By Michael Regenstreif
Finally, after 52 long, cold winter days, the OC Transpo strike ended when the City of Ottawa and the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 279 agreed to binding arbitration on January 29.
However, because the buses had not been serviced, maintained or inspected for almost two months, it was announced it would take until February 9 – the publication date of this issue of the Bulletin – for the first busses to start rolling again and up to 14 weeks, almost twice as long as the strike itself, for full service to be restored to all routes.
The further you are from the city centre, the longer it will take before you see a bus at your stop. Hardest hit routes could eventually be without bus service for more than five months.
The strike could not have come at a worse time. We were already into the worst global economic crisis since the Depression and what has turned out to be one of the harshest winters in decades.
It was only the threat of federal legislation after more than seven weeks of strike that led the city and the union to the last-minute agreement to submit to binding arbitration. However, it was pretty clear from the outset of the strike that positions of both the city and the union were so entrenched that legislation or arbitration would be the only means to the end. Given the obviousness of the situation, they should have gone to arbitration from the get-go and avoided the inconvenience – as the mayor put it – to all transit users and the motorists who normally share the roads, and the very real suffering for far too many people, including our most vulnerable.
The Jewish community is generally perceived as relatively affluent. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t significant poverty and hardship in the community. Long before the current crisis, it was estimated that about 17 per cent of Canadian Jews, including about 20 per cent of Jewish seniors, live below the poverty line. The current crisis has exacerbated the situation, and will continue to do so.
A little over a year ago, Barry Fishman wrote in this space about the problems the Ottawa Kosher Food Bank, headquartered at Congregation Agudath Israel, was having just in keeping up with the demands of serving its already established clientele. You can be sure the demand will increase as unemployment rises during this economic crisis.
The situation for some Jews in Ottawa is so dire that they live on the streets. We have a story on Pages 1 and 2 by Cynthia Engel about the kosher lunch Jewish Family Services (JFS) served January 27 to 200 homeless people at Beth Shalom Synagogue.
At the lunch, Rabbi Arnold Fine, who works with the JFS StreetSmarts program to provide chaplaincy services to Ottawa’s homeless, estimated there are about 50 homeless Jews living on Ottawa’s streets and that several more were newly identified that day. When Barry wrote that column in late-2007, the StreetSmarts estimate was that 10 to 12 homeless Jews lived on the streets in Ottawa. Clearly, things have already worsened.
Some of you may be shocked to learn there are homeless Jews living in Ottawa. These are not people worried about making the payments on second or third cars; they’re people worried about whether they’ll have a second or third meal every day.
By the way, organizers and volunteers expected to serve at least double the number of about 200 who turned up for the lunch. But, without bus service, many of the homeless beyond walking distance of Beth Shalom could not get there.
All of these problems, the effects of the bus strike, the economic crisis, poverty – in the Jewish community and in society at large – are symptoms of the hard times we’re living in.
As Jonathan Freedman discusses in the Federation Report on Page 6, the economic crisis has a very real impact on the community’s ability to help our most vulnerable just as more people are becoming more at risk. Jonathan points out that the community has always risen to the challenges of difficult times and, as he says, it’s up to us to do so now by digging deeper into our pockets and/or donating that great human resource, volunteer time, so that programs and services can be maintained and expanded to meet the greater demand.
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