes or limited mobility of transit options.