Transportation Minister Ron Lemieux announced late on the afternoon of Sept. 16 that Greyhound bus service will continue in Manitoba, and that there will be no layoffs of company employees.
The announcement was made after Lemieux met with Greyhound officials. The two sides have agreed to work towards short- and long-term solutions to address the unprofitability of several Greyhound bus routes in the province.
Greyhound previously gave the federal and provincial governments an ultimatum on Sept. 3, announcing it would pull its buses out of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario within 30 days if it didn't receive $15 million a year in subsidies, citing problems with provincial regulations mandating service on unprofitable routes in the North and in rural areas.
Before Lemieux's announcement, around 200 people employed by Greyhound were expecting two-week layoff notices on Sept. 17 or 18 if the issue wasn't resolved.
Senior vice president of Greyhound Canada Stuart Kendrick said in a press release that the company had repeatedly asked the federal and provincial governments to change the existing legislative and regulatory regimes that govern inter-city bus operations. He cited a dour financial situation that left the company unable to absorb losses that they claimed were "solely attributable to government policies" as the reason for wanting to pull out of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.In June, Greyhound applied to the Manitoba Motor Transport Board - which regulates bus service in the province - to discontinue service on its Flin Flon-Thompson route as well as a van service operating between Snow Lake and Ponton. Hearings on the application were held in Flin Flon, Snow Lake and Thompson in July but the transport board has yet to announce its decision.
Greyhound spokesperson Peter Hamel told attendees at the Thompson hearing July 9 that the Northern Manitoba region had seen a 33 per cent decline in ridership since 2005, including a 16 per cent drop on the Thompson-Flin Flon route in the past year alone.
Another meeting dealing with the issue of Greyhound pulling service out of Manitoba and northwestern Ontario took place at the Burntwood Hotel when the Thompson Chamber of Commerce met to discuss the issue on Sept. 16. In attendance were Mayor Tim Johnston, Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) director of operations Raj Thethy, and two co-agents with Greyhound Canada in Thompson Wendell Fitzpatrick and Lona Barnowich.
Johnston was the first to address the crowd that was assembled, saying that Thompson's future is as a regional service centre, and not having access to Greyhound buses would pose a difficult problem for the city. Johnston says he has a hard time believing the suggestion that there were no profitable routes for Greyhound in Northern Manitoba. He says he thinks that the routes from Thompson to Winnipeg, Thompson to Gillam and Thompson to Cross Lake would all be considered profitable.
Johnston went on to say that the city believes that if the Province of Manitoba and the federal government are going to look at giving subsidies to Greyhound, they should look at the whole story about the operation.
"Greyhound as a company has to look at its capital investment over the years with respect to the quality, safety and comfort of the capital rolling stock they have. One of their arguments is low ridership causing the issue. I don't think that it's too long ago that many remember a bus breaking down on the way up to Leaf Rapids or Lynn Lake. The likelihood is that some of those issues of comfort, safety and quality impact people's desire to ride the bus," he explained.
Johnston said that although the city will continue to work with the province on the issue, he is concerned about the issue of charter bus service, especially with regards to youth sports and extracurricular activities. He also pointed out that if people in the North wanted Greyhound bus service to continue, they'd have to make a commitment to actually use it.
Fitzpatrick responded to the issue of quality, safety and comfort with regards to Greyhound buses that operate in Manitoba.
"Buses are just like anything else - they're a mechanical piece of equipment and they have flaws and they have glitches in them. One of the biggest concerns that I've noticed is that when they're driving on a snowy road, the computers get wet. And when the computer tells the bus to shut down, the bus shuts down," he explained. "As far as mechanically - the buses are in great shape. Greyhound goes out of their way to make sure the buses are safe and warm."
Thethy pointed out that from the BRHA's perspective, Greyhound pulling out of Manitoba would be a very unfortunate situation, since so many patients rely on the service as part of the Northern Patient Transportation Program the hospital offers. On Sept. 16 the BRHA was already busy looking at different options that were available should Greyhound follow through with their plan to pull service out of the province.
"Options will be either getting chartered companies to come up and charter our patients down or hire chartered airlines to fly them down, but that's a whole different dynamic, because the referral appointments will have to then be aligned with the schedules of our charters," Thethy explained. "It's a huge, huge impact for us. It's not just moving one piece on a chess board, it's playing the whole game of chess - trying to figure out appointments, aligning with the physicians' schedules in Winnipeg, and making sure that the patients have the time off to go down."
Lyle Miller, a member of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce, said that he couldn't understand why a system that has worked so long for Greyhound isn't working anymore, citing the fact that Greyhound was looking to pull out of the passenger market and only offer freight services.
"Now all of a sudden it's not adequate anymore to cross-subsidize your passenger routes with your freight business. Initially, when your passenger business was larger than your freight business, it was quite okay to cross-subsidize the other way, by adding freight in the bottom," he said to the co-agents that were present. "We've seen buses evolve over the years from a conveyance that was primarily for passengers with a little cargo spacenow we've got buses that have a much larger cargo space. And in fact, the freight revenues exceed the passenger revenues. But in order to maintain passenger service, why not use cross-subsidization from the freight?"
Fitzpatrick responded, saying that should Greyhound cease servicing Manitoba passengers, the freight would not be shipped by bus but rather by Greyhound trucks.
According to the co-agents from Greyhound, just before Lemieux's announcement that Greyhound bus service would continue in Manitoba, he had come forward and discussed giving the company $6.2 million, but nothing was set in stone.
