Where Transit Is Actually Won - ATU Canada Gears Up for the Municipal Elections
This October, voters in Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia will head to the polls for municipal elections. For most people, these races don’t get the airtime that a federal or provincial campaign does, but for transit workers, they matter more.
Where Transit Decisions Really Get Made
In Canada, transit funding decisions happen in Municipal Council chambers, not on Parliament Hill. Municipal councils set the operating budgets that determine whether routes get cut or restored, whether service expands into growing neighbourhoods or gets hollowed out to balance a budget, and whether contracts stay in-house or get handed to a private operator chasing margin. Councillors also sit on the transit commissions and boards that decide fare policy, staffing levels, and how hard the city will fight the province and Ottawa for its share of funding.
“The fight for transit is won in local council chambers, in the wards, door to door, by members who show up not just on election day but every day in between, building community coalitions that champion public transit,” said ATU Canada President John Di Nino. “Very few workers get to help decide who their employers might be. So, if we’re not organizing politically with everything we have at the local municipal level, someone else is deciding our members’ future for us.”
A Three-Track Political Program
That means ATU Canada’s political program this fall runs on three tracks, all at once.
The first is defence by re-electing proven transit champions through door-knocking, phone banking, and get out the vote work. The second is deepening relationships with transit-friendly councillors who aren’t well known yet to our members, briefing them on our priorities and making our members a visible, organized presence in their campaigns. The third is offence by backing non-incumbent candidates in wards represented by councillors who have voted against transit funding, sided with contracting out, or stayed silent while service was cut or one of our workers was attacked. Flipping even one anti-transit seat can change a budget vote for the next four years.
Ontario’s Strong Mayor Powers Raise the Stakes
Under Ontario’s strong mayor powers, mayors in several major cities can now override council on budget matters, giving them outsized influence over city hall. That authority decides who sits across the table when transit budgets and labour relations are negotiated.
Building Permanent Political Power
We’re coordinating with district labour councils to make transit a top priority for every endorsed candidate, and pushing candidates to put commitments in writing, following Local 1320 in Peterborough, ON’s public pledge to keep transit public.
An October win can’t be the end of the work. Locals need to shift from campaign-season mobilization to permanent political organizing, identifying key political action organizers who stay engaged with the rank and file year-round, not just at election time. These upcoming elections will test how far we’ve come.