Regina transit workers respond to proposed budget cuts with strike mandate

Regina city council is set to review the 2026-27 budget Monday; transit workers say they may strike if services or jobs are cut. Donovan Maess reports.

The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 588 Regina has delivered a strike mandate in response to proposed service reductions in the 2026-27 City of Regina budget.

“We were really shocked and surprised to know the city is even thinking of cuts on the services which most of our workers and our residents use here,” ATU Canada Local 588 president Sukhwinder Gainda told CTV News.

On Monday night, ATU Canada Local 588 members voted 83 per cent in favour of a strike mandate. The union says 180 of its 450 members participated in the vote, 150 voted in favour.

“Our members, they need more job security, safety and wages increase, too,” Gainda added. “And it’s not only affecting our members now, it will be affecting whole community which is getting the benefit from transit and who rely on transit.”

• Download the CTV News app to get breaking news alerts sent to your device

The cuts were a part of nearly 140 budget reduction options presented by administration in its 2026-27 budget documents.

Within that forecast, administration is forecasting a 15.68 per cent mill rate increase this year alone.

An agenda packet totalling 717 pages was posted on the City of Regina website on Nov. 20. The document has a number of service reduction proposals for city transit including:

• Stopping conventional and paratransit services at 10:30 p.m. Currently, conventional service ends at 1 a.m. and paratransit service ends at 12 midnight.
• Removal of service from Routes 15, 16, and 17 which are the lowest ridership routes in Transit.
• Service reduction of express routes on weekends and reduction of pickup frequencies on weekends and late evenings on most popular routes. In the 2024 and 2025 budgets, funding was approved for express routes on weekends along with the reduction of pickup frequencies from 60 minutes to 30 minutes on weekends and late evenings on the most popular routes.

According to the city administration, the 16 cuts related to transit would save the city $12.48 million within the budget but 49 full-time employees would be impacted or even let go.

“The City values its employees and remains committed to achieving an agreement that balances the needs of staff with the interests of residents and taxpayers,” the city responded in a statement Tuesday.

“You talk about seniors, students, low-income people,” Gainda said. “They’re working students going to the high school and seniors going for their grocery shopping or their doctor’s appointment.”

When the budget documents were released, acting city manager Jim Nicol said administration is not suggesting the city make any of the cuts.

“We don’t do this lightly. We’re not taking any joy [in it],” he said Nov. 20. “We’re not making any professional recommendation to do that. We were tasked to say, ‘How would you find $68 million in a budget that is tight and that the public is expecting services from.”

Gainda believes Regina should be investing more into transit, not chopping it up on the council floor.

“We want an extension of the services, not the reduction of the services,” he said. “We need more hours, more frequency of the buses. But it’s going totally in the wrong way.”

City council is scheduled to conduct budget deliberations for 2026-27 on Dec. 15 beginning at 9 a.m.

The agenda packet for the Dec. 15 City Council meeting is available online.