A closer look at the accessible transit strike

Good morning,

The weather is turning, the pumpkins are spicing and the sweaters are donning — soon enough, the leaves will be orange-ing! And you know what that means — spooky season is upon us! I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Dracula recently and remembering why I liked it in high school, but I’m always looking for more well-done horror. Let us know what you’ve got in your Netflix queue, or on your bookshelf waiting to be read — or something you’ve just finished and loved!

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got a closer look at the HandyDART labour dispute that has been going on since June, and which ratcheted up this month, as well as a look at what’s top of mind for everyone at the UBCM conference this week.

—Dustin Godfrey, freelancer

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WEATHER

Wednesday: 18 🌡️ 12 | 🌤️/🌧️

Thursday: 18 🌡️ 11 | ⛅️ 

Friday: 18 🌡️ 9 | ⛅️ 

HANDYDART

A closer look at the accessible transit strike

What’s going on: As you may have heard (including in this newsletter), 600 employees of the HandyDART door-to-door transit service for people with disabilities have been on strike since Sep. 3, pausing all service except essential medical trips. But how did we get here and what is at stake? 

• Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724 had been cautiously optimistic early in the strike that mediated negotiations would settle the matter, according to The Canadian Press, but the local’s president, Joe McCann, said members were prepared to strike “as long as it takes.”

Background: The union had averted a strike in late August, when ATU suspended a strike vote while it took an offer from Transdev, the company that operates HandyDART, to a vote by its members, Global reported at the time. The pause followed a vote granting what Global called an “overwhelming strike mandate,” with job action increasing over the course of July and August.

• Transdev called the proposal an “improved and final offer” at the time, according to Global, which noted the two parties had been in negotiations since November last year. 

That final offer, however, was not enough for drivers, who voted 83% against accepting it, according to The Canadian Press.

What’s on the table? One striking worker told CTV a big part of it was about pay, with the drivers seeking wages “close to conventional buses as possible." She said the drivers feel it’s “time to bridge that gap.” Another driver told CTV she makes “a good wage, but I still live paycheque to paycheque because I’m not making enough.”

• That worker said they are also aiming to end the practice of contracting out work to taxis, saying there’s “no reason for them to be contracting when we have all of these drivers that are here and willing to work.”

But the key issue, which relates to both of the above, has been staffing shortages, McCann told Global, noting the shortages impact riders and drivers. McCann said HandyDART has had troubles with recruitment and retention due to low wages, according to The Canadian Press.

Demanding jobs: The offer put forward in late August by Transdev would have seen a 19.2% increase in pay by January 2026, according to The Canadian Press, but drivers turned the offer down.

• Former Vancouver councillor Tim Louis, who is also a co-founder of the HandyDART system, told The Canadian Press he “100%” supports the union in its fight for better wages. Louis said HandyDART drivers’ jobs are more demanding than the job of conventional bus drivers and that they have waited too long for pay parity with other bus drivers.

Negotiations break off: Last week ended with the two parties still “miles apart” on some issues, but McCann told CityNews a 15-hour session ended at 2 am on Friday with “some progress.” He said a good contract for employers should be a benefit to everyone, as it would improve employee recruitment and retention.

• “If we can get a good contract, that’ll help attract and retain trained employees, and that should be good also, because they have the experience to take care of clients,” he told CityNews.

Zoom out: Some of those most affected by the work stoppage are clients who use the service — in 2022, HandyDART provided nearly a million trips, The Canadian Press noted, citing a performance review from that year. Lynn Johnston told the newswire she relies on the service for trips to Burnaby Hospital and that navigating the conventional buses and SkyTrain in her wheelchair has been a challenge.

• Another rider, Julio Cristales, who relies on it after cancer reached his spinal cord and left him paralyzed, told CTV it’s a “great” service “when it works.” But taking a taxi contracted by HandyDART during the strike took him four hours, after the driver brought him to an address in Vancouver instead of his home in Coquitlam, and made him get out.

Johnston told CP that while she and others who use the service are struggling right now, she supports the workers in the dispute, saying she sees “how hard they work and how much they care.” The employer, meanwhile, “doesn’t seem to care much about the vulnerable status of its clients,” she said, adding she is “not at all surprised to hear drivers talk about how little the company cares about them.”

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VANCOUVER NUMBERS

🧑‍🏫 1/3: Vancouver’s schools are facing a challenge in retaining teachers, with this many telling their unions in a survey that they planned on leaving the district. Of those, only three-fifths planned on finding work in other school districts. Three-quarters said they feel undervalued. [The Tyee]

🚧 $3 million: The cost of repairs on a sewage pipe that failed in June have reached this high, with officials still working to determine the cause of the leak. Much of the work has been mitigation, including vacuum trucks and building a bypass pipe to avoid contaminating False Creek. [Vancouver Sun]

💰 $744,000: Provincial lawyers filed an “unexplained wealth order” asking the court to require a Vancouver man charged with murder to explain deposits totalling this much as part of a civil forfeiture claim seeking to seize three homes worth a combined $7 million and $1.5 million in cash. [Vancouver Sun]

🚢 7: BC Ferries wants to add this many new vessels to its fleet. The corporation is going ahead with purchasing five of those vessels for its busiest routes, with an aim to have those ones operating by 2031. [CityNews]

📉 2%: Canada’s inflation dropped this low, reaching its target and hitting the lowest levels since February 2021, declining from 2.5% inflation year-over-year in July. The slowdown is in part due to gasoline prices, according to StatCan. This raises expectations the Bank of Canada will continue to cut interest rates, and perhaps even accelerate the cuts. [CityNews]]

UBCM

What municipalities want from this election

What’s happening: The Union of BC Municipalities is holding its annual conference in Vancouver this week, attracting councillors, mayors, provincial officials and lobbyists to talk about policies that most affect local governments in the province just over a month before the provincial election.

• The meeting has a number of priorities, many of which you can surely guess: housing, mental health, the toxic drug crisis and public safety. The convention will also touch on costs associated with climate change, according to CBC.

‘Stretched to the limit’: UBCM issued a statement late last week titled “Stretched to the limit,” outlining the organization’s provincial election policies, with a particular focus on local governments’ inability to meet the rising cost of “providing more and more public services in areas of provincial responsibility without a corresponding growth in revenue.”

• “[Municipalities] are increasingly stepping up to meet the needs of a growing population by filling gaps in provincial services while implementing costly new legislative requirements in such areas as housing, community safety, infrastructure, and emergency management,” the statement says.

It cited costs associated with issues like rising housing costs and homelessness, increasing infrastructure deficit and “more frequent and devastating extreme weather events,” addressing “significantly more” issues with “fiscal tools that have been in place for generations. Local governments are being asked to solve 21st century problems with 20th century revenue tools.”

New revenue tools: UBCM called for three particular transfers to municipalities, including a percentage of the property transfer tax to support affordable housing and homelessness response, $650 million in annual infrastructure funding and a portion of the carbon tax to support climate action projects and emergency planning and response.

Housing: UBCM says cities have had to subsidize development of below-market housing and homelessness response where provincial and federal governments have failed to adequately do so. Nearly 19,000 households were on the BC Housing waitlist in Metro Vancouver alone last year, a 27% increase over 2022, according to the statement.

• Local governments have been providing land, covering servicing costs, offering nominal leases and waiving property taxes and development cost charges to encourage more affordable housing, all at a cost to municipalities, the statement says.

Infrastructure: Along with building housing supply targets set by the province, UBCM notes municipalities will need to invest in corresponding infrastructure, including water, sewer and roads — and environmental regulations are making that infrastructure more costly. 

• In all, UBCM estimates a necessary investment of $24 billion to cover the cost of core infrastructure in poor condition over the next decade. 

Climate: Local governments have “invested significant human and financial capital to institutionalize climate action,” including through land-use planning, developing green infrastructure and promoting renewable energy use, UBCM says. But it notes a challenge in maintaining momentum on that action due to fiscal constraints.

• Municipalities are also having to invest in mitigation plans to protect against climate-related disasters, like wildfires and flooding, such as a $1-billion bill to cover dike upgrades in Richmond. The report noted each dollar spent on preventing damage from disasters results in $6 in savings in the aftermath of those disasters.

Eyes on UBCM: With provincial parties eager to please ahead of the Oct. 19 election, there are likely to be a number of officials from each at the convention. UBCM president Rich Mandewo told CTV the organization is “going to all parties and saying, ‘share with us, what is your plan going forward?’”

• And the parties will have their chance to speak, with Premier David Eby set to address delegates tomorrow, followed by delegations from the BC Greens and BC Conservatives on Friday, according to CTV.

HOME OF THE WEEK

The view from this two-storey penthouse suite on Alberni St. is just 🥹. The price tag, however, is more like 🫠.

House of The Week is a home selected by the Lookout team and is not a paid advertisement. All ads are labeled as such. If you’re a realtor who wishes to feature your home in our newsletter, please contact our sales team.

THE AGENDA

🚃 A group of Metro Vancouver mayors, along with officials from the board of trade and TransLink appealed to senior levels of government to act quickly to avoid a “fiscal cliff” for public transit or risk “drastic cuts to service.” [CityNews]

🏥 Criticism for the BC NDP’s pledge to expand involuntary treatment is continuing to come in, as experts note the policy “doesn’t have the promise we hope that it does,” while increasing risk to those subject to it. [CTV]

🔪 BC Attorney General Niki Sharm is asking the federal government to add more regulations to machetes and other machete-like weapons following recent attacks. In a letter to the federal Justice Ministry, Sharma pointed to England, which is criminalizing possession of machetes and zombie knives and empowering police to seize and destroy the weapons. [CityNews]

🗳️ Support for the BC United appears to be largely split between BC NDP and the BC Conservatives, with each party seeing a 3% and 4% bump in support respectively in polling since the centre-right party folded to throw its support behind the Conservatives. [CTV]

🏢 Vancouver House was supposed to land the city a $6-million in-kind community contribution by developer Westbank, transforming the area below the Granville St bridge into a public space — so where is that $6-million amenity? It seems even the city isn’t sure, argues a retired Burnaby planner. [The Tyee]

🧑‍⚖️ A Vancouver lawyer took an $18,200 ICBC settlement intended for one of his clients, according to the Law Society of BC, marking at least two clients he’s allegedly siphoned settlement funds from. Rene Joan Gantzert was disbarred last year for misappropriating another $63,000 from another client. [CTV]

🫣 Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! is how we feel about this 40-minute documentary on how a megathrust earthquake could impact the Pacific Northwest. [CityNews]

ARTS

Theatre

Qwalena: The Wild Woman Who Steals Children is coming to The Cultch on Saturday and the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts late next week, using live theatre and truth-based storytelling to bring more awareness to the Indian Act. [Stir]

Music

A pop-up artisan market in Kitsilano will have Georgia Lee Johnson onstage from 6-8 pm, performing live indie-folk on Saturday — go listen, or enjoy it as some background music while you check out local artisan offerings, a beer garden and food trucks. Plus, it’s free! 

Country star Sam Hunt, winner of the 2017 Choice Country Song at the Teen Choice Awards, is playing tonight at Rogers Arena. [Vancouver Is Awesome]

Movies 

The Vancouver Queer Film Festival is still ongoing, and there’s plenty to check out, including the Canadian premieres of The Astronaut Lovers Friday evening and Life Is Not a Competition, But I’m Winning on Sunday afternoon, both at the International Village. 

Or if you’re feeling the spooky season early, Cuckoo, described by Boston Movie News as “cuckoo and batty and a whole lot of scary fun,” will be playing on Saturday at the Rio.

Art

Vancouver’s Iranian Visual Arts Allince will be holding a three-day pop-up art sale featuring local artists, live demos and a range of art, including paintings, sculptures, photography and more, on Oct. 4-6 at 401-353 Railway St. Tickets are $20.

Not quite Vancouver, but… how could we not share?

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Vancouver was looking pretty tropical for a minute. [Vancouver is Awesome]

• There’s a new Japanese restaurant serving up a somewhat unique menu item. Plus their katsu sando is out of this world.

• That said, it was also looking a little, uh… Military-y? [Vancouver is Awesome]

• Mountaineers predate Vancouver dating app profiles, believe it or not. By a long shot. [Daily Hive]

VANCOUVER GUESSER

This one is related to something in the newsletter — can you guess which bridge is overhead here? Reply with the correct answer and your name to be featured in the newsletter.