School Bus Operators Urge Minister Lecce and Premier Ford to Support Small Businesses and Local Jobs
TORONTO, June 9, 2021 /CNW/ - After protesting at the Ontario Legislature last week, independent school bus operators are bringing their concerns to the doorstep of Education Minister Lecce and Premier Doug Ford, asking them to prevent the closure of more small businesses by fixing an unfair bidding process. Over the last decade, an unfair RFP (Request for Proposal) process has put more than 100 independent school bus operators out of business.
"We have a solution – one that guarantees value for taxpayer money while at the same time preventing more small, family-run businesses from being wiped out" Said Sherry Barker of Parkhurst Transportation. "The problem is the competitive process unfairly hurts small, rural operators" said Ms. Barker. Over 100 small operators have lost their businesses in the last ten years because of the current flawed process.
The solution is simple – follow recommendations from two government commissioned reports and adopt the benchmarking process used by almost a third of school boards and consortia across the province.
Premier Ford and Minister Lecce need to show leadership on this issue. The conservatives supported independent operators and promised to fix this unfair process when they were in opposition. Now they are in power they have not lived up to those commitments and nothing has been done.
The independent school bus operators are calling on Minister Lecce to make clear to school boards that there are alternatives to RFPs that guarantee value for money and to tell school boards they have to follow the recommendations from government's own reports so that small business are treated fairly.
The Tri-Board School Bus Operators Association employs nearly 1,000 people across the province, and hundreds more through local businesses they support. "My family's business has been a staple of the Belleville area since 1957," third-generation Parkhurst Transportation operator Sherry Barker said. "For more than 60 years, we've transported children to and from school safely and efficiently. But thanks to an unfair RFP process, we're now at risk of losing it all. This is exactly what happened recently to an independent operator in the Hamilton area, that served their community for over 50 years -- they lost all their routes and their entire business."
The operators are calling on the Ford government to work with them to save local jobs, and maintain a reliable transportation system for students. "For decades, we worked with school boards on the principles of goodwill, trust and co-operation to make sure the community's needs came first," said Barker. "Now they're using an unfair RFP process that ignores the government's own recommendations and makes it impossible for local businesses to compete. We don't stand a chance."
SOURCE Tri-Board School Bus Operators Association
Media Contacts: Sherry Barker, Parkhurst Transportation, [email protected], 613- 920-3179; Karman Wong, KPW Comms, [email protected], 416-880-1333
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