Letter to my councillor

I wrote the following letter to my city councillor today. A bit late, I admit, since they are meeting with the ATU today, but I have little faith that they will come to agreement today anyway. I recently sent an e-mail of outrage, carbon-copied to my city councillor, Mayor O'Brien, and the ATU. My councillor answered stating that they voted to add another $500,000 to assist low income and vulnerable people who are affected by this strike. I replied with the following. Please feel free to use any or all of this to write to the Mayor, your City Councillor, or any other government official if you are so inclined.

Dear {name},

Thank you for your efforts to provide assistance for our city's disadvantaged. It's not that these efforts go unappreciated; it's just that the need is so great and the extra help has not been nearly sufficient or fast enough. As you can see, public protests have begun today because citizens have had enough of these hardships.

I don't know if you will reach an agreement today, and I'm sure you are overwhelmed with letters and e-mails on this. But I have a few of suggestions, for what they're worth.

1) Compromise more with the union on scheduling to get the buses back on the road - just bite the bullet - BUT.....

for their UNCONSCIONABLE selfishness and willingness to impose extreme hardship on our citizens, and to protect us in the future:

2) Use future transit funding to implement an automated, driverless system such as Vancouver's Skytrain, and

3) Do whatever it takes to get the light rail system going in our city.

I am normally pro-union in my views, but this abuse of the public by the ATU has caused me to rethink my position. This is the capital of a G8 country and there is no reason why a group of bus drivers should be able to bring this entire city to its knees every 3 years if we can not or will not cater to their every wish. Something needs to be done, and if we have alternate transit options in place they won't be able to repeat this nightmare year after year. Knowing the possibility of a similar crisis always exists, it would be extremely irresponsible not to make other provisions. Granted, these are not short-term solutions - but we can live with this hanging over our heads for the next few years while we take steps to mitigate it, or we can live with it for decades to come.

Thank you for your time. Please feel free to share this letter with the mayor or other councillors as appropriate.

EEP