The green-and-white-coloured buses that formerly carried the Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) logo stopped running on the province’s highways as of May 31, an unfortunate victim of a slow economy and a provincial budget where the government was dealing with a large deficit.
The bus line operated for many years losing money, provided as a service to the province’s residents and not as a money-maker for the government, and helped people who do not or cannot drive with a means of transportation, such as seniors who needed to go to medical appointments in a larger centre like Regina or Saskatoon.
However, as the economy tanked in recent years, due to many factors including depressed oil and potash prices, and the bus service continued losing money on the majority of its routes, STC simply became too expensive to continue running, and the decision was made to close the freight and passenger service.
A number of private companies made plans and proposals to take over the passenger bus service, and they met up with objections from a core group of STC supporters, some of whom organized protests against the bus closure and filed objections with the Highway Traffic Board.
One company that proposed to offer passenger bus service, Carpe Diem, formally withdrew from the application process, citing some of the pressure exerted by the objectors, who vilified the government and any private company who had the audacity to think they could take over any routes previously served by STC.
What is curious is that those objecting to companies vying for the chance to be granted running rights to provide passenger bus service kept claiming that the government was privatizing the STC bus service. This is simply not the case, as STC was not privatized but was closed as a company, with its operations wound down as of May 31.
Did those protesting the closure of STC hope that maybe the Wall government would reverse their decision like with the cuts to the library funding, which were restored after province-wide grassroots protests?
Possibly, but the main difference in the case of bus service is, there is not a major grassroots movement to save it, only a handful of objectors, some of them from the union representing the bus drivers.
The result is that they are standing in the way of bus service being provided to the residents of Saskatchewan in a way that may be more fiscally prudent and sustainable than what STC was able to provide.— Greg Nikkel
