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For those still steamed about last weekend's day-and-a-half Toronto Transit Commission strike, this coming Monday promises to be a cathartic day at Toronto City Hall.

In Committee Room One, Toronto's executive committee will be debating a notice of motion from two seldom-heard-from councillors, Cesar Palacio (Ward 17, Davenport) and Cliff Jenkins (Ward 25, Don Valley West), to turn the Toronto Transit Commission into an essential service.

It would have been more cathartic, of course, if the two councillors had succeeded in getting the matter debated this past week at council, when the wounds of the strike were still fresh and the whole proceedings would be viewable on cable television.

As it stands, we angry Torontonians will just have to make do with some speeches and some news scrums, while city staff scurry off under orders to study the implications of making transit service essential in Toronto.

That's probably just as well.

You don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry and you shouldn't make decisions about collective bargaining when you're angry. Both are recipes for breaking the bank.

And in this case, there are important questions to ask before abandoning traditional collective bargaining with the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 in favour of arbitrated settlements from here on in.

The obvious question, from which all others flow, is this: what do we want to accomplish?

If it's just a guarantee that transit workers will never go on strike again - essential service legislation won't provide that.

While the weekend's legal strike would never have happened in an essential-service world, the same can't be said for the last transit strike, 2006's wildcat walkout. Making new laws does nothing to stem lawlessness.

Do we want a financially-viable and affordable transit system? Essential service legislation certainly doesn't deliver that.

Taking from workers the right to strike means giving the workers the right to arbitration; and where that's happened in existing essential services, the arbitration most often comes down in the favour of the workers, and richer compensation.

Perhaps those richer settlements would, over time, give rise to a workforce less inclined to stage illegal wildcat strikes; but again, the only guarantee is that taxpayers and riders would end up paying more.

Perhaps we need to focus on the thing that actually drew such ire - that caused the mayor, the premier, the transit boss and the transit commission chair, to all urge Torontonians to take it easy on the operators when service resumed Monday: that being the decision by ATU president Bob Kinnear to break his word to Torontonians, and call for a work stoppage with virtually no notice.

We've all lived through transit strikes before. But this is the first time that a large number of people were actually stranded by a sudden work stoppage. Even in the 2006 wildcat, workers walked at the beginning of the day, not at midnight on a Friday. The decision was irresponsible and a fundamental betrayal; it put people in harm's way.

And what's galling is, that inconsiderate, morally questionable and downright dangerous decision was perfectly legal. Kinnear has no obligation to give TTC riders 48 hours to make alternate plans; he simply said he would, and in good faith, riders took him at his word.

Maybe, as one city hall observer suggested this week, that's what needs to be essential: an enforcement of fair notice before the city's transportation network shuts down in a legal strike.

Transit, after all, is not essential in the life-or-death way that ambulance service, firefighters and police are - unless, of course, it strands your daughter or son far from home in the middle of the night.

Maybe, it's best we start talking about options Monday, and come to a decision some months down the road - when we've gotten the worst of it out of our collective system.