CALEB NICKERSON
CAMPBELL’S BAY July 9, 2020
The public transportation non-profit TransporAction held their annual general meeting on July 9 at their office in Campbell’s Bay. Due to pandemic restrictions on indoor meetings, the group held the meeting in their conference room with their chairs spread out across the space. Masks were mandatory and attendees were asked to . . .
disinfect their hands at the door.
After reading and adopting the agenda and the minutes from last year’s meeting, the group got an overview of their 2019 financial statements by accountant Simon Thibault of Dignard Etheir CPA Inc. in Chelsea. Thibault participated in the meeting by phone.
Speaking after the meeting, Director General Sylvie Bertrand explained that they divide their types of transportation into two categories, collective and adapted, with the former consisting of volunteer drivers using their own vehicles to transport clients to their appointments. Adapted is for people with mobility issues that require a wheelchair lift or another one of the vans and busses in the group’s fleet.
With the finances out of the way, TransporAction President Guylaine Marcil gave the group the rundown of their activity report for 2019. The group saw an increase in demand for their services, with a bump of more than 1,000 trips more than the 2018 (36,298 vs. 35,145).
The increase was largely due to adapted transport, with 25,639 trips compared to 23,560 in 2018. Of those trips, the largest increase was in trips outside of the MRC, with 8,031 in 2019 compared to only 6,380 the year before.
Collective transport however, was down slightly from the previous year with 10,659 trips compared to 11,585 in 2018. Of those, the largest drop came from trips within the MRC, with 4,997 in 2019 compared to 5,684 the year before.
Bertrand said she was unsure for the reason for the for the fluctuation, but said that overall the group had a successful 2019.
“The numbers’ a little bit higher in adapted transportation and a bit lower in the collective one,” she said. “We had a really good year.”
In addition, the group purchased their office building in April 2019, and have begun to rent out some of their unused space to the Office d’habitation Pontiac to offset some of their overhead.
“Now we own our property here, and … on the other side we had an office with nobody in, so we decided to renovate it,” she said. “They signed the lease with us so it makes a little revenue for us so we can pay all the maintenance of the building.”
Bertrand said they had been doing their best to take precautionary measures during the pandemic.
“The service was always there, but we had less and less demand,” she said. “But we had some essential transportation, like dialysis, cancer and emergency appointments, we did all that with the bus, no volunteers, all the volunteers decided to take that time off, but now it’s starting to come back, with the measures.”
The provincial government announced earlier this month that masks would be mandatory on all public transit starting July 27, but Bertrand said they had taken that step from the beginning.
“Since it started, we obliged all our drivers to wear masks, passengers too,” she said. “Every time they call, we tell them they have to have a mask and sit in the back.”
Two employees with young children were also forced to take leave from the organization earlier in the pandemic and many of their colleagues were working from home, but as things began to pick back up, everyone was back in the office.
“After the service started to get a little bit busier, we started to call back all the staff here,” Bertrand said.
She added that with the return of non-emergency surgeries and appointments that were postponed earlier in the pandemic they are anticipating a return to normal.
“I’m not too sure, because it changes day by day, week by week, but I see that it’s coming slowly, but I think it’s going to come back because people need to go to their appointments,” she said. “We noticed one thing, that we have more and more appointments on the weekend, on the Saturday. So I think that’s because they’re so behind on their appointments, now they’re trying to [catch up].”
