Zero buses. One law. Four votes.

Try getting to the hospital from the east end without a car. Or from the Prescott and Russell Residence to the grocery store. Or to a shift in the industrial park at seven in the morning. You call the taxi company. You call a friend. Or you walk. I manage buildings in this town. I see it every week: tenants who do not drive, and appointments missed. In March a resident came to council and asked for a way to get to Ottawa. The minutes record the presentation, and nothing after it. That is the file.

What happened to the bus

The Ottawa to Montreal bus used to come down Highway 17 and stop here. It stopped running in the spring of 2020, when the pandemic hit. The company never restarted it, and in 2021 it left Canada for good. That same year Ontario opened its intercity routes to any licensed carrier. On the Quebec side a company asked to bring the Highway 17 line back through Hawkesbury. The corridor went to two runs on the Quebec side that skip us. No scheduled bus has stopped in this town since. The nearest train is at Alexandria, and there is no bus to it.

What the Counties tried

The Counties ran a bus of their own. It started as a provincial pilot, with village loops one day a week. Then it went on demand, booked by phone and by app. It was shut down in 2023. It ran out of drivers and vehicles first, then out of money, and the Counties left the field rather than carry it alone. Three lessons. One day a week per village does not work. A grant with an end date and nobody standing behind it does not work. And a county-wide loop for a town-sized problem does not work. Any plan for this town has to be built the other way around.

The law I can change in office

Our taxi rules are By-law 37-2004. It was written in 2004, for taxis with a dispatch office in town, and it has never been rewritten for the phone apps. It says a taxi is any car hired for a trip with one fare. It says nobody drives one from any point in town without a Town licence. It says an operator's licence goes only to a business whose dispatch building sits inside Town limits. It caps the number of cabs by population. So an app with no dispatch office in town cannot be licensed as the by-law stands.

The by-law says on its own first page where its power comes from: Ontario's Municipal Act, which lets council license and regulate taxis and set the fares. That means council can rewrite it. Four votes of seven. No province needed. Ottawa did it years ago, with a by-law of its own. So will we. A vehicle-for-hire by-law that licenses any operator that meets the safety rules, phone apps included. It keeps the accessible-cab licence. It keeps the phone dispatch, because a good share of the people who need a ride will never book on a screen. And it protects the one taxi company this town has, because a town that loses its last cab has gone backwards.

Fixing the by-law does not put a driver on the road. An app only works where drivers are waiting, and drivers only wait where the trips come. Ontario's new law for platform workers pays a driver the minimum wage only while a trip is under way. Waiting between trips is not a work assignment under that law, so a town this size has a hard time holding a driver. I cannot promise you that Uber walks through that door. Nobody can. What I can do is open it, and then write to every app operator and ask them to look at this town. Under Quebec's law, a driver licensed in Ontario cannot pick up a paying passenger across the bridge, so a Hawkesbury service serves Hawkesbury. And the province has said it will look at one set of rideshare rules for all of Ontario, with a pilot in the north. If that rule ever reaches us, our by-law will already be ready for it.

What I will do, in order

Five moves. Each one is a decision council takes in public with the costs in front of it. Every one of them is a try, in order, and each gets its answer in public.

1. Council vote Rewrite the taxi by-law. In the first hundred days, staff draft a vehicle-for-hire by-law to replace the 2004 one. Council votes. It costs staff time. Done looks like: the new by-law passed and posted on the Town's website, with the taxi company still licensed under it.
2. My penCouncil voteApplication Put transport on the neighbours' table, and ask for the study money. Transport is the first file on the standing table I have already promised with Champlain, East Hawkesbury, Grenville, Grenville-sur-la-Rouge and the prefect of the MRC d'Argenteuil, with the Counties invited. The federal government has a fund that helps pay for a small town's transit study, and towns compete for it. The province has a new fund that helps pay to start a service in a town with a gap, for a few years, on a ramp, and it wants the county and the neighbours on the project team. Both want a council resolution behind the application. The study answers the questions nobody has answered here: who would ride, where, when, what it costs, who runs it, and what happens in year five when the provincial money steps down. Done looks like: a council resolution on the record, the application filed with it, and the study delivered in public inside the first year.
3. Council voteApplication A small service, only if the study says yes. If the riders are there, the shape is already known from the towns that got it right: a few accessible vans, booked by phone and by app, run by a contractor under contract, with a fare, serving the hospital, the Residence, Main Street, the grocery stores and the industrial park. The Town never buys a bus and never hires drivers. The province's fund pays part of it for the first years, and the gas-tax transit money follows once the service is running. If the riders are not there, the study says so in public and we go to move five. Done looks like: an operator under contract, vans taking bookings on weekdays and Saturdays, and a ridership report to council after the first year.
4. Council vote The link out, only if the riders exist. A timed van to the train at Alexandria. A weekday run to Ottawa for appointments and students. Or a carrier back on Highway 17 with a service guarantee behind it. Each one is sized in vans, never in coaches, and each one waits for the first service to prove the riders. Done looks like: a connection running on a published schedule with its own ridership report, or a public council decision that it stays closed and why.
5. Council vote The floor, if every door closes. If the province says no and the study finds too few riders, the fallback is a ride subsidy: the Town buys down the fare, through Community Services or the taxi company, for people who cannot drive. No fleet, no app, and it still takes a council vote. Done looks like: a signed agreement, a budget line, and the number of subsidised trips reported to council every quarter.

What a mayor can and cannot do here

My whole platform runs on the real powers of the office.

What I cannot promise, and what I will try

I cannot promise you a bus line. What I will try for is the answer to whether one can run here, found in public, with the money that exists for exactly that question. I cannot promise you Uber, because I cannot order a company to send cars. What I will try for is the door opened, and the invitation sent. I cannot promise a number of jobs from an app, because an app pays a driver only while a trip is under way, and in a town this size that is side money for a few people. I cannot promise a ride to Ottawa on a date. What I will try for is the link out, sized to the riders the first service proves. What I promise is the order: the by-law, the table, the study, the answer in public, and then whatever the riders and the money will carry.