A HandyDART bus.
A HandyDART bus. Credit: Victoria Disability Resource Centre / Facebook Credit: Victoria Disability Resource Centre / Facebook

Joe McCann wants to know why BC premier Dave Eby won’t keep his promise. McCann, president of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) local 1724, which represents drivers and other employees who deliver custom transit  for passengers living with mobility issues (HandyDART) in BC’s Lower Mainland. McCann says he has a clear and abiding memory of a promise Eby made during the last provincial election, a promise to bring HandyDART back “in house” to government management and away from the foreign multinational Transdev, which operates the service as a contractor and is ATU employees’ direct employer.

McCann told rabble in a phone conversation in early July that the premier seems to have decided to break or defer that promise. Instead, BC is going to spend millions of dollars on an unnecessary review of HandyDART contracting. (Full disclosure: I drove HandyDART for 20 years and am a retired member of the ATU.)

“We expected a Translink decision on June 25, but we were bumped from the speakers’ list, and now the decision may be deferred for another 18 months,” he said.

ATU’s concerns led to a leafleting action recently, an attempt by union members, HandyDART workers and community activists  to inform the public of the premier’s  unmet promise to bring HandyDART in house and out of the hands of Transdev, a giant multinational firm.

The leaflets read in part:

“This extension to Transdev’s contract with Translink is extremely disappointing for riders and workers,” said Joe McCann. “The Translink Board could have brought an end to its practice of sending millions of dollars to foreign companies and outsourcing care, but instead Translink is signaling that it needs more time to consider just how much importance it gives to care and quality of service for seniors and people with disabilities.” Transdev reported revenues of over 10 billion Euros in 2024. Translink is an agency that manages how various BC transit services, including HandyDART, will be contracted out. It says on its website:

“Officially recognized as the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, most simply know us as TransLink. Created in 1999, we deliver our services through contractors, and our operating companies and subsidiaries such as Coast Mountain Bus Company, British Columbia Rapid Transit Company Ltd. (SkyTrain), Metro Vancouver Transit Police and West Coast Express Ltd.”

The fight being currently conducted by HandyDART workers and the ATU is part of the global fight against privatization, a worldwide and ruling class-initiated campaign to reduce the size of government and deliver former government services through for profit entities. Privatization has been actively promoted by business friendly think tanks like the Fraser Institute in Canada and the Cato Institute, founded by the notorious oil tycoon Koch brothers in the US. Privatization is going to be a hot issue for workers under the Carney Liberals, who are emerging as advocates for this fundamentally anti-worker policy.

Gavin Davies, National Representative with Unifor a union that also represents some BC HandyDART employees, told rabble this weekend that he “absolutely” supports the ATU demand that HandyDART operations be brought in house. Davies, himself a 20- year veteran bus driver before going to work full time for his union, emphasized that he was expressing his personal view on this matter, not Unifor policy, although he did say a discussion of the issue is slated to occur at an August convention.

“Transdev is primarily concerned with profit,” Davies told rabble. “These are taxpayers’ dollars flowing offshore.”

He emphasized that “unions are working together” on this front, and  “…we have  common goals. ”

Davies’ focus on solidarity between the unions involved in Transdev HandyDART operations is particularly significant, given the sometimes contentious history shared by Unifor and the ATU.

In 2018 Unifor disaffiliated from the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in a complicated tangle of events in which Unifor was accused of an attempt to raid an ATU local in Toronto. The ATU remains a member of the CLC today, while Unifor remains “outside the house of labour.”

If the ATU and Uniforcan successfully co-operate in confronting Transdev over the rights of HandyDART workers, as Davies suggests, it will be a welcome moment of class solidarity we can all celebrate. It could be a first step toward mending fences between Unifor and the CLC, a step that would leave the workers’ movement stronger, as David Bush argued persuasively in an essay published in Spring: A Magazine of Socialist Ideas in Action in 2023.

More recently, Mark Haddock, president of CUPE had this to say about Carney and privatization:

“Both Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney believe in further privatization. Mark Carney’s Liberals want to cut taxes for the wealthy and sell off our infrastructure to the highest bidder. Pension funds, which behave just like any other investor, are waiting in the wings for changes to rules that will allow them to invest and profit from infrastructure projects. Many of Canada’s airports are already up for sale. Carney has spent much of his career further enriching some of the world’s richest people as chairman of Brookfield Asset Management which profited off the privatization of public services.”

Our choice should be clear to us all. Let’s oppose privatization wherever it rears its ugly head, and let’s start by emailing BC premier David Eby to tell him he should end the delay and keep his promise. Move HandyDART back in house and end the bleed of tax dollars to a profit-driven multinational. You can reach Eby at [email protected]

Tom Sandborn

Tom Sandborn lives and writes on unceded Indigenous territory in Vancouver. He is a widely published free lance writer who covered health policy and labour beats for the Tyee on line for a dozen years,...