Rally for Transit sees huge turnout

March 26, 2025

Our Rally for Transit this past Sunday was a massive success! Despite the pouring rain, 300 people turned up at Metrotown Station to have their voices heard and to fight for the future of public transit in Metro Vancouver. While the Mayors’ Council and the province continue their negotiations over how they will address the $600 million operations deficit that if left unfunded could lead to massive service cuts around the region, Metro Vancouverites came out to show that the people who would be hurt by these cuts are not some nebulous imaginary category, but real people with real needs.

Turnout greatly exceeded even our most wildly optimistic expectations, so our audio system struggled a bit to carry the words of our fantastic speakers, but their ideas echoed loud and clear all the same. These speakers included local residents impacted by underfunded transit, community activists, and even Burnaby Councillor Maita Santiago and New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone, who were willing to take a stand in favour of transit funding.

Full List of Speakers

Denis Agar, Executive Director of Movement
Travis Angus, knowledge keeper from Nisga’a Nation
Patrick Johnstone, Mayor of New Westminster
Maita Santiago, Burnaby City Councillor
Philip Vargas, Movement volunteer – Transitking on socials
Annie Ohana, L. A. Matheson Secondary School teacher – Indigenous department leader
Vanessa Sharma, Union activist with COPE
Cole Reinbold, Secretary-Treasurer of BC Federation of Students
Ray McDonald, Movement supporter
Arden English, Movement volunteer – Thegreaterdiscussions on socials
Bobin Monga, Vancouver-based comedian
Chris Ng, Movement volunteer

It wasn’t just the people physically present at the rally who would have heard our message too: we were featured in a number of media outlets, including Global News, CityNews, Fairchild TV (Cantonese), and CTV News (“CTV Morning Live for Vancouver, March 24” at 26:34)

For those of you who couldn’t make it (or who did but want to relive the memories) we have recorded the entire rally and uploaded it onto YouTube.

So what now?

The campaign is not yet over – we continue to encourage you to email your MLAs, and to email and call your city’s mayor to tell them that you support increasing funding for public transit instead of seeing service cuts. The mayors and province are expected to conclude their negotiations sometime within the next week, so we recommend getting your messages in as soon as possible! We encourage the use of the phone line in particular – phone calls are hard to ignore since it’s very difficult to fake one.

Our campaign has clearly had an effect already, as Burnaby City Council has passed a motion introduced by Cllr. Santiago, who spoke at our rally, affirming their support for operating funding for transit. This is in direct response to your emails and support – keep it up!

Lastly, a huge thank you to everyone who has written in, volunteered, or came out to our rally! None of this would have been possible without you.