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Episode 5 - Advocacy wins and setbacks (with Damian)
172 Plays11 days ago
Advocacy matters and it can lead to wins even with losses elsewhere.
We discuss the expansion of the R4 RapidBus in Metro Vancouver, the return of late-night bus service in Waterloo, Ontario, and a survey performed by Abacus around support for ALTO's high speed rail service between Toronto and Quebec City.
Damian Mikhail is a Waterloo community organizer, deeply focused on activating young people in politics. Getting his start in municipal politics as founder and president of the University of Waterloo NDP Club, he spearheaded two student transit coalitions that protected Waterloo from cuts to off-peak Ion service and brought Night Transit to the city. At time of recording, he is at the tail end of his term as President of the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association.
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Student advocacy saves evening ION LRT service
https://uwaterloo.ca/news/environment/student-advocacy-saves-evening-transit-service
GRT bringing back late night bus in Waterloo after advocacy
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/late-night-loop-route-91-grand-river-transit-university-district-1.7184466
R4 expansion in Metro Vancouver, linking North Vancouver and Burnaby
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/north-shore-metrotown-expanded-rapidbus-9.7157034
TriTAG
Website: https://www.tritag.ca/
Instagram & Bluesky: @tritag.ca
Damien:
@MikhailDamian for Twitter
@damian7m for Instagram
Abacus Data Survey on ALTO HSR Support
https://www.altno.ca/_files/ugd/f1a60d_f91a3f0ada144cb981f03a0da603e347.pdf
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome back to Dwell Time. We're so excited to have a special guest who is in the room with me right now. hi guys, it's Damien. I'm one of the ah a community organizer at Waterloo um and currently serving the end of my term as president of the Student Association at Waterloo. He's definitely serving.
00:00:37
Speaker
And I'm Rodney, your co-host. And the other co-host is... Dennis, I'm here, but not in the room with you. Unfortunately, on the other side of the country in Vancouver.
00:00:48
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah. And me and Damien are recording in Waterloo right now.
Transit Issues in Vancouver and Burnaby Heights
00:00:53
Speaker
So today we're going go through some news items as usual. And both me and Damien actually have organized quite a few campaigns together. So that's something that it's going to be really exciting for us to talk about and reminisce about. Yeah. Going back in time. Yeah, it's been lots of years. Yeah. yeah not even Neither of you are old at all. You can't go back. I am almost 25. How old are you? I'm 24. Oh my God. So we're both almost 25. That means we're halfway to 30. Yeah.
00:01:22
Speaker
yeah that's where That's where, as we're chopped and unk, as the kids say. You're practically dead. The next out is Fish Creek, the home station.
00:01:37
Speaker
Anyways, is there any is there any news in Vancouver you would like to share, Dennis? Sure. Yesterday, TransLink announced that they would extend the R2 rapid bus, and they're doing it four months before they plan to. Wow. And set off a wave of confusion because there's a bunch of different things happening to that corridor. And it's a very contentious corridor. It's one that battles have been won and lost and fought, and it's a saga of a bus route. Mr. Saga?
00:02:06
Speaker
it's It's a saga. Okay. Different. The R2 today runs across the North Shore. And the announcement yesterday was that it would get extended to Metrotown in Burnaby. And it would run past a bunch of really important destinations. And it would run through this neighborhood, Burnaby Heights, where we, Movement, our organization, has been having a skirmish around bus lanes. We want there to be more bus lanes in Burnaby Heights, which would benefit this route, the R2. But the bus lane fight is really revolving around bus rapid transit, which is like the next step after R2 extension.
00:02:41
Speaker
So it's very confusing. We had, I got a call from someone at the CBC yesterday that was like, oh man, they finally made their decision. They picked the, this corridor. What do you think? And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:02:54
Speaker
Like, no, all they're doing is extending an existing bus route. They're kind of stitching two together. The R2 and the 222 are getting stitched together and they're making zero changes to bus lanes, anything like that. So this is a very good thing, but it's also an opportunity for us to highlight the fact that the buses are probably gonna crawl through that segment. They're gonna have trouble on the bridge, which is a very congested bridge.
00:03:18
Speaker
And also it it it kind of is a concern about
Complexity of Transit Policies and Communication
00:03:22
Speaker
reliability. Like when you get into the transit planning world, you realize that really long routes aren't always a great idea. Like it's a great idea in the sense that... Line one and Toronto.
00:03:32
Speaker
Exactly. it just never ends. You're just... Yeah, it's it's wild. Like some routes are really, really long and this one will become very, very long and it will have some really unreliable segments. And so for the people that are currently using the R2, they might have to deal with some additional unreliability after this change happens.
00:03:53
Speaker
But they will get access, one seat ride access to a lot of Burnaby, to BCIT, to Brentwood and to Metrotown. So it's like, It's like an interesting trade off that transit planners deal with. And I don't know if there's one right answer. I don't know if you guys have an opinion on like, do you prefer buses getting chopped or just really chopped and unk? um I think there's two parts to this. One part I find really interesting is how do you explain like complex policy or like changes?
Ontario's OSAP Funding Cuts and Communication Strategies
00:04:24
Speaker
And when you're like advocating for something that's a little more complex, like, How do you communicate that to the public when you're trying to advocate? Like, do you dumb it down? Do you try to explain the full thing?
00:04:35
Speaker
i know one hard thing TTC Riders has been getting for like transit signal priority is like, right. I think we talked about it a little bit last, I think last time, and I was kind of getting too into like the lagging left and leading whatever and the extensions and whatever. And I think TTC Riders did the right job there. Branding was give, what was it like?
00:04:57
Speaker
give transit the green light or something. Yeah. And like that's something, it's like catchy, it's short, people understand. i don't know, Damien, I feel like Damien has a lot of experiencing experience organizing stuff. Like right now he's working on like OSAP cuts in in Ontario as like a student association president. I mean, I feel like with OSAP cuts, OSAP is like the student loans that students get.
00:05:20
Speaker
in Ontario, right? Yes. You can qualify for these loans that make it a lot easier to afford. Yeah, that's right. Recently, um the province cut that funding from, it used to be a maximum of 85% would be in grants and they cut it down to ah think it was down to 25%. So was a pretty major cut in that kind of funding. So, I mean, trying to figure out the communication on that was, I think, a little bit simpler than that because it's it's very simply look at your pocketbook, look at what's going on. yeah um So are there any other things in the past that were a little more complex that...
00:05:57
Speaker
Well, i think it's i think it's I think it's very difficult. I think i think to, um you know, this isn't super transit related, but um there was really good bill um that was passed at the province, Bill 33, and trying to communicate. That one specifically overrode kind of student democracy on how, you know, funds, how like the financial structures of...
00:06:17
Speaker
how your fees work, whether they're mandatory opt out and how the ministry plays into that and trying to communicate to students that this isn't just, you know, like saving money, right? Because now you get to opt out of fees. This conversations of whether or not you're going to be like losing money because you're not going to be able to do things at scale anymore, that money is not going to be predictable anymore and trying to communicate as well, that democratic aspect, you know, figuring that all out. And I think, think when we're talking about consistent funding and, you know,
00:06:45
Speaker
doing things at scale. I think that's, that's where probably you start to see the most connections with transit funding, which is constantly on and off. so Yeah. And then with riding on a line. Yeah. I think that's like the balance between the two, like everyone loves a one seat ride, but if that one seat ride is kind of unreliable, I mean, there's also like the unreliability of a transfer adding some unknowns. So yeah,
00:07:12
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, the pinnacle of that is Australian cities, right? Like they're known for having spaghetti routes, just hundreds of routes that overlap in the city center, but they fan out. And so everybody in Brisbane or whatever it gets a one seat ride, but the the route actually only comes every hour and like not at all on Sundays. And so, yeah, you you've got to constantly struggle with that choice about where to make people transfer and why and is it worth it?
00:07:38
Speaker
I want to go to
Controversy Surrounding Canada's High-Speed Rail Project
00:07:39
Speaker
Australia so bad. I want to go to Australia, and New Zealand, because apparently it's like Canada in an alternate universe. Like they have similar urbanism. They also have like some tolerance for all going on They have their public transit is kind of decent. It's like not as bad as America, but...
00:07:57
Speaker
not as good as like Europe and Asia. It's kind of like in this weird area that we're in as well. So I would love to experience that. Yeah. I just want to say, I spent some time in Ottawa, like kind of near the outskirts of, of Ottawa where the I'll say the public transit was inconsistent at best. um And it was,
00:08:19
Speaker
at least in my experience, the area I was in, it was quite choppy. lot of transfers. And so I found myself getting caught up in in just how many transfers there were. would That would take up the majority of my time because it would have ghost buses showing up essentially where on Google Maps it told me that a bus had just just passed by the stop. like um But I was there the whole time for the last 20 minutes. And so having even if even if the buses were maybe less frequent, but I knew that when I got on you know, I'd get to my destination.
00:08:48
Speaker
That's one of the things that I found to be be difficult. Average OC transpo experience. really I guess we can move on to Alto. So the high-speed rail project in Canada from Toronto to Quebec City, most recently the Federal Conservative Party and their leader Pierre Polyev have come out against the project saying it's a boondoggle, it's a train to nowhere, even though it k connects our like largest cities and capital, kind of just saying it's too expensive. And yeah, and there's been interesting response. There's been, it's resonated with some communities. others There's a lot of communities in Eastern Ontario who are farmers and this train going to affect their livelihoods. And I think a lot of transit advocates and urbanists are kind of, they brush it off really really easily. it's like, oh, they're just NIMBYs.
Public Consultation in Transit Projects
00:09:39
Speaker
And
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes they are, but like this is people have like been farming on this land for a while and it's it's like a family thing and it's a way of life and it's going to take up quite a lot of property. It's going to sever a lot of people's like farms in half. But I think at a certain point, it's like.
00:09:56
Speaker
I think it's gotten me thinking a lot about public consultation and like, what is the point of it? Like when I think about, for example, for like this high speed rail, the public consultation shouldn't be, is this project happening or not?
00:10:09
Speaker
It's this project is happening and we're here for you to tell us like, what issues you have with it, how can we best mitigate the impacts for your community? So it can actually be constructive about, okay, like where do we need crossings so you can get your farm equipment across where, which communities are, should we, can we like slightly change the route a little bit for like,
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of projects, even like subway projects and in the city, it's always like, no, we don't want this here, rather than here's where the station should be, or like, here's how we can better design it to mitigate noise and all these things. and Yeah, I don't know, did did you have an ah opinion?
00:10:51
Speaker
i mean, I have a hotter take on that. i think it's just been swallowed up into the broader culture war. And you see that with Pierre Poitier, like the conservative leader, taking it up as a cause because he sees like, okay, this is just like the trucker stuff. It just feels the same. And and it's a way to get people riled up.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think that the farmers will get compensated really well. And if they're not, then I think that's like a legitimate grievance. But I do think they're going to get caught like overcompensated for the harms they're going to see. And it's ah it's something where, you know, like the government can buy up a lot of the farmland around it and then resell it.
00:11:28
Speaker
in slices that make sense to a farmer. You know what I mean? like It's rough slices. um I think... the idea Yeah, i I just want to say like um one one thing as well, especially with the rural communities, because I think there's this truth to the fact that you know a train cuts through your your farmland that's going to have an impact, right? Even with the compensation. But I think we need to think of this as a like a more systemic way. And this might be come back down to like how do you communicate a lot of these things where...
00:11:56
Speaker
ah The biggest loss that we're having to farmland isn't by through a train, high-speed train. It's through suburban sprawl and you know these kind of car-centric ways we we live our lives. But you know it doesn't matter off well it does matter but not as much when you build a city like one city that's it's very transit friendly and all of these kind of things to try and get people out of their cars but if you can't get around outside of that um like leave that city oftentimes people still get a car right like i i live in waterloo here and i find that the transportation to be amazing right i sold my car um not too long after i came to waterloo But, you know, have family at different spots in different places, and I can't get to them very easily without transit in less than three hours, right? And so I found myself I bought a car again, right?
00:12:42
Speaker
And so if we want to really cut down on our loss in farmland, we need to start building ah these systems that can get people out of their car to protect that farmland. And i think that I think we need to do a better job at kind of communicating that, that like a lot of these issues kind of intersect. Yeah.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah. You're right to reframe that. And I'm ready to take it one step further. I'm actually from farm land in Eastern Ontario. So maybe that's why I have like- Wait, where are you from? Okay. I'm from Russell, Ontario, which is maybe like 10 kilometers away from where the line could go. i think it depends. We don't know exactly where the alignment is going to be but it's like super close to where I grew up.
00:13:17
Speaker
Most of the people that I went to high school with either worked for the federal government or were farmers. And, you know, it it is a business, right? Like the people have a bottom line and the biggest threat to a lot of these Eastern Ontario farmers right now, I think is climate change, right? Like it's blasting their insurance costs up. It's making their harvests totally unpredictable and unreliable. And it's just like, it's it's making their lives more complex and more stressful and and putting them at greater risk.
00:13:44
Speaker
And what do we got to do to stop climate change? I mean,
Student Advocacy in Waterloo's ION Transit Campaign
00:13:47
Speaker
it's a very diffuse impact, but, you know, get more people on electric trains, get them out of cars, et cetera. But that's why I really come back to this culture war thing. Like, there's no way to convince most of those farmers that climate change is is real, let alone that it's like,
00:14:04
Speaker
that it that it's can be mitigated by putting more people on trains. What I find the most funny is the Alt No group. ah I'll give it to them. That is that is a ah funny name. But they commissioned like like a survey that was like done like properly, like randomized and everything. And they found that right there's a majority support for this project across the country and across all political groups.
00:14:28
Speaker
um stripes, like even like self-identifying conservatives, like over 50% of people support the project. So it'll be really interesting to see if this is an effective kind of cultural war thing or I've seen a lot of people come out to like, this is like, yeah, like they don't think that that was the right move. You're going you're just losing. Like, I feel like, right. It's just been,
00:14:52
Speaker
they don't really have any substantial policy rather than just no to this, like no carbon, like acts the tax, like no to this, no to high speed rail. Like you have to come up with something constructive rather than just saying no to everything. Yeah.
00:15:06
Speaker
I mean, the Altnode group, they commissioned a survey. It went really bad for them. And then the the power in commissioning a survey is that you can just not release if it goes bad.
00:15:18
Speaker
But they released it anyway. That's the most perplexing thing to me is like they told everyone, look, we are a minority. Like, we don't actually reflect the broader opinion. you have to kind of respect it a little bit.
00:15:29
Speaker
I mean, I guess it's very transparent, but God, don't tell us that.
00:15:37
Speaker
The next stop is Kami Meta Station. Me and Damien, how did how do we first meet? That's a really good question. Was it through? It must have been no it must have been but before the ah ION campaign, right? it was yeah like it was definitely So Damien, did you run UW? Yeah, I did. i did. I founded the club. i founded the Sorry, i mumbled that. No, I founded the UW NDP, I think, in my...
00:16:05
Speaker
It was third year of university. um you know What year was that? Oh, you're going to date me. 2023, I guess it must have been. or twenty twenty two late twenty twenty two or early twenty twenty three it was um that is that probably, we must have met at one of the events. Yeah, so I've been, I was like trying to get more politically involved on campus. So I was like shuffling around seeing like the UWDP, UW Liberals, sorry, Damien. Oh my God, the scandal. Yeah, I'm i'm a sellout.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that must have been where it was. um And then from there, then on, I started seeing you on Twitter all the time. That's that I think is where I might have ah seen the most of you.
00:16:51
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So then fact basically what happened was there was crowding during peak hours on the ION. So during peak hours, it runs every 10 minutes because there's crowding. They want to run more service. So they wanted to run it every eight minutes. But because of like the P3 contract, like the amount of hours per year is like set so they can only rearrange the hours. So they wanted to make peak hours eight minutes, but at the expense of the like early morning and late evening shoulder periods to be half an hour instead of every 15 minutes.
00:17:23
Speaker
And i yeah, so I so I first saw this on Twitter, Michael Drucker, and he will be important later. Yes. He posted, it was just like one page from like the budget. Thank God that he is a policy nerd and was like looking through like every single page of the budget to see.
00:17:42
Speaker
But yeah, he found that and posted that on Twitter. And i was like, wow, that's not good. And I was talking to a lot of people and there was a general community consensus that I would rather be in a slightly more crowded train during peak hours than wait in the dark for half an hour the evening.
00:17:59
Speaker
I think um i think i I must have seen it. I think it was from Michael Jurka as well. um But like um I think another issue was like just reliability. right I think um you know at 15 minutes, um you can walk up to the ah the one of the ION stations um and know that it's coming and know that you don't have to wait forever to to get to it. You don't have to really plan ahead. Exactly. And that was like a huge, I think, benefit for for me and helped me kind of get out of my car is that i I knew I could just rely on something. I didn't have to plan ahead. I do not like planning ahead. um And so I find that that aspect to be really helpful. And so was like was scary, I think, when I first saw it. Yeah. And
00:18:42
Speaker
I feel like, yeah, every eight minutes versus every 10 minutes is such a marginal difference. Eight half, too. Yeah. Is that going to, like, solve crowding? Like, no. At that point, it's really, yeah, it's not about the frequency. It's about it's about the crowding. But, but yeah, it it does seem like there's there's a huge difference between 15 and 30. Resource-wise, that's, like...
00:19:04
Speaker
one train, you know, like one train becomes less and less of frequency benefit as you get closer and closer to zero. Yeah. Yeah. but This was also a really interesting time in my life. I was kind of kind of in my, in my depressed, depressive era, I was like kind of falling behind school and everything. And i was kind of like in bed and I don't know this like campaign kind of activated me, got me. I remember I started, i remember I started designing social media, like infographic, like a little like campaign posters for this saying like, I will be cut to every 30 minutes.
00:19:41
Speaker
And I don't know at what point you, So i I believe what happened um was that, you know, i've I've been having conversations for a while about, you know, we have a very politically motivated kind of base at Waterloo, both with the UWNDP club and the Young Liberals who are kind of getting started up as well at the U.S. university, but it wasn't being put to any work, really. It was mostly just like advertising ourselves, which I wasn't a big fan of. And so I think I saw ah Michael Judker, and then I think you had posted about it as well. And I think you might have come to an event where you had add a conversation about it. And then it was just like, well, you know,
00:20:21
Speaker
maybe we should do something about it. Yeah. um Groundbreaking. What if we did something about an issue in the world? Yeah. So I got I was like, I remember I still remember being like at midnight in my bed, posting, designing it and then posting this graphic. And it kind of not viral, but it went like a lot of people in Waterloo. And I feel like like almost a lot of people on campus saw this post. It was shared so widely um and it was concerning a lot of people. And yeah, I think what Damien was talking about, like the UW-NDP wanted to get more into like local advocacy issues and not just kind of be like,
00:21:02
Speaker
an entity. Yeah. And then, so what happened next? Yeah. So I think kind of the way it went down is we reached out to the Young Liberal Club to see if they'd be interested as well.
00:21:15
Speaker
Because I think, um i think on top of this, um we knew that if a motion didn't go to council, I think things just kind of stick as they are planned is ah is one thing that i've I've slowly learned. And so we wanted to get you know access to Colleen James, right who was the ah chair of essentially the transportation committee of the region. yeah And we knew that you know she has a history with the liberals and some of the liberal execs may have a connection to her, reached out.
00:21:44
Speaker
They did. Hallelujah. And so reached out to the counselor and got got a motion going. But I think that's where it all kind of got started on, think, probably the first time you know, big organizing event, at least that I was involved with, where we had to get kind of a petition going, which I think was really successful, honestly. Yeah, I think we got like over 800 signatures for that, for this first event.
00:22:11
Speaker
I think, it yeah I think it was within like, like two weeks, it, it, it, we got to that much and in a small city like Waterloo, um, it's quite a lot. Yeah. It made an impact for council for sure. But I think really what started getting, you know, council to pay attention was that all of the talk of actual organizing and actual, you know, I think Waterloo hasn't had a history of students coming out to council. And so when they had heard that there were all of these students who were planning on actually coming out to speak to the issue, you know, directly in person. One, it's, I think, an exciting moment for council who usually just see a bunch of gray-haired heads at council meeting. And so it's exciting and they want to... Or do you have like i'm sure like gray hair? Well, yeah. I'm getting my own as well.
00:23:00
Speaker
I think that was exciting and got people paying attention. Yeah, I think i think it was a really important lesson and exercise of community building. like Damien talked about being from the UW NDP, but being able to like reach across political lines to like young liberals. But then also there was like getting student clubs involved. There was like the UW climate justice ecosystem. I got the planning student association people involved because we have a lot of transit nerds. So like having like cross political, cross like clubs, cross like you get a lot of
00:23:33
Speaker
like energy and momentum going in a lot of people. And we ended up getting like over 10 people to like sign up or even more. like Yeah, i think I think in total, when it comes to pure students, I think we had like 11 students that came out, but it had spread to, you know, obviously different people outside of the community. So I think we had like 16 delegates um and each one speaking for five minutes. I'll say that that council meeting took quite a bit of time. And what was funny is like, I know Damien talked about earlier about how yeah like There was a lot of notice about the buzz about all these people going to council. like that i think they approved the motion before we even got there. so This one, I'll say you know the ION campaign was the first kind of big organizing moment. I think there were a lot of lessons learned as well when it comes to communication, ah which is i think a recurring topic, one of which was with our regional council, Colleen, who is a recurring character that comes back in in you know the next campaign we might talk about. but um Yeah, she had she had put the motion forward for the morning. And surprisingly, students do not prepare for morning councils. And so we showed up in that evening.
00:24:43
Speaker
Already, we started, i think we started doing delegations. And they didn't tell us immediately. It took us like three. Yeah, like in the middle of like the third delegation, they're like, Yeah, we actually passed this already. So like, and we're all like, oh, well, it was still like, it was like both kind of like, why are we here? But it was still like, fun to get everyone together and for council to see all these young people out. And it was it was still a fun and an eventful night. But it was, i don't know, looking back, it was kind of funny.
Engaging Students in Transit Advocacy
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'll say um I was actually really impressed by kind of the students who adapted their speeches in the moment. I think, um you know, it became, i think, ah a much more, you know, wholesome conversation around, you know, what transit means to them and the importance investing in transit and started talking about phase two of the ION. i saw a lot of people kind of on the spot change up, which I know is is scary because for a lot of them, it was their first time ever delegating. But it's just, I think a conversation that's always worth having is, you know, when you're out to delegate, it can be scary, but you're talking about things that you care about, right? So if you if you just come back to that, right, and you just kind of talk talk about what you actually believe, you will find the words, right?
00:25:52
Speaker
I think one lesson like that, when I've talked to other people about like, you can, a lot of times people try to like go in there with facts, like, oh, like X amount of people will ride the ion and has X economic benefit. But I don't like counselors already briefed on a lot of the facts and numbers they want to hear.
00:26:13
Speaker
Like, usually it's a personal stories and anecdotes of like, my commute is like, like 90 minutes and I have kids and, or this, this route helps me get to my job. And it's like all these stories ah compiled together.
00:26:27
Speaker
that kind of really make an impact. That really sticks in your head. And I think one of the genius things that you did very like immediately at the start of this campaign was reach across the aisle to other parties and other groups. And like you described all the different groups that got involved. I think counselors are really looking at that because it can give them an indication of like, oh, wow, like I'm going to hear about this in the aisles of the grocery store i'm going to hear about this at the golf club like if i don't do the right thing people are going start getting at me so it's just like how do you make them feel like they have only one choice yeah well i'm a strong believer that like you know we're we're trying to get things done right um get her done get her done you know as as good as uh doug ford would say we need to get it done for the people
00:27:11
Speaker
I think we need to do whatever that takes, you know, a very kind of utilitarian approach. And I think, um, i think there were some people in the liberals who agreed. I think there were some people all across the political spectrum who, you know, saw the the negatives on this. I think, um,
00:27:26
Speaker
i think I think that ended up showing. I think what really comes out as well is like how much work people put into it. that's if you want to If you want to make your your statements on anything, it's about, you know, put the work in and show students the amount of work that you'll put into these projects. think that's where it comes out. Also, it's like reducing barriers and making it like a lot of we kind of talking about how like the fact that the idea of going to council and speaking is really scary to a lot of people and not even scary. A lot of people don't know how to do it. To be honest, like I have been so used to Waterloo. i recently like am trying to speak in something in Toronto and I'm like relearning how to do it in Toronto. I've been like navigating and I'm like, I took
00:28:07
Speaker
I I'm still kind of clueless like you have to email because in Waterloo you just there's like a form that you just go through but in Toronto you have to like email the clerk but you have to also find like the specific community council or committee and it's like this is too complex so I think we were really effective in guiding students like telling them this is how you sign up and like we'll go with you like we all most since a lot of us were from UW we all met at the University of Waterloo Ion Stop we all took the Ion together down there so like You were with your peers, like you felt supportive, you saw your other friends and ah people's delegations. So make finding ways to make it less intimidating and make it a group activity and you go get dinner or drinks after. you like make it fun activity.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think like some people are just like they're like 80% for the social. Yes. You know mean? You learn really quick when you're organizing that people just want to have a reason to hang out and with like like minded people. feel like you're just here for the zip line. Yeah, I think I think you're right. It's like organizing in many ways is about just community. For the most part, people looking for connection, they're looking like One thing I've noticed, especially I think especially with students is that they want to be involved, but it's scary. Right. They don't know what the process looks like. They don't know any of this. And so when you can make it a kind of a familiar environment was like, oh, we're we're going out to eat. You know, we're we're going on a trip together. All of these kind of things. Free food. Free food is ah is admittedly one of the most powerful organizing tools I know of. Yeah, I don't think the the ION campaign was perfect. I think we learned a lot of lessons that you know changed the way we did it next
Community Involvement in Night Transit Campaign
00:29:48
Speaker
time around. For example, we had a few students who um you know who dropped out of their delegation because they were afraid that their you know their their scripts weren't good enough and all that stuff, which I think taught us a valuable lesson about, i think you really do need to...
00:30:03
Speaker
build a a more personal relationship with the people who are going out, especially for their first time, which I think... You can practice with them. Yes. Yeah. That was a big thing, right? Yeah. And it can't feel like they're doing something that they're not supposed to, right? It needs to be... Yeah.
00:30:18
Speaker
When in reality, this is set up for them. Like, they are the boss of the city council. That's right. Yeah. And like, I know TTC Riders is really good at like training people up and making them feel comfortable with that. And that's something that movement we're... going to be doing more of like starting next month, like having a webinar with people just as like this is how you reach out to your MLA, your provincial politician, and like this is how you talk to them and don't be afraid.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think my experience at TTC Writers was really helpful because it's taught what taught me how to do it and how then I could share with other people. And then i was also like using TTC Writers resources. like I still have like access to like the drive and everything. And I was talking to Sheila, the old exec of TTC Writers. And they like, yeah, feel free to share like the delegation, deputation, material.
00:31:05
Speaker
We had some like templates from that that I shared with some of the people. And yeah, it's it's really helpful to have some sort because it's like, what am I supposed to talk about? It's like, okay, well, like, here's how you're supposed to address counsel. And like here's like, some sort of template of how to outline your points and whatever. But yeah, we use this campaign, we wanted, we saw how much interest there was, and how many people, like now we have a bunch of people who are like,
00:31:27
Speaker
want more so what do we do after yeah well next campaign i guess it's a few only a few months after it um i think it was it might have been the next term you know we we had a conversation about you know what's next we we had started to build up kind of ah a group of people who wanted to get involved who were starting to get experience getting involved had done their first delegation and felt good with with a win. And we didn't want that to kind of die out. So started with, I think a meeting where we tried to figure out, you know, where are,
00:31:58
Speaker
kind of the biggest impacts, the most visible visible gaps, I think, in the in the region. I think the one that was brought up, I believe, Rodney, you you brought up that there was there was something that was missing on on night transit in Waterloo. What were the other options? Well, we had we had a few. I think there was one on like ah a PIRG on campus, this ah public interest research groups. It's this type of organizing group that exists on many different campuses that help fund kind of local activists and advocates. So that was one that was brought up. There were a few others on like, there' was affordable housing, obviously, there were a lot of like good ideas. But I think the one that was kind of the the most visible when we had it, we had a
00:32:40
Speaker
yeah i think a strategy, like a viable path forward was on night transit because ah one thing that we learned was that back in the day before like 2019. Oh my god, the old days. I know, the old days. Before 2019. Before everything. Before the bad things. Before the bad things. Before the panini. We do not name. Before the panda. The University of Waterloo, ah the student union, had made a deal with GRT to get the university pass, the bus pass on the student cards. And part of that deal involves the creation of a night route.
00:33:15
Speaker
And so there was a very, very strong thing that we could push on, which is we were promised something that we lost, especially during the pandemic. Like a lot of things happened.
00:33:26
Speaker
had disappeared. ah And never came back. Never came back. Yeah. So this was was always, we never really had fully overnight transit. it was more like late night transit until like, instead of bus service ending at 11, 12, would end at like two or three, which is still, that's like when, like most of it. So our main corridor in Waterloo is King Street and that's where all the bars and clubs and restaurants are. So our main, one of our main focuses was getting people back from the bars and stuff like later at night and back on campus and in student housing and other parts across the region. Yeah.
00:34:05
Speaker
I think the messaging on this one was really interesting because i think for students in particular, there was a lot that they could point to when it came to, you know, going to uptown late at night, you know, studying late at night, I think was one as well. We didn't want to just make it be like, but we want to drink and we need this thing to drink more. but like, yeah, there's people who study and there's like shift workers and people who but work at the restaurants and the hospital and, Yeah, I think i think the shift workers in particular were one that we we ended up focusing quite a bit on because it was like something that we heard from the community at at large. And we didn't we didn't want this to just be a student issue because I think... We wanted to expand the scope because the last one was very student-centric and we wanted to reach out to the wider community this time.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's just, um you know, I think a lot of the time with youth issues, they're framed as, oh, these are youth issues, right? But young people kind of live within the same system as everyone else, right? And, you know, um students rely on transit, but so does the rest of the community. And I think Oftentimes when you get it stuck on, oh, these are youth issues, it's very easy for everyone else to, or for council to ignore it. Young people don't vote, right? ah Young people don't vote. And you're like, fair wise, you know, you're already getting the U-pass. You're already getting kind of a free ride. Exactly. Like, what are we going do for you? Who cares?
00:35:20
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And so we really focused hard on getting ah a very kind of broad base. We ended up working with a kind of a similar strategy as as last time where we tried to reach out to different organizations, different clubs. I think on this one, we worked most with the kind of climate justice ecosystem. It then created a broader way for clubs and different organizations to endorse. And I...
00:35:44
Speaker
I can't remember exactly how long the list was, but it was a few pages. yeah Cheese club. Cheese club. We had the cheese club endorsement. like it was It was everyone, right? Cheese eaters. Cheese eaters use transit, and that's important to remember. They deserve to come back from their brie tasting at 1 a.m.
00:36:01
Speaker
right but yeah it just doesn't taste the same in the middle of it doesn't it just doesn't this one was a lot more interesting because the last one was like no stop like don't cut the evening service but this one was like like reinstate something like bring something i was more constructive and it required a lot more research of like what was the old route like what were the hours what was the routing of it is there budget for it like how big should our ask be like we don't want it to be too ambitious and cost too much money that they'll just vote it down but we don't want like such a bare bones service that's useless. So kind of negotiating and bargaining, like we also like wrote the motion, like with the help of counselor Colleen James, like writing the motion. yeah So I think, I think one of the lessons that we kind of brought into this campaign was that um we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood that this is a kind of grassroots movement, right? It's not just the UWNDP or the climate justice ecosystem or some other group that's that's running this. it's
00:36:59
Speaker
It's students. And unless it's kind of a broad base of students that are coming out to this and working on this, it doesn't work, right? And so- and a lot of students are not just students. like They are people who like work in the community. like They're also like waiters. They're also like Yeah, I mean, I mean, our parents, you know, yeah there's any kind of age of students, you know, these days. Yeah, yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
And so, you know, we had made a request out for just broadly to students, you know, who wants to get involved in marketing, right? Who wants to get involved in some of this policy drafting and helping out with these delegations. And so, like, i think it was a lot less centralized of a campaign, right? And obviously, We're helping start the events and invites.
00:37:41
Speaker
We had invited Colleen James actually this time to you know present in front of students. Colleen was the ah regional counselor that put the motion forward to present in front of students and tell them about how to delegate and stuff like that. and so Yeah, I think that was really helpful. And it was also just a good opportunity for students to just meet a counselor and then also talk about some of their other issues like, oh, this bus route is not reliable and ah these other things. So I think it's a good back and forth channel is also like a good relationship building and political education for people.
00:38:13
Speaker
I still remember that Zoom call. Yeah. we had Yeah, we had two Zoom calls to kind of where people could just come in, ask questions about their scripts as well for their for their delegation. um it really it It really played into what you were talking about, Dennis, about kind of community. And I think that's what made it work, right? So we we had record turnout to a council for like when it comes to like student turnout. It was like 16. Yeah, it was it was I think 16 delegates. And then we had several other people who were just kind of watching in the stands. 16 and a half.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. um No, it was really cool. Our petition got over 1,200 signatures. Yeah, that's correct. signature So like not we got more signatures than ever. we got more delegates than ever.
00:39:01
Speaker
um So it was like, yeah, we really successfully like built on the momentum. and the and And was there like a single organization leading this big coalition or was it relatively like...
00:39:12
Speaker
you know, flat, like a flat, like chaos kind of model? So I think, i think it was, it was, i wouldn't call it chaos. um It was, it we we tried to make it as flat as possible, I think was the the effort that was made. Like, for example, we voted on what marketing material would go out. Like, you know, we had collectively people putting things in. I think for something like this, you do kind of need some sort of organizing, central organizing body. Like the UW NDP was the one that like put forward the idea in the first place. and then from there, it was like a call out to who wants to help. And then we can all work together and decide together how we want to take it.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah, we tried to democratize it. I think um even though even writing the motion itself, I had invited like several people. I think, Rodney, you were there as well. I remember being in that room with the whiteboard. That's right.
00:40:05
Speaker
and And so like I know that Tritag exists. And like it was it kind of like resurrected after? after this or like where does TriTag fit in? So basically, so yeah, Michael, well so after the, I i still, the timeline is is still kind of scrambled in my head, but yeah, after the first um Ion sex cuts thing, I realized like, oh my God, like Michael, Michael reached out to me and was like, oh, like we've been following each other for a long time and it didn't, I didn't put two and two together. Like, oh, he's actually like the old board member of TriTag.
00:40:38
Speaker
and like Which is like a multimodal group, right? They're focused on not just advocating for more transit, but also for cycling and stuff. Not just bikes. Yeah. So we stand for Tri-Cities Transport Action Group. They focus on public transit, cycling, pedestrian infrastructure. So yeah, during this like night transit thing, Tri-Tag wasn't really a thing yet. But me and Michael were kind of in the talks of, we were in the process of restarting it.
00:41:05
Speaker
um I think one of the regional counselors during the night bus, that I think it was Rob Deutschman, had brought up that, you know, he heard rumors that Tritag was going to come back. It was ah so it was it was pretty clear that something was in the works at that point. Yeah. But yeah. So during the the council meeting. So how how did howd that go?
00:41:26
Speaker
Honestly, like amazing. It was, um you know, once again, i think like students, it was very clear to a council at at ah at that that council meeting that it was from all across the political spectrum again.
00:41:38
Speaker
And i think, you know, we tried very hard through the UWNDP to kind of make sure that was clear and to kind of fade into the background to show that it's not just, you know, one party that was ah as a part of it. It's like we we organized, but we didn't, like, we're not every student that's out here, right? um And I think that was very clear at that that meeting. And um I found that I don't think they've ever seen this many students, most of those counselors, ah this many young people in in one room. And so even the ones that were kind of skeptical on the idea of bringing back night transit, you could you could hear them go, you know, try and,
00:42:14
Speaker
trying to rationalize like you know i actually really like the idea i'm just kind of worried yeah like they are yes there is this power and they were they were they were telling us like oh like we've never like they were saying like this is actually really exciting for us like it's kind of refreshing to hear like not just like angry people be like we don't want this we don't want that it's like oh students coming together to kind of create something collaborative and constructive and we did obviously still have some naysayers like We had some counselors from Cambridge being like, this route isn't in Cambridge. What about Cambridge residents? When will we get night service? I agree. like yeah we That's what we said. We're like, okay, like if you want to find night transit and in Cambridge, like we'd be all for it. But we we kind of emphasized that this was a route that already exists before and was kind of like a promise to students. So like this is something that we should bring back first. And like now, like the region has like a business plan for like a wider overnight service, like a full overnight, not just late night with like that's kind of gridded and like covers like a lot of the region, including Cambridge. So this was kind of a cool like we not only pitched it as like this is something that we need to return now, but this is kind of like a stepping stone to like getting to a broader night network.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yeah, because I'm looking at the current late night loop Route 91. Is that what you won in that meeting That's correct. yes That's the one. It didn't exist before um before that day. Well, not since 20 years. That drinking area like downtown Kitchener, with it does ah a loop around kind of the student-y, housing-y That's right. then Yeah, I have, I lowkey have like issues with how it's currently routed. So that's how that's, it's kind of where a lot of students lived in those areas, like pre 2019 and student housing and demographics and where people live have shifted a little bit. and i don't think it matches that. But like,
00:44:04
Speaker
Yeah, like currently the service runs only Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Yes. not a Not even on Sunday. Yeah. But like, this is, it was a lot about concessions and compromise. Like, basically what happened was like after this, they voted in favor of it, but like,
00:44:19
Speaker
this was also in the middle of a budget year, not like during a budget process. So they were like, let's see how much money we can like scrape together. And then from there, how much service can we actually provide?
Challenges in Transit Funding and Policy
00:44:30
Speaker
And yeah, so the transportation or commissioner, Doug Spooner was like, okay, we'll get back to you guys. And yeah, like, I think like, ah it's like those nights are when most students are out and like extending it to the 2am. I would like it to be longer, but I think that captures most of the,
00:44:49
Speaker
kind of that demand. And yeah, like, do you have any like lessons learned or any thoughts about it in general? I think one lesson that stuck with me from both of those campaigns is I think just the way to think about regional council, I think, especially more progressive ones that we see in Waterloo that seem to be kind of inactive, right? Is that oftentimes, you know, these councils are ah full of people who are like, extensively good people, progressive people who care about transit, who care about, you know, you know urbanism, but don't tend to take action.
00:45:21
Speaker
A big part of that is what you'd expect, which is kind of political backlash. The people who show up to these meetings are, you know, car owners who have never, never even thought about, you know, getting on a bus before, never experienced it, seen how it works. And so,
00:45:35
Speaker
I think one thing that I learned from my conversations with them is oftentimes what they're really looking for is an excuse to do good, which can be frustrating, yeah right? But, you know, the way that it ended up coming out and received media wise was students won a victory um in bringing back a late night transit, transit improved, all of these kinds of things. But if, you know, there's the council just, you know, passed it, that reception might look different, right? Where, you know Regional council after passing property tax increase you know creates a unless you less utilized bus route or something like that. there There are many different ways to spin it. right And so you need to kind of give them that excuse, which it sucks that we have to because we elect these people to do this work. but
00:46:20
Speaker
It's always hard when you have like 90, like 50 people speak against something like then you kind of are kind of forced into a corner to like not pass it or or pass something. You need the people in the room. And also like, yeah, even before this, like we got a lot of people to like call and and email their their counselors. Yeah. But I find it to be a really like calming message for students before the delegations that I give them. It's like these are. These are often good people, right? They're not here to get at you.
00:46:50
Speaker
And so remember that a lot of them are on your side, right? And so I found that that calmed them down quite a bit who felt like they were going to a hostile situation. But really, it's just about giving giving the media a better story than just, you know,
00:47:05
Speaker
hitting on anything new. Yeah. And then it's so true after this, then we kind of already had like a well-oiled machine. Then after this, there were like, there was a budget year and there was proposed cuts to multiple bus routes. And by that time i was starting to get more active with TriTag. So, u and also in contact with Damien, UW NDP, like we all delegated against the cuts and that's another thing that we won. Yeah.
00:47:35
Speaker
Unfortunately, this time around, Damien got kind of busy with with the student union with this with the pesky student union and yeah this time around this budget year it was mostly tri-tag that was and I wasn't I wasn't even in Waterloo I was on co-op term in Toronto I was like trying to like piece together some semblance of a campaign and we we did have a lot of people speak out against it but because it was an election year this year that they just had to keep those property taxes down below that five percent level and they just couldn't
00:48:07
Speaker
That wasn't in and it was such a close vote. wes vote It was one vote. It was a tie break. The regional council, the regional chair could have been the tie breaking vote. I don't know. Is there anything you want to say about that? No, they ended up going through with the cuts. Yes, they they ended up making some cuts to GRT. What does that look like? Was that like coverage? was There's routes 9, 13, 19, and 30.
00:48:35
Speaker
And these are all predominantly student-heavy routes. Initially, these routes, some of them came every 15 minutes during peak, and some came every 20 minutes during peak. The proposal was to make them all come to every 30 minutes. Oh, there's no 30 minutes again.
00:48:51
Speaker
And what I took issue, well, so and then the GRT, like I don't blame GRT, like their prerogative, they were told by council, like, yeah this is the amount of budget you have, you we cannot increase it anymore, find the savings, we don't care. Like, they kind of blamed the because of the international student cap that there's student populations are down, like rider, student ridership is down. And these are the student centric routes. They said it was like, I don't know, like a 15% decrease, a lot of these routes kind of interlined as well. I don't know. I didn't really buy it. Like I really, I still want to file a freedom of information request of like, like where, which part of the routes at what times I know a lot of people who take these routes where they're crowded. Sometimes it's so crowded. You can't even get on. Some of these routes are already unreliable. So yeah, I just am still kind of caught up about this. And I know like our co-lead at TriTag Michael was kind of saying like, this was still,
00:49:47
Speaker
oh it was a tough budget year and they still had some other wins like they could have cut a lot worse and having a lot of people speak to transit kind of shows that like it's still kind of a regional priority but also like GRT had was in a tough position like they want to diversify the ridership right because we just paid until the you pass like them better it's kind of a distorted incentive where like Providing more service to students doesn't get them more money. so we need to diversify their service to have non-students ride the system and make a little more money back.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yeah, I just, um I want to say ah on on that note that, you know, i think one thing that council really need to start paying attention to is the transit death spiral, where you make a cut because, oh ridership is down, and then ridership decreases because it's significantly less reliable, and you keep going, you keep going. But I think it also speaks to what we were talking about before about, you know, regional councillors wanting to do good, but but feeling like they shouldn't. For example, just a few months before that, which I found was, especially interesting is they had just passed the GRT business plan, which had included, you know, plans for a massive expansion of the Knights. The three main pillars was a frequent transit network. And that was so Tritag at the time was wanting to advocate for a frequent transit network. And for us, we were like, okay, like we want to see a system that comes at least every 15 minutes, like seven days a week.
00:51:12
Speaker
Like that's what we thought, but they were even more ambitious. They were like every 10 minutes and we're like, okay, like great. They wanted the Frequent Transit Network. They also wanted overnight service. They wanted a highway like Super Express. They wanted better rural transit. Like it was a very ambitious plan and we were happy to see it. And council like enthusiastically endorsed it. But that it was a 10 year outlook. And that means that they have to start increasing the funding and allowing GRT to make these ah service improvements year over year. And the last few years, it hasn't, doesn't seem like something that they're following through with. So it's kind of concerning and and we do have that opportunity maybe this year, if if Doug Ford doesn't appoint a regional chair, ah but we still can elect our counselors. So I'm i'm hoping to take this opportunity to
00:52:02
Speaker
reverse the cuts on that and actually go towards a frequent transit network. yeah
Political Involvement of Students in Waterloo and Conclusion
00:52:06
Speaker
Another thing is, so there was, so we did work with councillors. I don't remember if it was Colleen James or Mayor McCabe, someone we got, we were in conversation with multiple councillors at Tritag and Mayors, and we put forward a motion. help us put forward a motion to compromise. So instead of cutting to every 30 minutes, like the 15 minute routes would be cut to every 20 minutes.
00:52:30
Speaker
And that was kind of the vote where it was like, was one off. And that was already a compromise. So that was, yeah. I think it's important to remember as well, that was an election year for those counselors. And so they were so obsessed with that arbitrary 5% property tax increase. And so. And this would have been like 0.00. Yes. like I think. Yeah.
00:52:51
Speaker
yeah I think it's, you know, council and, you know, politicians as a whole need to feel like, you know, transit riders and all that are an important political force. that they need to consider when it comes to an election, right? That needs to matter, right? About whether or not they're losing, you know, transit riders. And so I think that's, I think that's a message. Preach. Yes. We need to get involved. build that right Like that's what tri-tag can be potentially.
00:53:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I think bringing it back to like OSAP and student and and young people involvement, like when so recently University of Waterloo had like a, had a protest yeah where yeah there was record,
00:53:30
Speaker
It was ah one of the biggest protests we've ever had on campus, you know, in response to the cuts to OSAP. I think what this all shows is that like this is kind of ah a shift in, you know, political involvement where I think there's been a history of, you know, the message of students don't get involved. Students don't like care. They don't vote. And I think we need to slowly start to shift that. So, hey, students care about issues. The shift is already happening yeah as as shown. Like, I think.
00:53:56
Speaker
for For this, ah people, i think for provincially around the OSAP stuff, I think we'll see a lot more students vote in a provincial election because they're starting to realize that it affects them. So that's something that's great. But bringing it back to the municipal level,
00:54:09
Speaker
even like non-student turnout for municipal local elections is pretty abysmal. So I'm really hoping if depending on where my co-op is like getting, organizing, getting more students out to vote.
00:54:22
Speaker
But yeah, I think it is happening. There's a shift. I feel it Yes, I feel it too. yeah We see it, we feel it, it's coming. It's generational. Generational. But this has been really exciting. I'm honestly so thrilled with what's happening in Waterloo. And, you know, we see stuff like this happening all across Canada. And I hope in our podcast, we can shine a light on different places. Like I would love to talk to some transit activists from Windsor. We might have Edmonton coming up. Maybe that I can put a call out to people to email us if you have ideas for like exciting campaigns that you'd like.
00:54:55
Speaker
us to cover if you want to be on our show or you want to recommend people to be on our show go to dwelltime.ca our email's there also like and subscribe etc anything else that we should say check our emails yeah we should if you haven't gotten a response in a while now you know why i highly recommend highly recommend being on the dwell time podcast it's a great experience okay awesome bye everyone
00:55:30
Speaker
You've been listening to Dwell Time. This show is hosted by Rodney Chan and Dennis Agar. Producer and editor is Carriette Heather Keir. Thank you for listening.
00:55:41
Speaker
Details about our social media and content mentioned are in the show notes. We would like to recognize that this show is written, recorded, and edited on the ancestral lands of First Nations peoples across Canada.
00:56:06
Speaker
Our producer is great and we should i should we should send her flowers, honestly. yeah Our producer is the best and maybe she'll put this in at the end of the clip. just
00:56:19
Speaker
I can confirm your producer is the best.
00:56:23
Speaker
Endorsed. yeah