The Toronto Transit Commission would be designated an essential service, its workers prohibited from striking, under private-member's legislation being introduced Monday by a leading Liberal MPP.

David Caplan (Don Valley East) says commuters are fed up with work stoppages that disrupt the city and cost the local economy about $50 million a day. "No strikes, no lockouts. And it establishes – if the parties can't bargain on their own – an arbitration process for them to resolve their collective-bargaining issues," he told the Star.

"We've had too many work stoppages over the course of recent years. Enough is enough."

Mayor David Miller and a majority of city councillors oppose Queen's Park declaring the TTC essential because they believe it would lead to unaffordable arbitrated wage settlements.

"The party line is that these kinds of arbitration processes cost more than collective bargaining. I don't buy that," said Caplan, a former senior minister in Premier Dalton McGuinty's cabinet.

"Because what happens, as we've seen the last several rounds, is we have a work stoppage, the province convenes an emergency session to send people back to work and to send it to arbitration," he said.

Indeed, when transit workers walked off the job at midnight on a Friday in April 2008, McGuinty called a rare weekend sitting of the Legislature to enact back-to-work legislation.

"If the rules of the game were set out ahead of time, it would give far more motivation for both sides to get to work to settle things ... to keep the transit system and the city running much more effectively," noted Caplan. "The phony dance that happens ahead of time – we don't have to deal with that."

A 2008 report by the C.D. Howe Institute, an independent think-tank, found that declaring a public service essential increases the cost of negotiated wage settlements without reducing work stoppages. The report estimated such a measure would cost the cash-strapped TTC an additional $23 million over a three-year contract if workers get deals similar to those awarded essential servants such as police officers and firefighters.

While it is relatively uncommon for a private-member's bill to become law, the influential Caplan, who voluntarily resigned from McGuinty's cabinet in October to help the Liberals weather the eHealth Ontario spending scandal, is no ordinary backbencher.

Widely expected to be returning to the premier's executive council before the October 2011 provincial election, the former health minister is a well-regarded MPP who championed city of Toronto issues at the cabinet table.

Caplan is also mindful Torontonians expect the Better Way to actually be better, so such legislation would be smart politics in a city where Liberals hold 18 of 22 seats.

The transit authority has been plagued by service problems and embarrassed by photos of a snoozing ticket-taker and thoughtless bus drivers that went viral on the Internet, as well as the sex-lies-and-text-messages scandal that cost TTC chair Adam Giambrone his Toronto mayoral bid.

But at the end of the day, Torontonians just want buses, trains and streetcars to be there when they need them, emphasized Caplan. "Residents in Toronto have learned pretty clearly that public transit – whether you're a transit user or you take your car – is so vital to the health ... and economic well-being of our city," the MPP said.

"Without it, we grind to a halt. There's a tremendous economic cost, but there's also a tremendous social cost. It's clear that it is an essential service and it ought to be declared one," he said.

"You're a senior who has to get to a doctor's appointment, you're a parent who has to get your kids to school, you're somebody who has to get to work. The entire city becomes completely congested and you can't move around."

While aimed at the TTC, the legislation would also empower the government to similarly designate any other transit system in Ontario.

In the past, McGuinty has indicated a willingness to prohibit TTC workers' right to strike.

"It's not fair for 1.5 million commuters to (be told) they can't use the system on Monday morning," the premier said on April 18, 2008, days before the most recent strike.

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"If there was some kind of an approach made within the course of the next three years by the city of Toronto ... saying we have decided ourselves that it would be a good thing for us to have our public transit system essential, that is something that we, at Queen's Park, would have to consider," he said.

Since 1974, the TTC has been plagued by nine strikes and work-to-rule campaigns, including an illegal one-day walkout in 2006, a two-day strike in 1999 and an eight-day job action in 1991.

The C.D. Howe report, however, noted banning strikes doesn't prevent illegal walkouts, such as the New York City transit strike of 2005. (The union was later fined $2.5 million.) In Montreal, where transit workers are allowed to walk out but must maintain minimum rush-hour and weekend services, transit strikes have twice been ended by legislation since that requirement was added in 1982.

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