RF process for busing contract leaves local providers fear for their very survival

Jeff Green | Dec 16, 2020

(Editors note - This article has been update with current information)

Starting in 2009, many of the school bus consortia in Ontario responded to a directive from the provincial government to establish a competitive process for busing contracts by setting out Request for Proposal (RFP) processes.

As these processes rolled out across Ontario, many of the smaller, local, bus companies, that have been the backbone of the school busing industry in rural Ontario, have lost contracts and ended up going out of business, accelerating a trend towards national and multinational corporations taking over the industry.

Last month, Tri-Board Transportation, which oversees busing contracts for the Limestone District School Board, the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board, and the Hastings Prince Edward District School Board, announced that it was planning to issue an RFP for the 2021 school year, sometime at the end of November or early in December. 

Bus operators held a rally opposing the RFP process in Plevna, near Clarendon Central Public School, on December 15, coinciding with a visit by Limestone District School Board (LDSB) Director of Education Krishna Burra to the school. The RFP dropped on December 16, at 5am. There was another rally later in the morning at the LDSB Board office in Kingston.

The Tri-Board School Bus Operators Association says that the RFP will result in the closure of up to 19 school bus companies in the region.

“During the Kathleen Wynne years, over 110 small business operators across Ontario lost their businesses in these RFP processes,” said Sean Payne, owner of Martin's bus lines and the President of the Tri-Board School Bus Operators Association, last week. “We were hopeful that a Conservative, pro-business government would attempt to protect small businesses. We are urging MPP’s Daryl Kramp and Todd Smith to sit with us, to come up with a solution, before this RFP is issued.

The busing RFP's that have rolled out across Ontario, have tended to be long, complicated documents, and have included large bundles of routes, and it is not surprising that they have resulted in two or three large contractors winning up all of the contracts, putting dozens of so called 'mom and pop' operators out of business, according to information supplied by School Bus Ontario, an organisation that represents bus operators in the province, large and small.

Steve and Jen Dunham of Ompah run Dunham Transportation, one of those 'mom and pop' operations, serving students in Central and North Frontenac.

“When this comes in, I expect we will be toast” he said this week. “The large companies, like Stock and First Student, thrive on the RFP's. They have teams whose whole job it is to work through these forms, and create the conditions for winning these contracts. If they lose one, they just shift their resources to another location. If we lose, we're out of business. We have nowhere to go, and we have to find someone to buy buses, which we still owe money on.”

Dunham and the School Bus Operators Association both said Tri-Board has another option, which has been done elsewhere in Ontario. The process is called ‘benchmarking’, which includes a third-party evaluation of the market value of all the routes under the jurisdiction of a busing consortium, to determine a fair price, giving the existing contractors the option of meeting the price.

Gord Taylor, the Executive Director of Tri-Board Transportation, said, in a phone interview this week, that “there is a number of pieces of legislation, including the free trade agreement, and the public sector procurement directive, under which we are required to use a transparent and competitive bidding process for new busing contracts. ‘Benchmarking’ is not a competitive process. We have a legal opinion to that effect. This is a $40 million expenditure. It needs to be done using one of the prescribed ways to ensure a transparent and competitive process. An RFP is one of the prescribed ways.”

According to School Bus Ontario, 9 new ‘benchmarked” contracts have been negotiated in the province since 2015, including a 12-year contract between Chatham-Kent Lambton Administrative School Services and its operators in 2019.

Taylor said that he cannot comment on how other busing consortia determined that benchmarking is consistent with the rules that govern busing procurement.

“All I can say is that we are following a process that meets the requirements. You would have to ask them about their process,” he said.

He said that the RFP that is about to drop from Tri-Board was designed with an aim towards providing as good an opportunity for the small companies that are already in the market as it does for larger or small companies looking to enter the market.

“This is the first RFP in the Province of Ontario, that I am aware of, that not only permits but encourages collaborative bids by smaller companies on bundles of routes. It was designed by an independent procurement advisor and an independent fairness commissioner. There are 2 components to the scoring system. 75 per cent is based on technical aspects of the bids, and only 25 per cent is based on the price.”

There have been questions raised about undertaking a time consuming and disruptive process in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time school bus companies are under extra stress, as a front-line service. These were raised as recently as Wednesday by members of the Board of Trustees at a Limestone District School Board meeting.

Taylor said that the contract with Tri-Board operators ends in June of 2021 and has nothing in it that provides an opportunity for it to be extended.

The contract came about in 2014, based on a court order. An attempt by Tri-Board Transportation to use an RFP process in 2012 and 2013, had been challenged in court. A judge ruled against Tri-Board and ordered that the 2014 contract be signed.

“We need to do this now, because we need to have buses available in September of 2021 to bring kids to school,” said Taylor.

The potential impact of national and multinational bus companies coming into a rural market is something that Peggy Muldoon, a driver for Dunham Transportation, knows from experience.

She has been a school bus driver for 32 years, the last 12 in Sharbot Lake.

Muldoon has worked for a number of companies, small and large, and not only does she prefer working for a locally based company, she has found that she can do a better job with a smaller company.

“I used to live in Greely, near Ottawa, and the first company that I ever worked for was O’Brien’s Transportation, which was owned by Dan O’Brien. He was there every morning and every evening when we picked up and dropped off our bus, and he used to follow drivers around every once in a while, to make sure we weren’t driving too fast,” she said, in a phone interview on Friday morning, December 4, after she had finished her morning run.

All that changed when that company was eventually taken over by one of the large bus conglomerates, Stock Transportation.

“Everything went through the company after that. I was not to talk to anyone, and we no longer had any ability to keep the routes we were driving because other drivers could claim routes based on seniority with the company. As a driver, we had less ability to interact with the students and the school. Everything was filtered through management.”

“We have a lot of responsibility to make sure everyone is safe and to check the roads carefully. When I drive for a local company, I feel respected for the job that I do, with a large company, I don’t feel that respect. It is not the same.”

She said that not only do the children that she picks up know her, they know the back-up driver that replaces her when she needs to take a day off.

“It will be very hard for a large company to get and keep drivers on these rural routes. We drive for the money, of course, but also for the comradery. It is a family atmosphere now. The companies are part of the community, and once that is lost it will not be as good a service. It never is,” she said.

Steve Dunham also pointed out that if the small companies that serve Frontenac County communities are pushed out of the school bus industry, the communities will also lose the charter services for community events.

“We do about 250 trips a year for ball teams, seniors, all sorts of groups, and we keep the price really low. Cox Lines [another local bus company] does at least that many. I don’t think either of us can stay open without school bus contracts, so another important local service will be lost.”