2021 ATU Canada National Conference On April 26th and April 27th, ATU Canada held its first-ever virtual national conference. The conference was initially scheduled to be held in Saint John, New Brunswick, but the executives made the very difficult decision to hold it virtually as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the difficult circumstances, the delegate count was high at over 150 delegates, and members were able to get through important business such as the creation of an Equity and Inclusion Committee, the first of its kind at ATU Canada.
Equity and Inclusivity Committee The committee will aim to shed light on barriers to inclusivity within ATU Canada locals, union-sanctioned events, leadership positions and to work with existing national and local leadership to address systemic discrimination and exclusionary culture. The new Equity and Inclusion Committee builds on work done by members at the ATU Canada Conference in Winnipeg, MB, in May 2019, when two interim committees were formed to begin to address barriers to full inclusivity experienced by women and other marginalized groups in the union.
Election of New Executive Board Delegates at the ATU Canada conference also participated in the election of a new executive board.
National President, John Di Nino, was re-elected into his role for another three-year term. Delegates also reelected other members of the executive board: Eric Tuck (Vice President), Travis Oberg (Financial Secretary), Denyse Mitchell (Western Representative), Jack Jackson (Eastern Representative), and Paul Churchill (Quebec-East Representative). Clint Crabtree (Eastern Representative) and Bill Johnson (Western Representative) were newly elected representatives to the board. The new executive board has a lot of work ahead of them and will continue to fight for the things that matter, like getting more protections for transit workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, permanent operational funding for transit agencies, and fighting attempts at privatization of our public transit systems.
Call Action to Federal Ministers for COVID-19 Vaccinations To finish off the conference, delegates joined together in a mass phone campaign to push Canada’s federal Transportation Minister, Health Minister, Prime Minister, and Deputy Prime Minister to take action when it came to voluntary priority vaccinations for transit workers. Over 100 calls were made at the end of the conference to ministers’ offices to demand that they act in the best interests of transit workers as well as their constituents to ensure that transit professionals get the protections they need to continue to keep transit moving. v
IN TRANSIT
| www.atu.org
15
