School Bus operators buoyed by Minister’s moratorium

Jeff Green | Jun 30, 2011

After meeting with representatives from the Independent School Bus Operators of Ontario (ISBOA), Ontario’s Minister of Education, Leona Dombrowsky, has placed a six-month moratorium on a new 'Request For Proposal' bidding process for school bussing contracts.

The existing system is based on ongoing contracts, with fees being set annually by the local school boards.

ISBOA was formed in order to advocate against the Request for Proposal process, which the independent operators worry will force most of the small independent companies out of business as large multinational bussing companies lowball their bids for the routes.

According to ISBOA, once the local companies are out of business, the multinationals will be able to recoup their losses by putting up the price when the contracts come up for renewal, because the competition will be gone. ISBOA says that in the end, a local industry will be gone and transportation costs will end up higher than they would have been otherwise.

According to ISBOA executive member, Mary Stinson, this is exactly what happened in the Sudbury district, which has been using the Request for Proposal system since 2001.

“The first time the process was used in Sudbury, just about all of the local companies lost out and they ended up going out of business. So, now that they are negotiating the third five-year contract, the multinationals have no competition and transportation costs are going up by 13%,” she said.

In their meeting last month with Minister Dombrowsky, ISBOA executive members presented exactly this scenario, and urged her to reconsider instituting the system throughout the entire province as had been planned.

In the media release announcing the six-month moratorium on further implementation, Dombrowsky wrote: “In recognition of the concerns and issues expressed by both school boards and operators, I believe that taking an opportunity to review competitive procurement processes for student transportation would be beneficial for all parties.”

Dombrowsky also wrote that she would be appointing a task force “that will review the competitiveness of processes used to procure student home-to-school transportation, paying specific attention to their fairness, transparency, accountability and value for money.”

The task force will report to the Minister of Education on December 1.

Sean Payne, of Martin Bus Lines, is the president of the ISBOA. He described Dombrowsky's letter as “truly encouraging,” noting that Dombrowsky also referred to working with a “vibrant, multi-operator student transportation community.”

The moratorium and task force have implications for the upcoming provincial election as well. ISBOA had been planning activities around the campaign, which will now be cancelled as they participate in the task force.

As well, the task force will be reporting after the election takes place and the outcome of that election could effect the reception the report receives. On December 1, the task force report could be arriving on the desk of a new Minister of Education, perhaps one from a party other than the Liberals.