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David Miller, Toronto City Councillors

The TTC is not an essential service

At some point, Toronto City Council will debate a motion to request that the provincial government declare Toronto’s transit system an essential service. The introduction of the motion follows the strike that didn’t materialize after a last minute tentative agreement that was reached and then the walkout with no notice when the employees failed to ratify it.

Last week, when the union pulled a fast one on the union-loving council, making the TTC an essential service was a top priority for the kiddy kouncillors. A few minutes after learning of the walkout, Mayor David Miller was on the phone to the premier begging back to work legislation. The legislature held an emergency sitting the next day and by late afternoon the buses, streetcars and subways began rolling.  Having received almost immediate gratification, the councillors, like the children they are, became a lot less interested in the matter of the transit system being declared essential.

          Like most things that Toronto councillors get involved in, this motion will be a complete waste of time. We all know that the city will never ask the province to make transit workers essential. When Mayor David Miller and his sycophant socialist supporters on council have the choice of doing what Torontonians want or doing what their beloved unions want, the unions will always come out on top. The transit unions of course do not want to give up their right to strike. To help the council decide the matter, CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan took time off from his regular job of bashing Israel to warn the city that there will be labour unrest if there is an attempt to make transit an essential service. According to Sid, if the TTC becomes an essential service, his garbage collectors will be next. Of course the worst thing about a garbage strike is that some garbage collectors would be unable to practice their green bin tossing which ultimately will become an Olympic sport.

          Council will rely on the fact that making the TTC an essential service would be too costly; a laughable argument when raised by a council that has no scruples on spending billions of dollars that they don’t have on their pet causes. It will be fun to watch. In the end, all city unions will get their way and there will be no talk of making transit essential until the next time they approach a legal strike position.

          But none of this means that transit actually is an essential service. And it isn’t. To put a group of pudgy bus drivers in the same category as police officers, firefighters and emergency service personnel who keep order in the city and save lives is an insult to those latter groups. The reason that a lot of people view transit as essential is because we have become a nation of pampered wimps. Anyone who is old enough to remember the time when the city was subjected to lengthy transit strikes will know that a strike is not the crisis that it is now portrayed to be. The first few days are chaotic. But people adjust; they find alternatives. We have become a society that is discouraged from taking any action or solving any problems; instead we look to governments to take care of everything for us. The residents of Toronto would survive a transit strike and after a few weeks, some people might even enjoy it. There’s nothing like driving down Queen Street without having to worry about coming upon a streetcar.

          Some will argue that people could very well die if a transit strike took place. Police, firefighters or paramedics would take longer to respond to emergencies and death or serious injury could result. This is very true. But it’s no different than the ordinary spring and summer weekend where the expressways are closed for repairs while alternative parallel routes are closed for special events. And it’s hard to envisage pedestrians being injured or killed by cars that are just inching along. There is probably a greater chance that someone will be die as a result of a drunk driver returning from the entertainment district after having found during the last work stoppage that the TTC is not the better way.

          A lack of transit is not the crisis that it was portrayed as being. And the media such as Citytv didn’t help by having nonstop coverage of the strike as if it was on a par with the Asian tsunami or a devastating hurricane. The coverage was good for a laugh if nothing else.

          We don’t need transit as an essential service. What we need is proper leadership – a mayor who doesn’t panic and call the premier five seconds after hearing about a walkout. Torontonians would have been much better off if the transit workers would have been off for a few weeks. The city would have saved much needed money and the workers would have lost anything that they would gain in a new contract. They would think twice about striking in the future.  But this would be highly unpopular here in Wimp Nation.

          It is only a matter of time before those who are becoming more and more dependent upon the nanny state will want all government services to be deemed essential. Except the tax collectors of course.