Thompson bus line cancels ticket home after passenger recounts nine-hour trip to Winnipeg without heat

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2024 (598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Thompson teacher who endured a bone-chilling nine-hour overnight trip to Winnipeg last week aboard a bus with no heat says his ticket home was cancelled after he spoke out publicly about the ordeal.

Erik Skeaff was one of about 80 passengers who boarded the Winnipeg-bound Thompson Bus & Freight vehicle Friday night on the first leg of his weeklong trip to visit family in Montreal.

The journey was so cold it was borderline dangerous, he told the Free Press after arriving in Winnipeg Saturday morning. He and many others were bundled up in parkas and snow pants, aware some of the company’s vehicles were operating without heat; Skeaff had previously taken a frosty trip on one of the company’s buses and was prepared.

Some who arrived unprepared for the cold were shivering over the entire 650-kilometre route, he said.

Skeaff sought a refund for the trip, and said he was offered a free return bus ticket for this coming Sunday by a Thompson Bus staff member instead, which he accepted.

However, on Tuesday, the day the story with his concerns was published, he received a phone call without caller ID from a staff member who refused to identify himself but informed him, “since the bus doesn’t meet your expectations, we are cancelling your ticket, you no longer have a ticket,” and he would not be allowed on the bus back to Thompson.

“It does feel vindictive, it does feel like I was targeted for just saying the truth of what happens, I think, fairly frequently on that bus,” Skeaff said Wednesday.

“It does feel vindictive, it does feel like I was targeted for just saying the truth of what happens, I think, fairly frequently on that bus”–Erik Skeaff

“It’s hard not to think that I was targeted to discourage me from speaking out and to discourage other people from speaking out.”

Skeaff said he asked for an explanation in writing and was refused. Thompson Bus co-owner Siddarth Varma declined to comment on Skeaff’s concerns Monday, and did not confirm that the company cancelled his ticket Wednesday.

“I will not be able to comment on anything,” Varma said repeatedly in response to questions before hanging up.

Skeaff said he’s now looking at having to buy a pricey last-minute plane ticket purchase from Winnipeg to Thompson. On Wednesday, an online flight-booking website listed the cost of one-way tickets to Thompson on Sunday at more than $900.

He uses Thompson Bus lines because it isn’t economically feasible for him to fly regularly, and said he knows many others in Thompson or northern communities feel forced to use the service because they have no other choice.

The only other bus line in the area, Maple Bus Lines, is not running in the area currently and has faced similar allegations of mechanical and heating issues.

Skeaff doesn’t know what his next steps are. While passengers travelling by air are protected under the Canadian Transportation Agency’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, there aren’t similar required standards for long-haul bus operators.

“Another reason that this is upsetting is that someone can just do this with impunity,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of actions that I can take.”

Intercity bus operators in Manitoba have an open highway to act unethically because the province’s regulations barely exist, said Kasper Wabinski of the Coast to Coast Bus Coalition.

Wabinski, who owns Kasper Transportation, which shuttles passengers between Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, Ont., said Thompson Bus Lines is part of the coalition but called the allegations “embarrassing” for the industry, especially considering many passengers are from remote northern communities travelling for medical treatment, and some of those tickets are subsidized by the province.

“The concern has always been that government agencies that buy tickets for people who travel on those routes go for the cheapest price, even if it means there’s no heat, doors don’t close, drivers are scraping the windshield with credit cards, wheels are falling off,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Other provinces have invested in strict oversight. Wabinski pointed to Ontario, which hires safety inspectors solely for long-haul bus companies, has a set of standards bus operators are required to maintain both inside and outside bus cabins, and infractions result in more inspections.

“It’s the same problem as trucking companies — if you can’t operate In Ontario because you got shut down for doing a crappy job, just move to Winnipeg,” he said.

“My criticism of Manitoba has always been that it is the wholesale capital of Canada, and everything is for wholesale, including safety”–Kasper Wabinski

Wabinski wants to see the federal government take over the bus safety file and regulate it nation-wide.

“My criticism of Manitoba has always been that it is the wholesale capital of Canada, and everything is for wholesale, including safety,” he said.

Skeaff’s traumatic trip last weekend came almost exactly a year after the previous Progressive Conservative government promised to investigate the Thompson-based bus line accused of operating vehicles with a variety of mechanical issues, including broken heaters.

Last March, then-transportation and infrastructure minister Doyle Piwniuk promised the province and Manitoba Public Insurance would investigate the northern Manitoba bus line.

The Tories introduced a “chameleon carrier” bill last May that bans transportation companies from changing their names to hide poor safety records from passengers. But NDP Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor — who is also responsible for consumer protection — said that legislation doesn’t cover bus cabin issues such as a lack of heat, because it isn’t included on safety records.

“(The Tories) did nothing on this file in seven years (in government),” she said.

Naylor promised immediate action on the issue, including a letter that will be sent out to bus operators beginning Wednesday to “put them on notice” that the province would be taking on the issue of bus cabin safety and heating.

The federal and provincial governments share the road safety file, but Naylor said what happens inside the buses is outside of the province’s framework right now.

“We’ve been looking at this under consumer protections, looking at it as a health and safety issue, looking at the Highway Traffic Act — our goal is to identify, quickly, how we can regulate the cabin of buses and bring that under provincial framework,” she said.

Her office is in contact with Skeaff to help him get home.

“These stories… coming forward from Manitobans are not acceptable,” she said. “We’re not going to wait for the federal government, we’re going to act.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca