This greyhound is moving in one direction: out of Canada.
Of course the news - https://news.greyhound.ca/ - of Greyhound Canada closing all its services in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada is bad for the many, often low-income bus travellers and the small Canadian communities for which Greyhound bus service had become a transportation lifeline over many
years. And it is not news for many communities previously divested, but as with many recent challenges like, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, there is, and must, be a linked opportunity for radical transfomation if similar societal breakdowns are not to re-occur. Simply put, the public sector in Canada, particularly in recent years, under the control of neoliberal privatization and divestment policies has increasingly relied on porivate organizations to conduct public services for which they are unfitted. Simply to state the problem thus is to reveal the basic contradiction. The challenge is not Greyhound's to resolve; as forewarened by their previous desertion of communities in western Canada they have taken a simple profit-loss buiness position on their Canadian services and concluded Canada is not worth the cost of operating here.
TorontotheBetter calls on all in Canada concerned with maintaining basic public services to make their voices heard for re-investment in social transportation, either public or non-profit. We are in transformative times. We must take action now to avoid further shredding of our societal service fabric. For-profit market suppliers can never be reliable providers of public service, though the socially purposed rnterprise can make a valuable contrinution. This is a principle that is basic to TorontotheBetter. Stay tuned to this blog for more ideas and opportunities for progressive post-pandemic socio-economic change.
# posted by Taodhg @ 10:29 am
