This week TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn made a very specific claim as to why the transit authority couldn’t give in to the demands of the 180 or so transit supervisors that
shut down the bus and SeaBus system this week due to job action.
“We are facing a fiscal crisis,” he said.
Three separate times in a 13-minute press conference, the head of Metro Vancouver’s transit system invoked the spectre of $4.7 billion in combined losses by 2033 as a reason why they could go no further than the 15 per cent wage increase over three years they’ve had on the table for weeks.
“We fortunately have been the recipient of
provincial and federal government funding that has allowed us to stay stable through the end of 2025. But it is not financially responsible to dig that hole any deeper,” he said.
It’s a straightforward argument from TransLink. But is it true?
Only if you imagine TransLink (and the province) will do nothing to change that financial imbalance.
The $4.7 billion figure cited by Quinn didn’t come out of thin air — it was first
raised at a Mayors’ Council meeting last October (you can read the report
here). And his math is based on a very real problem: adjusted for inflation, the money TransLink gets from fares and the gas tax is down about $200 million a year since the pandemic.
As such, giving raises above the 15 per cent threshold previously set by other TransLink unions is irresponsible. Or so goes Quinn’s very specific argument.
However, that $4.7 billion deficit is a cumulative projection, which starts in two years. It only happens if the provincial government doesn’t give TransLink new revenue tools. Or if they don’t make up for fare increases they put on pause during the pandemic. Or if they don't
raise the gas tax again. Or if ridership never
fully recovers from the pandemic. Or if TransLink doesn’t find efficiencies that they haven’t yet considered.
(We’ll note here that after talking about this in a video, a large number of commenters focused on the salaries of TransLink executives as a possible efficiency in its $2 billion budget. But in 2022, Quinn made $11,000 less than his counterpart at the Toronto Transit Commission, and $17,000 less than what the Montreal transit system’s head made in 2021. The amount of senior managers making more than $250,000 a year is also comparable between the three cities. Which isn’t to say that such salaries can’t be cut — only that Vancouver doesn’t appear to be an outlier in how it views the thorny question of executive compensation.) TransLink will have to contend with those big questions no matter how this dispute ends, and may have to make unpopular choices. It’s why mayors in the region have held many press conferences in the last year, asking for more revenue.
Which means that on the surface, the bus strike this week was a traditional labour dispute.
But underneath, it involves a lot of the same questions around infrastructure and revenue streams that characterize a lot of the tensions in local and regional governments.
