The Sask. government will soon do away with a transit subsidy given to workers at the Global Transportation Hub in Regina.
According to the GTH Annual Report 2017-18 it budgeted $244,000 for transportation, but only received $130,000 back, an approximate $114,000 subsidy.
Attorney General Don Morgan says the GTH is losing money, with the taxpayers footing the bill for bus rides, something he says isn’t right. “I don’t think its right for the taxpayers to subsidize a bus service,” Morgan said.
Morgan is changing his tune, as he said this in Committee hearings last week. “The current users of the property are labour intensive. They’re indicating they’re bringing more workers there. The expectation I think was reasonable on their part, when they came in, that public transit would be available, and as more of them come, there’s greater opportunities for cost recovery. But at the present time, maintaining those jobs, those individuals there, its good value when you realize the amount of money we recover from those individuals in property tax. And I would not want to put any of those positions in jeopardy, or somebody thinking that they’re not going to be able to get to work.”
Yet with the closure of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, NDP critic Cathy Sproule says its ridiculous that a billion-dollar corporation like Loblaw’s gets a transit subsidy, when vulnerable people and northerners do not. “I think it’s appalling that Loblaw’s is getting a subsidy when we have individuals from the north, from rural Saskatchewan who are denied the opportunity to some form of transportation. I think it’s just disgusting that this government would be subsidizing Galen Weston and wouldn’t even begin to look at helping people from the north,” Sproule explained.
Morgan says the decision was made to shut the STC and that he is applying that same standard to other transit subsidies.
(The view from inside one of STC’s last trips. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.)