In 2004, company officials said the risk was too great to even think about. But on November 19 last year it happened anyway. Saskatchewan Transportation Company (STC) started its first new route in 30 years. Since then, four times a week, a bus spends 14 hours on the road making the 1,136 km round trip from Prince Albert to La Loche, population 3,000. Unfortunately, the route is doomed to add to STC’s ever-increasing losses.

So, just how did this happen? Access to information requests by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation help tell the tale.

In September of 2004, STC regional development manager Bob Bailey traveled with a colleague to La Loche, Ile-a-la-Crosse, and Buffalo Narrows to discuss the idea of bus service to the area. Residents welcomed STC’s great rates on freight, buoyed by generous taxpayer subsidies. A 20 pound parcel could be sent anywhere in the province for just $13. Besides, the only existing way out of town on the public dime was when Health Canada paid for medical appointments. Local “medical taxis” were paid $1,000 to make the round trip from La Loche to Prince Albert for medical appointments, with only one to seven passengers aboard.

However, Bailey warned his bosses not to salivate over such revenue. On September 28, 2004, he wrote, “We were also told that...we should not count on this [medical] business, because the medical taxis provided a valuable service and were too entrenched to eliminate.”

Given how little use the route might receive, he concluded, “the risk is far too great for STC to contemplate service to this area.”

But for bosses still bent on the unthinkable, Bailey suggested, “We could connect with a private service that comes out of this area. As well, if there was funding from an outside source to cover the expense of the operation we may be able to offer the service . . . political pressure may be brought to bear to achieve this.”

As it turned out, three years later STC drummed up such political pressure by requesting letters of support from town councils of communities on the proposed route, which were indeed written. It also just so happened that the Minister for Highways and Transportation, the Minister Responsible for STC, and the MLA for the Athabasca constituency (where these towns were located) were all the same person: Buckley Belanger. And so, the plan roared on.

Even so, STC boss Ray Clayton had low expectations. In a December 6, 2006 email, he acknowledged, “We get small express revenue compared with passenger revenue on these northern runs. I think we need to be careful not to overestimate the express revenue for this particular route.”

Too bad. STC’s freight business tends to make more money than its passenger travel, but this route would have little revenue from either. It helped none that STC was banned from stopping for passengers or freight from any town between Prince Albert and Green Lake since a private company has exclusive rights to bus in that 209 kilometre stretch. Somehow this didn’t persuade STC to guide its route another 50 kilometres southwest of Green Lake and make Meadow Lake the destination. Doing so would have saved 300 kilometres on the round trip to La Loche.

Despite an impending election, a briefing note on August 17, 2007 indicated that STC would introduce bus service to La Loche "in the very near future" whether it found a private sector partner or not. The Sask Party followed through with the NDP’s plans and partnered with Buffalo Narrows Bus Service, operated by Larry Young. His request for proposal to STC called for compensation of $1.95 per kilometre. This suggests he will be paid $460,761.60 each year for his services.

In February, Minister of Crown Corporations Ken Cheveldayoff announced that STC would receive its biggest operating subsidy ever: $7.8 million, plus another $1.8 million for capital. The La Loche route was cited as one of the reasons. No one should have been surprised.