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FreePublications Mail Registration No.

40050017

City must act nowIt is long past time for the City of Toronto to step up to the plate and aggressively defend its licensing system. Toronto’s taxi industry is in crisis, a crisis industry members have long warned was coming, and the time to act is now. Will the City move to reinstate order, or cave to the proponents of deregulation and open up the floodgates?

Editorial, page 6

This month’s Cover Cab is Beck driver Ahmed Mahadjoubi, who has been driving cab for 10 years in Toronto. Mahadjoubi

likes the new lower drop rate on the meter and thinks it will help business. He’s hoping the City follows Calgary’s lead

and acts immediately to try to shut down Uber X.

CoverCAB

Dec 2015 Vol. 30 No. 12

Seasons Greetings

And then cameGoogle… page 7

Blame the Citynot Uber… page 3

Hudak gets intothe act… page 2

by Mike Beggs

In yet another threat to the interests of licensed taxi operators, past Ontario Pro-

gressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak’s Private Member’s Bill (PMB), the “Opportunity In The Sharing Economy Act” (Bill 131) swiftly passed second read-ing at Queen’s Park on October 29, and will now move on to Committee.

The MPP for Niagara West-Glanbrook wants to create prov-ince-wide guidelines for ride-sharing services such as Uber, homesharing services like Air Bnb, and parking space sharing services like Rover. It runs somewhat con-trary to Ottawa South MPP John Fraser’s “Anti-Bandit Taxi Bill” (Bill 55), also heading to Commit-tee.

Sparking an intense debate in the legislature, Hudak reasoned that one quarter of Canadians are living pay cheque to pay cheque, and, “Here’s something we can do right away to empower people to create a little bit more money from assets they already own -- their home, their vehicle, and their park-ing space.”

“In talking to stakeholders, may-

ors, industry leaders, they’re saying these technology improvements are upon us and consumers are re-acting. Unfortunately, government is not reacting. We’re having de-bates, almost guerilla warfare on a municipality by municipality ba-sis,” he stated. “So, why not? Let’s get going and empower Ontarians to make a little bit more money through services like Uber, and Air Bnb. It also gives you more choice as a consumer.”

His words echoed those of both Toronto Mayor John Tory, and Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa, who spoke to the sharing economy in his Fall Economic Statement on November 25, deem-ing it, “an emerging sector that has immense potential to foster eco-nomic growth and innovation.”

“It’s pushing the envelope. It’s disruptive technology, but it’s here,” Sousa told Taxi News. “We want to embrace the new, but at the same time to protect citizens.

“They provide convenience, they provide good service. They’re offering things that’s turning ev-erything on its head.”

While Private Member’s Bills seldom become law, this Bill’s apparent fast-tracking, and the

prospect of yet another politician weighing in on this critical issue with only a surface knowledge of the taxi industry, has to be a cause for concern.

Veteran Toronto plate owner Andy Reti warns this Bill should be taken with full gravity, with these three Tory leaders on the same page in favour of accommodating TNC’s, and the Province suddenly, “poking their noses into it.”

“This one has gone through sec-ond reading,” he says. “I would not downplay it.”

He alleges, “It looks awfully suspicious. Out of the blue sky a failed leader of the party is now bringing this issue forward.”

Fellow owner Al Moore agrees, “You’ve got a mayor who’s a Tory, and Hudak is a Tory. There is a connection there.”

“How many (problems) do we have to fight our way through,” he adds.

Hudak has proudly laid claim to being the first person in the Niaga-ra Region to ride with Uber.

“He’s that lawmaker who brags about supporting lawbreak-ers,” alleges long-time Hamilton plate owner Hans Wienhold. “He doesn’t shirk from paying others to break the law, so long as he can save a few dollars on a cab ride.

“It’s all so out in the open now. Now it’s becoming commonly ac-cepted for politicians, not just to admit, but to openly brag about supporting illegal activities. They just write the law to make it legal.”

However, some Toronto industry leaders took little stock in a Private Member’s Bill being put forward by the opposition party.

“That Bill won’t go anywhere. I promise you,” says Mohammed “Reza” Hosseinioun, director of the iTaxiworkers Association.

“It’s a Private Member’s Bill from the opposition, and that’s it,” agrees Diamond Taxi general man-ager Saleem Irshad. “It’s like Bill 55, it’s just sitting there. Nothing.”

Mike Tranquada, president of the Independent Toronto Taxi Inc. insurance group says, “Hopefully, the Liberals are smart enough to shut that down.”

He alleges the sharing economy

is taking income away from strug-gling working- class cab drivers.

“That means you’re not creating any low-paying jobs in Canada. All you’re doing is creating a few bil-lionaires,” he adds.

Beck Taxi owner Gail Souter asserts that licensed, tax-paying companies are at “an extreme dis-advantage” competing with these subterranean operators. Uber man-agement maintains that theirs’ is not a taxi brokerage, but an app technology service linking custom-ers to cars.

In the Queen’s Park debate, Kathryn McGarry, MPP Cam-bridge observed that living in the Waterloo Region, Canada’s tech hub, she has seen, “an explosion in the IT sector, and a number of dif-ferent new emerging companies.

“There needs to be a fair balance between existing business, and new operators. Indeed, we need to ensure that issues around con-sumer protection, insurance, taxa-tion, and the impact on the labour market are addressed. These are all subjects that I think bear a lot more discussion, not only here in the House, but at the committee level.”

“I really do support seeing this Bill move forward into committee. I think that these kinds of conver-sations, and the work that we’re doing in government about the sharing economy can help vibrant, emerging sectors to thrive.”

Taras Natayshak, MPP Essex argued that while government cer-tainly has a role to play in ensuring these technologies are advanced to benefit consumers, “The shar-ing economy also has to be a fair economy. We can share, but let’s ensure that it’s fair.

“I see Uber, of course, as a mat-ter of convenience and something that can run parallel to a traditional system, but I also see it as a virtual hitchhiking type of system at this moment where you’re (taking your chances).”

Observing that Uber is now ev-erywhere if you have a cellphone and a car, he called for the Prov-ince to do its due diligence in the various jurisdictions being affected by these technologies, mainly mu-nicipalities.

“That dialogue with the munici-palities has to happen,” he adds. “This piece of legislation specifi-cally excludes them from talking about Uber, or bringing in munici-pal regulations around Uber. That’s a massive glaring omission. Tradi-tional providers like hotels and tax-is collect HST, and right now these are not, they are excluded. We have to ensure that those businesses that are operating are also contributing to the roads that we will be driving on.”

Parkdale-High Park MPP Cheri DiNovo lashed out against Uber’s cavalier arrival on the scene, and revisited the well-documented con-cerns surrounding its lack of com-mercial insurance, failure to collect and remit GST, its continuing re-fusal to take out a Toronto broker-age license, driver screening, surge pricing, safety, and privacy.

• see page 10

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by Mike Beggs

T hat it’s the worst time ever in the Toronto taxi business is pretty much a

consensus, among its members.That’s in no small part thanks

to Uber, which has invaded the Toronto market and scooped up approximately 50 percent of the business– while deftly working its way around the bylaw and civic authorities, and not paying any of the high expenses burden-ing licensed operators.

Most industry sources, how-ever, lay the lion’s share of the blame for their dismal circum-stances on the City, both for fail-ing to crack down hard on Uber, and for saturating the market-place with taxi plates and using the industry as a cash cow over the course of decades.

“There are too many taxis, and nobody is making money -- not even covering the costs,” says a veteran owner/operator named Manny. “All we’ve got left is old people going to the No Frills. This is disaster.

“It’s so shameful. The City has destroyed the cab driver who worked 30 or 40 years in Canada. In the future, I will tell immi-grants, ‘Do not work in the taxi industry.’”

The 30-year man purchased his plate for $250,000, and now esti-mates it’s only worth $50,000 or $60,000.

“The City of Toronto, they’re to blame,” he alleges. “They can do whatever they want. What else is new?” he asks. “They could have fixed this (situation with Uber), but they don’t want to do it.

“Who are cab drivers, people like us, when Uber is worth $52 billion? There’s no way I can compete, but nobody cares about the small guys.”

Just 50 years old, and with a wife and three children to sup-port, he figures his next step is to, “go to welfare.”

“It’s really bad. I have no words to say,” adds the native of India. “I wish I never drove taxi in my life. I came here very young , at 20. I worked hard. It’s too bad.”

Twenty-six years in, City Taxi driver Mahamoud Abdi says he’s planning to move on to some-thing else.

“Why should I pay $300 for an ID card? What does it do for me?” he asks.

The Ethiopian native feels, “Nobody listens to the drivers”, and if the industry worked to-gether, everybody could make a reasonable living.

“(But) the City never intended to help the taxi industry to begin with,” he comments. “What’s the difference between a TTC street-car and this taxi, we’re both on the road, it’s the same thing (but they’re looked after from head to toe).

“This industry, I don’t know what to do, and nobody cares about it.”

From Hamilton, veteran owner Hans Wienhold, likewise relates, “It’s nothing but bad news.”

He, similarly, faults the City as much as Uber.

“They never have cared, or they don t know what they’re doing, it’s hard to tell,” he com-ments. “They put out so many plates. They made a good busi-ness into something that’s only a shadow of itself.”

The father of three came back into the business in 1988, be-cause his name was coming up on the priority list – only to see his “small city” flooded with 447 cabs. He figures 200 plates would suffice in Hamilton.

“The last 25 years have been absolute hell,” he continues. “We’ve got this government on our backs making us miser-able.”

To make matters worse, he finds the public is, “too naive to understand what has really gone on” in the war between the li-censed industry and Uber, and the glaring inequalities involved.

While the politicians “boss us around”, he points to the “arro-gance” of Uber, as it openly flout the rules.

“Any individual who ever tried to thumb their nose at the regu-lator was put right in their place. And then, we’ve got Uber,” he complains.

He notes that two Uber-To-ronto executives worked for To-ronto Mayor John Tory’s 2010 campaign team, and in the U.S., President Barack Obama’s for-mer chief of staff is now with the San Francisco-based app service.

“Why are they recruiting these kind of people?” he asks. “Obvi-ously, because they have a net-work to leverage Uber.”

According to Wienhold, Ham-ilton authorities only laid eight charges against Uber X drivers, fining one of them $305. Howev-er, Uber management has said it will cover all fines for its drivers.

“When you look at the eco-nomics of Uber paying a $305 fine, and the legitimate fees we have to pay (it’s ridiculous),” he adds.

Meanwhile, the value of his

Standard plate values has nose-dived.

“There’s nobody buying plates in Hamilton. It’s effectively zero. Everybody’s scared to. Why would anybody buy,” he relates.

“I’m almost 62. I can’t start something new. I’m not one of the rich plate owners Tim Hudak (MPP Niagara West-Glanbrook) talks about sitting in Florida sip-ping drinks.”

“If they really want to do this the honourable way, they should say, ‘We’re going to compensate all the plate owners, and that’s it.’ Give me $180,000 and I’ll say, ‘Fine, we’re settled,’ Don’t just walk in here and take away ev-erything I worked for.

“We’re high and dry (at the moment). We, literally, are fac-ing being tossed out in the cold.”

Wienhold is waiting to see the outcome of law suits against Uber in Chicago and New York, and the class action suit filed by a Toronto cab driver.

Veteran Toronto shift driver John Proos points out that even if Uber wasn’t overcrowding the market with cars, the City has is-sued another 500 Toronto Taxi Licenses, and cleared the way for Ambassadors to put on a second driver.

“(The City does) what’s good for them. Are they really that stu-pid? I don’t know,” he offers.

“(Municipal Licensing and Standards executive director) Tracey Cook, for two years, at every opportunity, was saying the average cab fare is $25. I told her it was $14. It’s even less than that now, it’s $12.”

He says the City needs to fine-tune the industry, not tear it asun-der. But he feels they’re always intent on either driving down plate values, collecting more fees, or building their empire, and that licensed operators have been “stabbed in the back.”

“If you’ve got the money, you’ve got the power,” he says of Uber.

“This is the unraveling. This is what human nature is like.”

He emphasizes that these are only his personal opinions, and others may disagree.

According to Proos, many Uber X drivers are saying they couldn’t make a living at it full-time, and that this work is just, “a top-up”.

“They’re destroying a middle class industry, and turning it into part-time employment,” he com-ments.

While collecting his pension

and preparing to retire from the business, on the streets he re-ports, “It’s just that much more stress and more competition. Nowadays just about every night you’re stressed out, plus you feel betrayed by the City.

“What you’ve got, there’s a lot of bitterness out there. It’s dis-couraging.”

He also points to a longstand-ing lack of transparency on the

part of the regulator.“You don’t know what’s going

on at MLS. You can’t get infor-mation on how many plates are on the shelf, and what plates are selling for. Bureaucrats, they’re all nameless, faceless,” adds the Beck driver.

He notes that he paid $5 for his first taxi license, while he expects his next renewal to amount to a whopping $340.

Politicians and ‘faceless bureaucrats’ destroying Toronto’s taxi industry

4 December 2015

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by John Q. Duffy

Laws governing taxicabs in Canada should be loos-ened in response to new

dispatch technologies such as those offered by companies like Uber and Lyft, suggests the Competition Bureau of Canada.

In a White Paper titled “Don’t ban ride-sharing. Rethink regula-tion”, released November 26th, 2015, the federal watchdog says customers will be better served, and traditional taxi companies would be better able to compete, if restrictive rules governing taxis were made less restrictive, rather than trying to force the technology companies into a traditional and outdated regulatory system.

Essentially the Competition Bureau is calling for a xo-called “level playing field” between what it calls ride-sharing and traditional taxi companies.

Regulated either municipally or provincially, taxis are subject to regulations while ride-sharing ser-vices are not, the report acknowl-edges.

It says, “This creates an un-even playing field in the industry. To even the playing field, where possible, regulators should relax restrictions on traditional taxis, rather than imposing additional regulations on new entrants in the industry.”

It continues, “When new regu-lations are needed, they should be limited to meeting legitimate pol-icy objectives, like protecting the safety of passengers and drivers.”

The bureau says it supports reg-ulating the new technologies, not banning them.

According to John Pecman, Commissioner of Competition, “We believe that unwarranted re-strictions on competition should be avoided, and any restrictions on competition that are implemented should be no broader than reason-ably necessary to address legiti-mate subjects of regulation.”

Pecman states. “The arrival of ride-sharing services presents an important opportunity for regula-tors—an opportunity to inject in-creased competition into the taxi industry by creating a single, level playing field for all. Consumers would benefit from competitive prices on a variety of innovative choices, while all service provid-ers would have an equal chance to compete.”

In a Nov. 26 news release co-inciding with the Bureau’s White Paper, the organization notes the Canadian Taxicab Association es-timates there are 30,000 taxis in the country, earning about $1.2 billion a year (the City of Toronto’s latest Taxi Industry Review estimates a gross of about $1 billion a year in gross taxi revenues).

It says the City of Ottawa in 2015 found Uber prices were about 36 percent less than for a tra-ditional taxi and passengers waited 5 to 15 minutes for a regular taxi ride but only about 4 minutes for an Uber ride.

The cost to buy a taxi license in Toronto peaked at about $360,000

in 2012 but since has dropped to about $188,000. (Taxi News is hearing plate values have actually dropped to about $80,000 in 2015, but there is a very limited number of buyers.)

Montreal has seized nearly 200 vehicles for allegedly operating illegal taxi services, and Ottawa has laid 142 charges against unli-censed drivers working for Uber while Toronto has laid 208 charges against 104 Uber drivers since 2012. (To the best of Taxi News’s knowledge, none of these cases has yet been heard in a court.)

Pecman’s paper states, “Compe-tition authorities and economists increasingly accept that, in many cases, restricting taxi numbers un-necessarily limits competition and harms consumers by making taxis less available.”

He compares the onset of tech-nology to the virtual disappear-ance of VHS tapes, asking, “When was the last time you watched a movie on VHS?”

Pecman asserts the Bureau has experience and expertise in “ana-lyzing issues relating to passenger motor vehicle transportation ser-vices,” as well as in analyzing the impacts of new technologies on competition and consumer protec-tion.The Competition Bureau recommends: • Easing price controls, such as

regulated taxi fares, to allow fares to be adjusted during pe-riods of varying demand, such as weekends, evenings and bad weather.

• Eliminating restrictions on the number of taxi plates issued and moving to a system where addi-tional qualified drivers may op-erate as vehicles-for-hire.

• Allowing all drivers to respond to street hails, regardless of wheth-er they work for a taxi company or ride-sharing service, unless there is a compelling policy rea-son not to do so.

• Providing incentives to drivers to operate accessible vehicles in areas where consumers are under-served. New technologies may have

both positive and negative impli-cations for taxi operators and con-sumers. Pecman says.

“Taxi operators may get more choices in terms of dispatches available and could see lower pric-es for those services.

“For consumers, there may be a benefit from greater convenience,

• see page 12

Competition Bureau’s call for wide open playing field deemed ‘ridiculous’

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Lawyers are in Association

LAWYERS

by Mike Beggs

The recently approved $1 reduction on Toronto’s taxi meter drop rate kicked in

on November 1, in the stated hope of drawing customers back from Uber X to licensed cabs.

So far, however, drivers are re-porting no such benefit. At this early juncture, they say they’re not gaining any business back. In fact, those interviewed say they’re los-ing even more on their bottom line because of it.

The staff recommendation to slash the initial drop from $4.25 to $3.25 was approved by Council on September 30, after Mayor John Tory’s controversial motion to bring Uber into the bylaw was ap-proved. (Several industry veterans dismissed the $1 decrease as little more than a carrot being dangled in front of drivers).

The prevailing opinion that To-ronto taxis are overpriced has been dramatically underscored over the past year, with the arrival of the cut-rate (unlicensed) Uber X ser-vice, estimated to have taken more than 50 percent of business away from licensed cabbies.

And while the $1 reduction was trumpeted as a balm to licensed drivers’ wounds, since November 1, iTaxiworkers Association di-rector Mohammed “Reza” Hosse-inioun estimates he and his fellow drivers are losing $20 to $30 a day because of it.

“I picked a passenger up at Union Station the other morning and brought them to Metro Hall, and it was only $5 on the meter. In that traffic, at 8 a.m., it was unbe-lievable,” he says. “Before it was $7.50 or $8, and people gave you $10 and left the rest for a tip…Now it comes to $6.50, they ask for $3 back.”

And Hosseinioun alleges that while Toronto’s 10,000-plus taxi drivers have acted in good faith on the Uber issue, the City has not fol-lowed suit -- neither filing another Superior Court injunction against Uber, nor cracking down heavily on Uber X drivers through enforce-ment. (Rumblings are now intensi-fying about a possible GTA-wide shutdown of the streets by licensed drivers).

“There is no such thing (as good faith),” he comments. “There is no proper administration, no proper competition. It’s simply sick what the City is doing.”

He notes that while Uber X driv-ers brazenly run their private cars without pricey commercial insur-ance, TTL operators now spend $70,000 on their vehicles and an-other $10,000 on insurance.

“So, how could I compete with this service?” he adds.

“And now, we all have to change to winter tires. I just bought four tires for $700, and rims. It came to $1,200. Is Uber doing that? No.”

On the road since 1981, Co-Op/Crown Taxi driver David Rice ac-knowledges Toronto cabs are seen as overpriced. But he, likewise, is only feeling the hurt from the $1 decrease.

“It doesn’t impact a significant amount on total income, if you’re shooting for longer fares. But if you’re shooting for a lot of little ones, it can impact,” he explains. “The more fares you have the more you lose.”

And how bad is business for him?

“Saturday, I made $29. I drove 12 hours,” he responds.

Of the younger demographic which has flocked to Uber X de-spite the warnings, he theorizes, “It’s a risk a lot of them have taken consciously, because they are pressed for money like every-body.”

Rice also lays blame on the City for “not doing its job” in enforcing against Uber X.

“I think it’s strange, we have a lawyer as a Mayor that doesn’t be-lieve in enforcing the law,” he al-leges.

“Uber is so big, and they set themselves above the law – ‘We’re rich, we’re strong enough you can’t do anything about it.’ Also, they have such a centralized or-ganization. They’re sophisticated at breaking the law all over the world.”

Diamond Taxi G.M. Saleem Ir-shad reports that his drivers aren’t making any more because of the decrease.

“How many times do we use tax-is? Because it’s $1 cheaper we will jump in a cab?” he asks. “I don’t think so. (People will) go on TTC, or use their car. The cab business, most people who use it don’t pay out of their own pocket.”

He estimates that 70 percent of Uber X drivers are part-timers, who only work a few hours here and there, many in the late night weekend rush.

Friday and Saturday they’re all out there, and that’s the problem,” he adds. “Our drivers used to gross $1,000 on the weekend, over three days.”

Past president of the Independent Cab Owners Cooperative Abraham Sekadu agrees, “Nobody is getting more runs. It’s very quiet now.”

“If I make 10 or 20 trips a day, I’m losing $1 per trip,” he relates. “You’re losing $20 a day, $100 a

week. It’s big money.”In the fight to win back fares

from Uber X’s wildly popular push button service, he says, “We need help from the media. We need ad-vertising, something like that.”

The staff report stated that, “The reduction of the initial drop from $4.25 to $3.25 would en-courage more consumers to take cabs, in light of the cheaper fares offered by the unlicensed Uber X ridesharing service.” This motion had the support of many of the City’s brokerages, including Beck Taxi, whose owner Gail Souter suggested, “a more affordable taxi fare would be a win-win for the whole city.” She noted that the $4.25 drop reflected a big spike in gas prices back in 2010, “and now that the price of gas has come back down, it should have been rescinded.”

Mike Tranquada, president of the 400-member Independent To-ronto Taxi Inc. insurance group agrees, observing, “The $1 reduc-tion really doesn’t have anything to do with Uber, in my opinion.”

“When the gas rates were 90 cents and jumped to $1.30 in 2010, that’s when we called for the me-ter increase,” he continues. “Now it’s down to $1 again, so we don’t mind giving that money back. It makes sense. You’re not going to pay that on gas, we can give it to

the customers.”However, he acknowledges the

$1 decrease, “does nothing to help us compete against Uber”, with li-censed drivers saddled with heavy expenses their estimated 20,000 Uber X counterparts face none of (commercial insurance, security cameras, City fees, etc.).

Tranquada maintains it’s regula-tion that keeps the industry strong, “because the safety of a car goes downhill without a regulated num-ber of cars.”

“Uber is going to cannibalize itself,” he predicts. “There are so many Uber cars.”

“I’ve heard taxi guys who went to them complain they’re only get-ting two runs a day. It only proves the point, you’ve got to have some kind of regulation.”

Veteran owner Al Moore notes that the drop was just $2 in the 1970’s, and suggests the drop of $4.25 had become a “psychologi-cal barrier” to taking cabs for many Torontonians. He maintains the reason cabs cost so much now is because the City has issued, “2,000 too many plates.”

Of the $1 decrease in the drop, he says, “Whether it’s going to help us, I don’t know, because people are now taking Uber X and that’s a hard habit to break.”

Meanwhile, on the Long Branch streetcar loop stand, veteran

owner/operator Bruce Jesson re-lates that with the $1 off the drop, “You’re even making less money. It’s ridiculous.”

“It wasn’t our idea,” he stress-es. “If the City had done some-thing about Uber X first, and then dropped it (maybe it would have helped).”

“It hurts because our expenses don’t drop. I’ll be getting my re-newal soon, I wonder if it went up.”

Forty-one years on the road, Jes-son muses that, “Next year may be my last, I’ve got to replace my car.”

Noting, “we used to have all the street business before Uber X”, he says it has become a, “less than minimum wage job.”

And, he can’t believe the City ever allowed Uber to get its foot in the door, in no small thanks to the Mayor’s open endorsement of this purported “ridesharing” technol-ogy.

“I don’t think it’s mismanage-ment. I think they’re doing it on purpose and it’s (an attempt at) backdoor deregulation,” he alleges. “The plate values are dropping, the garage cars are sitting at night.”

“Let’s share in every way. Let’s all become partners and take some of (Mayor Tory’s) salary. Let’s make it 444 councillors instead of 44, and divide up their pensions.”

Drivers report reduction in drop rate is just adding to their pain

6 December 2015 Editorial John Q. Duffy

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Letters to The EditorDecember 2015

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To the editor,(Editor’s note: This is a public notice from the Town Clerk of Oakville announcing a meeting of the Town’s Administrative Services Committee December 7 to discuss a Town staff recom-mendation to investigate open entry deregulation of Oakville’s taxi industry.)

In accordance with the Public Notice Requirement Policy, notice is hereby given of

Council’s intention to review

taxicab regulations contained in licensing by-law 2015- 075.

The Town of Oakville has regu-lated taxis since 1965 to ensure passenger safety and fair consis-tent pricing. The town currently licenses traditional taxis and ac-cessible taxis.

New technology has led to con-siderable changes in the industry, and the town has been approached on a number of issues includ-ing: non-traditional forms of taxi

• see page 13

Oakville considers open entry taxi regulation

To the editor,(Editor’s note: This is an open

letter to members of the Town of Oakville’s Administrative Ser-vices Committee.)

For the past 50 years, the Town has regulated the number of taxicabs ser-

vicing the Town, and for very good reason. Clearly, striking a balance between the provision of timely service and the op-portunity to earn a reasonable living represents sound public

policy, widely embraced by ur-ban municipalities from Victoria to St. John’s.

Given the fact study after study demonstrates the deleterious con-sequences associated with the open entry regulatory model, why is Staff even investigating the possibility of recommending it? In every single instance where open entry was introduced, market chaos ensued, inevitably trigger-ing reregulation - Dublin, Ireland,

• see page 14

Deregulation is an invitation to social, political and economic chaos

I t is long past time for the City of Toronto to step up to the plate and aggressively defend its licensing system. Either that, or admit it went way over the top in regulating the in-

dustry and back away.For far too long the City has looked on taxis as a cash cow, and

arrogantly, ham-handedly, created an expensive bureaucratic night-mare for thousands of people who have devoted, literally, lifetimes to serving its citizens and visitors.

One thing only we will agree with the Competition Bureau of Can-ada about: the City needs desperately to loosen the overly restric-tive reins it has mindlessly imposed on an industry that was already struggling.

Elsewhere in the paper we bring to you the voices of veteran cab drivers who once upon a time could actually make a living driving cab in Toronto. They could hope to raise a family, enjoy an occa-sional vacation, see their kids through school, and take pride in what they did for a living. Now we see once proud cab drivers openly considering leaving the business and applying for public assistance. Things are that bad, and we expect them to get worse.

One thing the industry seems to agree on: The mess is not the fault of Uber or similar operations. It is totally the fault of the City for not doing its job from the very start, not defending the entire idea of regulation and licensing. It is all the fault of a know-nothing, arrogant and incompetent City Council, apparently petrified of put-ting the bell on the cat. The City of Calgary got its act together and achieved what Toronto could not, at least initially, do: it persuaded a court to grant an injunction ceasing the operations of illegally operat-ing competition.

Toronto now has a new law in place and should immediately go back to the courts asking for an emergency hearing requesting at the very least a temporary injunction halting Uber-type unlicensed operations here.

Face it: either the law means something or it is scrap paper.When competitors can come in and scoop up perhaps as much as

half of the cab business in Toronto due in large part to its ability to utterly ignore laws enacted by Council, it makes a total mockery of the rule of law in Toronto.

Why should anyone obey the laws enacted by Council? The May-or and the Executive Director of Municipal Licensing and Standards have both, with straight faces, publically proclaimed the City is in-capable of enforcing the laws it already has on the books regarding taxis.

City Council asked Uber, on bended knee, to pretty please, kind sirs, obey the law until we get our own acts together and come up with a new set of rules? Of course, Uber promptly, politely, told Council to go stuff itself, while our Councillors didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed.

Council could have said: “Obey the new law or face the legal con-sequences.” It didn’t, and their lack of backbone made our city gov-ernment look plain ridiculous.

Meanwhile the Competition Bureau gives us the opinion that open-entry is just peachy-keen and will be good for the consumer. We suppose so, until surge pricing is the norm and vehicle and driver quality and service predictably go down the tubes.

So, we call on Toronto City Council to act immediately through the courts and aggressive enforcement to protect its own regulatory interests and the long-term interests of our visitors and citizens. Fail-ure to do so will hurt this city immensely, now and into the future— to say nothing of completely destroying a once thriving and effective industry employing many thousands of Torontonians.

We know in these tough times it sounds almost laughable, but with all sincerity, we at Taxi News wish all of you the Merriest Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. We can wish, can’t we? We’d all, as well, like to thank each and very one of you for your support and generosity sharing your time and thoughts with us over the past, very difficult year, and hope the New Year brings better news for everyone.

City must act now

7 December 2015Comment

Much to cover, or bring you up to date on this month, so forgive me if I am a little less chatty this time.

The City of Oakville is taking a long, hard look at its taxi licensing regime. A notice sent out by the City Clerk states, “New technology has led to considerable changes in the industry, and the town has been approached on a number of issues including: non-traditional forms of taxi operation, pricing, fairness, competition, contracting services and ac-cessibility requirements.”

I note, that Interesting word they use: “approached.” The clerk does not say who, or what organization, approached the City.

So the Clerk says the staff “has undertaken a comprehen-sive review of its taxi bylaw, and has consulted with the public, taxi drivers and owners.”

I sure didn’t know about these consultations, I or one of Taxi News’s reporters would have kept you up to date about what was going on.

The notice goes on to say a staff recommendation will be considered by a committee on Monday, December 7th, “to investigate open entry deregulation of the taxicab industry.”

Good heavens. Anyone wishing to speak to the matter is invited to do so, or written deputations can be sent to the Town Clerk, no later than noon on Monday, December 7, 2015 by email at townclerk@oakville.ca, or by mail: Town Clerk, 1225 Trafalgar Rd., Oakville, ON, L6H 0H3.

The committee’s decision will be sent to council for its Monday, Dec. 14th meeting, starting at 7 pm.

The experience of at least 35 jurisdictions around the world that have experimented with deregu-lation has been uniformly disastrous for the taxi industry and the public, as anyone with a minimal degree of research experience on the subject can attest. Deregulation is a remark-ably stupid thing to do, and I sincerely hope Oakville’s civic leaders recognize this eminent-ly provable fact.

Meanwhile, the Competition Bureau of Can-ada has come down with recommendations to “modernize” the taxi industry here, including

loosening overly restrictive regulations, like fare structures and limiting the number of taxis in a market.

These good folks recommend what is essentially deregu-

lation or open entry despite having read, and presumably understood, Dempsey’s paper that utterly destroys the idea that open entry is a good thing in any way. (Paul Stephen Dempsey (1996) Taxi Industry Regulation, Deregulation & Reregulation: the Paradox of Market Failure, Transportation Law Journal Vol. 24:73-120].

John Pecman, Commissioner of Competition, states, “The arrival of ride-sharing services presents an important op-portunity for regulators—an opportunity to inject increased competition into the taxi industry by creating a single, level playing field for all. Consumers would benefit from com-petitive prices on a variety of innovative choices, while all service providers would have an equal chance to compete.”

Three quick things about his statement: First, we are not talking about ride-sharing, which, at least

in Ontario, means, legally, people helping to pay the costs of a ride to a common destination, with the driver not expect-ing to make a profit out of the deal, but rather, just cover expenses. What we, and he, speak of is providing transpor-tation services for a profit-making fee, making it a commer-cial, “For Hire service.”

They are two different animals entirely. I submit it is fun-damentally dishonest for Mr. Pecman to confuse the two. He should, and probably does, know better. I also suggest Mr. Pecman and his colleagues look up the concept of “undif-ferentiated service.”

Second, taxi fares are regulated for damn good reasons. The Competition Bureau recommends fare flexibility. I call it price gouging. All is well and good with fare competi-tion until some poor passenger gets nailed $100 for what is normally a $20 ride. (Think “surge pricing” where terrified people fleeing a terrorist attack in Australia got gouged for rides away from the death and destruction. Eventually they got their money back, but what’s going to happen in a To-ronto winter snowstorm? Right.)

During the deregulation period in Sweden a few years ago, some taxi drivers gouged passengers more than $100 US for rides from the Stockholm airport, normally a $35 run. In Ireland, the head of the Irish Taxi Drivers’ Union is now attributing something like 50 suicides directly to dereg-ulation. People lost their homes, life savings and pensions, due to deregulation. Perhaps that’s what Mr. Pecman and his friends at the Bureau want.

Tell you what, let’s let TTC drivers charge their own fares for streetcar and bus rides while paying a fixed fee to the

corporation for use of the vehicles. Or let them buy their own busses and charge what they want. Wouldn’t that be a great idea!

I do like the idea of loosening taxi regula-tions, but it must be done with caution.

See the longer story elsewhere in this paper, detailing the Competition Bureau’s recommen-dations.

Finally this month, the iTaxiworkers Associ-ation is calling for another pre-Christmas dem-onstration against Uber.

What is this crazed rush to deregulate the taxi industry?

by John Proos

There is just one profound revelation that I retain from four cabdriver re-

fresher courses. I do not have the exact words, but it was in the module of “cab drivers and the law”. To paraphrase, the teacher suggested that the cab drivers present carried a lot of psycho-logical cultural baggage ow-ing to police corruption in their former homelands. Immediately the room erupted in spontane-ous anger. The Anglo instruc-tor was taken aback and quickly changed the subject. These were drivers from countries like So-malia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Paki-stan, India, Jamaica, Vietnam. They were incensed at the sug-gestion that Toronto police were any less corrupt than the police

in their former countries. They had learned the hard way, usu-ally from first-hand experience, as Toronto taxi drivers.

To carry on with this thread on corruption, I declare that if instead of “police” the instructor had in-sinuated that Canadian “politi-cians”, “bureaucrats”, “the judi-ciary” were any less corrupt, there would have been the same uproar.

The most obvious case-in-point is Uber. In virtually every country on the planet, governments pass laws regulating the taxi business – collecting fees and taxes, is-suing licenses, demanding com-mercial insurance, regular vehicle inspections, safety devices. Uber proceeds to intrude in a city disre-garding all these laws. This makes Uber a criminal organization. Ev-ery jurisdiction quickly tries to

ban Uber with usually limited suc-cess due to dubious enforcement. Uber’s response to “cease and de-sist orders” is to give each city the finger once again. This describes the present situation in Toronto. The City council vote on Septem-ber 30th acknowledged that Uber X was operating against the law and asked them to desist. They re-fused and enforcement of the law has been virtually nil.

After all Uber is a criminal orga-nization, but one with deep pockets and a $50 billion capitalization to buy influence. They would not have been able to raise these billions if financiers had not calculated that money-power trumps “rule of law” almost everywhere. Self-serving politically-connected lobbyists and expensive obstructionist lawyers arguing technicalities wrangle to

buy time for Uber. Actually, they started out under the name of Uber-cab in 2011 in San Francisco be-fore expediency demanded a name change to “ride-share.”

This is what the legal cab opera-tor is up against. Big money and its corrupting influence. Forget any delusions about “rule of law”. Power and politics operate on the same principles as the mafia. How many Wall St. banksters went to jail over the sub-prime mortgage frauds that almost collapsed the international financial structure back in 2008? None. Too big to fail; too big to jail. Gets you a mo-nopoly on breaking the law. Wit-ness megabucks Uber.

Uber is totally banned in Germa-ny, where the government backs the local cab industry against digi-tal colonization by Silicon Val-

ley oligarchs. It is also banned in France, where Uber executives were arrested. Uber is banned in Spain where telecom operators were ordered to block access to the app and finance service com-panies were ordered to stop pro-cessing payments to Uber. Uber is also supposedly banned in Hol-land, Belgium, Italy, Brazil, India and many other places but usually continues to operate due to lack of enforcement for subterranean rea-sons. It is totally banned in Nevada and in Vancouver.

The legal cab industry in To-ronto also wants enforcement of the ban on Uber X. To pressure Queen’s Park, Mayor John “Uber-is-here-to-stay” Tory and the To-ronto Police Department, many in-dustry activists, feeling they have

• see page 8

Don’t count on the powers that be to get us out of this mess

REAR VIEW

8 December 2015

by Louis M. Seta

CabStandby Susan Hoffman

People on Uber’s band-wagon simply accept that “Apps are here to stay”

that “It is the future”. But this lazy point of view, that progress is unstoppable, is a shallow per-

ception. Why should we throw our hands in the air and accept that whatever progresses is nec-essarily good?

Inventing gadgets is not prog-ress and we should not be in a race to come up with more and more stupid ideas to produce products that we don’t really need. After all,

do we really need an app to order a drink before we arrive at the bar? Do we need an app like Yo, that only sends a simple “Yo” to your contact. (This app has actually se-cured $1 million in seed funding!)

There is even an app that actually a d v e r -tises it-

self as doing nothing - just press the button and see what happens -nothing! Why? To generate un-imaginable wealth for a few with-out contributing anything substan-tial to society while disrupting the livelihoods of many.

One could argue that, while the need is debatable, ride hailing apps

like Uber do offer users a handy service - another way to flag a cab. Fair enough. What’s not fair is the way some multi-billion dollar companies have muscled their way into traditional business areas.

Rather than following existing laws and regulations, corporations such as Uber and Air BnB are the ones regulating their industries. Like the tail wagging the dog, they can call their own shots because they not only have the financial wherewithall but also the politi-cal clout to do so. For example, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wanted to cap the num-ber of Uber drivers in his city, Uber called on its ‘digital rolodex’ of millions of users to block the proposal. Wherever they meet op-

position, they hire high-powered former political operatives to in-fluence legislators to accept their unscrupulous business practices, or simply to turn a blind eye to their brazen flouting of the law. Thus technology trumps tradition-al business practices!

But electronics without ethics is not progress and it would behoove politicians and business people alike to examine the disruptive strategies of these rogue business-es. Once these corporations elimi-nate traditional cab companies and destroy the hotel industry, there will be no easy way back to pro-tecting the public or the workers who are the legitimate stakehold-ers of the industries they serve.

Rules, regulations and bylaws

have been debated over, finessed and fine tuned over many years to have arrived at a system that keeps the public safe and ensures that workers are protected. In Toronto, MLS has established stringent rules and collects hefty license fees from drivers to operate taxicabs in the city. The system isn’t perfect but it works. And if it works then all those that want to participate must follow the same rules. If foreign mega-corporations are al-lowed to disrupt traditional busi-ness practices, we will ultimately have to go back to square one and ‘re-invent the wheel’ establishing new rules, while we ride in the wild west of private uninsured cars operating illegally.

Why should the world submit to Uber’s self-interested demands?

Shutting down city bad idea• from page 7nothing to lose, urge collective ac-tions ranging from a taxi “strike” to “shutting the city down” pre-sumably by rolling roadblocks. Owing to international geo-poli-tics, “shutting the city down” is a most inappropriate metaphor. Be-sides such a tactic will only antag-onize the public and eliminate any sympathy for cab drivers. With the massive oversupply of cabs, anything but a total taxi strike will go unnoticed by the public, while Uber X slips into surge mode.

Sure, cabs are an integral part of the urban transportation network. Drunks need cabs to get home and the infirm need them to get to medical buildings. But the reality is cabs are mostly a non-essential luxury industry – just ahead of dog-grooming and lap dancing. There have been four TTC strikes in the last 30 years. With great ex-pectations, cab drivers had visions of thousands of customers fight-ing for cabs. This never material-ized. People adjusted. In the end cab drivers made about 10 percent more profit, had 100 percent more aggravation from traffic conges-tion and from novice cab users suffering anxiety attacks. Cab drivers were very happy when the TTC strikes ended. If the public can adjust to no public transit, they can surely adjust to a cab strike.

There is no united front possible for the Toronto cab industry. There are just too many divergent inter-ests, too much self-centred greed – a made-to-order model for the divide-and-conquer self-serving tactics of politicians. The bottom line for brokerages, fleet garages,

“taxi widows”, brief-case agents, Standard plate owners, Ambas-sadors, TTLs, plate-lessees, is all different. And at the bottom of the food chain is the shift driver. Not even the mortal threat of Uber can unite them.

The shift-driver’s take-home income is down around 35 to 50 percent from last year. It would have been down anyway thanks to taxi reform creating two-driver Ambassadors and 500 new TTL plates unleashed onto an already saturated market. Unregulated Uber is just the final stab in the back from the Licensing Commis-sion and City Hall. It is the height of naivety to expect any help from these sources. The Licensing Com-mission will only do what is best for them, namely empire build-ing, new hires, more license fees. Hence the insanity of issuing an-other 100 TTL plates. Ask any TTL owner why he is investing $55,000 upfront with all the high insurance and maintenance costs. He will answer that over the years he will recoup his start-up costs by eliminating his previous exorbitant middleman lease fees. Plus he in-nocently expects the rule of law to eventually be applied to Uber.

Likewise, taxi activists lobbying City councillors have discovered that these councillors are only in-terested in “what’s in it for them.” What voting blocs are most advan-tageous for them? Where can they trade their votes for future recip-rocal favours? What can they get from lobbyists, developers, suppli-cants of all kinds? And above all, how can they assure re-election to stay on the gravy train?

When a large factory is in dan-ger of closing down, throwing thousands out of work, the Ontario government tries to reverse corpo-rate decisions with million dollar bribes, loan guarantees and other favours. Anything to save jobs. In the meantime, tens of thousands of middle-class taxi jobs are being eliminated by Uber, being turned into limitless, unregulated, unsta-ble top-up part-time jobs. Not to be left out is the specter of Tim Hudak and his private members’ bill to legalize Uber province-wide. For-mer PC leader Hudak somehow lost the last provincial election to the scandal-ridden Liberals. A poor actor, this phony came across as too cold, too wooden and too over-managed compared to caring and compassionate Kathleen Wynne. Stupidly, Hudak campaigned on eliminating 100,000 civil service jobs. He can’t do that now, but he can help terminate the careers of ten of thousands of veteran cab drivers province-wide. He should have been consigned to the gar-bage bin of politics. But no. With the Ontario taxi industry in the toilet, a smiling Hudak is grabbing for the chain, while declaring his pride at being Uber’s first custom-er in Niagara region.

Yes, it is all a rush to the bot-tom of the greed barrel in these last years before Google self-drive cars make the entire cab industry obsolete. In these last years, it will resemble the T.V. reality se-ries “Survivor” where grasping, self-centred contestants try to out-sleaze, out-scheme rival backstab-bers. Sunny ways, friends, sunny ways.

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PointofView

9 December 2015

A s the year comes to an end the taxi industry says goodbye to the old

and welcomes (perhaps) the new and permanently changed industry. Technology, new oper-ating methods and increasingly changing customer demands have forced the industry to re-vamp and re-shape itself.

In this year we have seen fare costs drop, shift rates drop, plate rentals drop in cost. Insurance rates have not dropped, neither have monthly radio dues. The re-alignment of the taxi industry has begun. The number of cabs serv-ing the general public has gone from some 5,000 cabs to an esti-mated 21,000 vehicles with Uber X. Availability of cabs is not a customer issue. Sustainability and profitability of an over supplied in-dustry has yet to be resolved.

Economics dictate that an ever increasing taxi supply without a corresponding customer demand

will result in operators having a reduced income. This is basic eco-nomics.

There is an argument that as the City of Toronto continues to increase in size and population density without implementing more public transit infrastructure the demand for cabs will increase. Although the City of Toronto has plans to add more public transit, expected completion dates for these projects is at least seven years away. Due to the surface traffic congestion even adding more buses isn’t going to help moving people as bus routes are already congested.

Demand for cabs is going to in-crease but not as much as the sup-ply has already done and will con-tinue to do so. The taxi industry has come to a crossroads. The es-tablished industry members have suffered a dramatic decrease in demand and consequently income. Despite public outcries by the taxi

industry, the taxi travelling public is not sympathetic to the financial losses of the licensed taxi industry. People vote with their pocketbook and in the end Uber services win out.

The correct response for the taxi industry would be to establish a parallel system to Uber. Passen-gers want to pay with cards and use a system that provides them a prompt, clear and transparent sys-tem. Unfortunately, many drivers still insist on being paid in cash while whining incessantly about Uber taking their fares. Custom-ers don’t care about licensed or unlicensed drivers, they only care about their cost. In the end the in-dustry has priced itself out of the market and a new operation under cutting the established system has revealed that the top heavy indus-try costs are untenable. The mid-dlemen have become too greedy and too onerous for the industry. The people who are really suffer-

ing are the shift drivers and the taxi riding public.

What are the methods being used to correct this situation? Lowering the drop, taking more money out of the hands of the drivers. Bro-kers use the media to promote cabs while demanding shift drivers earn even less money. Radio dues haven’t ben lowered and broker-ages haven’t made any moves to run parallel systems to encourage cab users to their companies.

Unless dramatic changes take place soon garage owners will go broke as will many independent operators. The problem these oper-ators face is that they must revamp the way they conduct themselves. In many ways as Uber becomes a major player perhaps garages should just look at renting vehicles only and not worry about dressing them up as cabs. If fleet operators don’t find remedial methods of op-eration many will disappear.

Brokerages also are facing the

same fate. The lucrative operation of plate rentals as agents is rap-idly disappearing. As the industry tightens up, the role of middlemen is becoming redundant. Absen-tee Owners will be forced to step up and get involved in their op-eration. Already fleet operators are more and more likely to rent taxi plates directly from plate Owners rather than through agents.

The coming decisions at City Hall and Queen’s Park will in fact set the standards for the taxi in-dustry in the future. Insurance will also undergo changes and we shall see how this will finally resolve itself. All in all our industry is in a state of flux with, at the present time, no clue as to what the final outcome will be.

I wish all the readers Happy Holidays and a pleasant and

rewarding New Year.Louis M. Seta, Cab Driver

Latest estimate: 21,000 vehicles competing in T.O. taxi marketplace

10 December 2015

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Calling it ‘sharing’ doesn’t make it good• from page 2

“Simply because a sharing econ-omy moves along doesn’t mean that we have to embrace every-thing that it stands for. Absolutely, Uber, Airbnb, and all the sharing economy needs regulation, there’s no question about it. But there are other app-based companies that also work in various jurisdictions that don’t have the record Uber has,” she said.

As a prime example, she pointed to San Francisco, where a family is suing Uber, after an Uber X driver struck and killed their child.

“Uber says that it’s not its problem, the driver wasn’t on the clock,” she relates. “Yet in Toronto licensed drivers carry commercial insurance, so they’re covered when they’re cruising.”

She argued that there must be labour controls over how this $50-billion multinational operates, proper insurance on Uber (and Air Bnb) operators, and consulta-tion with municipalities on this hot topic.

“No doubt we’re on the tipping point of a brand new technology. It doesn’t mean we have to abro-gate our responsibility to look after those who are affected by it.”

Toronto plate owners have called for financial compensation – from the City and Uber – as they watch the value of their “taxi driver’s pension” being eroded to a nomi-nal amount (from $300,000-plus four or five years ago).

But former long-time taxi driver Peter McSherry dismisses the no-tion that the politicians will seri-ously consider this. “They may go around and talk like that, but it never turns into anything pal-pable,” he says.

He lays the blame for the li-censed industry’s plight squarely at the door of the City.

“All they’ve ever wanted from the cab drivers since 1978 is mon-ey,” he alleges. “The City is the taxi driver’s and owner’s principal predator.

“When we talk about Uber, we’re talking about a cut on the fin-ger. The real issue is our life, and the plates, and our security.”

And, while the insurance in-dustry has issued public warnings surrounding using Uber X, and Aviva Insurance recently cancelled the private policies of four Uber X drivers caught driving with-out proper commercial coverage, Hudak acknowledged the TNC’s would have to guarantee they have proper insurance.

“(But) that’s where the Ontario government comes in,” he said, enigmatically. “We run the regu-latory system, through FSCO (the Financial Services Commission of Ontario) for insurance. There has got to be insurance, for the driver, for the passenger, for the vehi-cle. In the Bill, we would set the level.”

Uber management claims it has been working with insurers for

some time to develop a hybrid pol-icy for Uber X drivers.

The second reading of Hudak’s bill was just one in a series of diz-zying developments pertaining to Uber X.

That ranged from Beck man-agement asking the City to cease charging licensing fees on legal operators until the Uber issue is re-solved, to Councillor Jim Karygi-annis attempting to go over the head of Toronto Police Chief Paul Saunders in demanding a crack-down on Uber X, to intensifying rumours of a possible shutdown of GTA roads by drivers, to the Competition Bureau advocating that regulations be loosed up to encourage competition between licensed companies, and sharing companies.

Reti is among many to shoot down the idea of a sharing econo-my.

“Sharing? Show me the hell what we are talking about,” he comments. “It’s sharing at my ex-pense. For 40 years, I’ve been mis-managed, and ridiculed, and what do I have to show for it.”

With the City of Calgary recent-ly granted a court injunction ban-ning Uber, industry leaders intensi-fied their call for the City to protect their interests, by filing another application for a Superior Court injunction. The Toronto Taxi Alli-ance hand-delivered such a written request to the door of Mayor Tory.

With only 104 charges laid

against Uber X drivers to date, Moore supports the idea of To-ronto Police setting up stings, but observes, “They don’t want any part of that.”

“I would like to see them take these people to court again. If they get an injunction, and if Uber continues to operate, just go in and take them out in handcuffs,” he suggests. “I think if they catch them during a sting, they should take them downtown to the po-lice station to charge them, which would mean the vehicle would have be towed.”

Hosseinioun, likewise, wonders what the delay is in seeking a court injunction. And having failed to protect its licensed industry to date, he claims the City has, “badly un-derestimated the taxi industry”. He says the iWorkers have led meet-ings with drivers from Brampton, Mississauga, and Hamilton where the consensus was, “definitely they want to shut down the city”.

He’s urging the major broker-ages to throw their support behind them.

“What else is left for us to make the City understand?” he asks.

He notes that, while Toronto Council has requested Uber pull its Uber X service off the road for six months, the outlaw company recently staged three recruitment sessions.

“The company is there, and the Police can’t enforce it?” he asks in-credulously. “Excuse me, go down to that place.”

The industry could take a small glimmer of hope in Tory’s criti-cism of Uber, after Uber Toronto GM Ian Black informed the City he would not be shutting down Uber X service.

“Hopefully, (Tory) is strong enough,” Tranquada says. “I think he should talk to the Mayor of Portland, Oregon. He told Uber, ‘You are not the regulator, you’re a private company.’ It seems in To-ronto the regulator is Uber. They’re telling Tory and Tracey Cook (ex-ecutive director of Municipal Li-censing and Standards) how many taxis they need. We have more than enough taxis, and limos here.”

Reti says everybody is waiting to see what happens in the provin-cial legislature, and the forthcom-

ing report from Licensing staff on how they plan to bring Uber into the bylaw.

He suggests that Hudak support-ing the part-time nature of the shar-ing economy model represents, “hypocrisy of the highest order.”

“Can you see this happening within a government-controlled environment?” he asks. “(As unionized workers), they have weekends off. How about I go in for the government worker at half the rate? How long do you think that would last?

Reti stresses that industry lead-ers have been writing letters to the Province for decades regarding such issues as the airport exemp-tion, insurance, and hotel doormen, and had them fall on “deaf ears”.

“Hudak wouldn’t give us the time of day when he was in there,” he complains. “Now, he’s support-ing Uber.”

Mississauga’s Public Vehicle Advisory Committee will host a special meeting to hear a report on TNC’s on December 7, while that same day Oakville’s Administra-tive Services Committee will con-sider a staff recommendation to in-vestigate controversial Open Entry regulation of its taxi industry.

Oakville resident, and long-standing Mississauga plate-holder Peter Pellier notes that deregu-lation has a terrible track record around the world – destroying livelihoods, and effectively wip-ing out the value inherent in a transferable taxi plate. And he maintains that for the past 50 years, by regulating the number of plates, Oakville has been strik-ing a healthy balance between the provision of timely service, and the opportunity for drivers to earn a reasonable living.

“Given the fact that study after study demonstrates the deleterious consequences associated with the open entry regulatory model, why then is Staff even investigating the possibility of recommending it?” he asks.

“The mere mention of open en-try is akin to shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, given the sheer panic it creates for members of the taxi industry and their families. Oakville’s cabbies deserve better, as do the people of the Town.”

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The final report from out-side consultant Dan Hara finally hit Mississauga’s

Public Vehicle Advisory Com-mittee (PVAC) on November 18 with several thought-provoking recommendations.

But its impact was overshad-owed by the imminent arrival of a separate report on the potential regulation of Transportation Net-work Companies (TNC’s), like Uber, at a special PVAC meeting on December 7. Hara himself ad-vised that some recommendations should be held in abeyance until the City decides what to do with the unlicensed Uber X service.

“We can’t predict anything hap-pening, with TNC’s. It’s too ear-ly,” he told the Committee.

His widescreen, 64-page look at Mississauga’s taxi cab industry culminated with the following rec-ommendations:• Cancel all plate issuances (ex-

cept Accessibles) until the TNC situation is resolved.

• Close the existing priority list, and then offer plates to drivers with the longest continuous ser-vice.

• Ensure that 21 percent of plates should be Accessible taxis (plus the number of plates required to service Transhelp), and that all future plate issues from the Pri-ority List should be Accessible plates until that 21 percent level is achieved.

• Issue 30 Accessible plates each of the next two years to priority list drivers, to be driven a mini-mum of 40 hours a week (single shift allowable). Any plates not taken by priority list drivers would be available to brokers, to operate on a double shift (80 hours a week ) basis.

• Consider discontinuing plate issuances (ownership), and in-stead change over to annual rentals of plates to individuals on the priority list, as required (a model known as “Entry Man-agement”).

• Flexible meter rates could be mandated, if approved by the industry at the PVAC, either a driver option to negotiate fares, or broker’s option to offer lower fares.Through his research, Hara de-

termined that the majority of stake-holders view the current number of taxis in Mississauga -- 708, of which 40 are accessible -- as being either too high, or reasonable. He concluded that Mississauga has, “a good, but not excessive supply of taxis”, with an average wait time to the door of 9.8 minutes, and 90 percent of calls served within 15 minutes.

Some suggested the City should review the formula more frequent-ly than it has, and formal consul-tations with the industry were also identified as a priority.

Hara found there is “generally strong support” from the industry to maintain the existing priority waiting list for plates, some stating that, “the priority list has worked very well for 40-plus years.” And, according to taxi industry repre-sentatives, any change to the issu-ance of taxi plates must be “long-term and gradual.”

All-Star Taxi manager Mark Sexsmith argued that, “Sixty ex-tra plates over the next two years could prove to be a serious over-supply of vehicles. Additionally, this would lock the next 60 prior-ity list individuals into Accessible taxis, as well as many as 50 or 100 of the subsequent issuances. For all practical purposes, the City would never issue another regular taxi plate for many years.”

And he suggested that having all new plates rented to car own-ers might prove to be too good a source of annual income for the City to pass up and that, “we might have seen the last of future increases in taxi plate ownership.”

Hara observed that determining the proper proportion of taxis that should be wheelchair/mobility de-vice accessible is complicated by the Accessibility for Ontarians

with Disabilities Act (AODA) re-quirement that all disabilities be accommodated.

“This includes those not in wheelchairs, but who may require or prefer a sedan, in order to back into a seat at their preferred level,” he explained. “Thus, a diversity of vehicle types is required to meet the diversity of disability types.”

His study found that, for the most part, Mississauga-based customers with Accessible needs must call in advance (typically 24 hours) com-pared with an on-demand service for Standard taxis. One stakehold-er said the City, “needs to consider the needs of these customers, as it is not fair that they have to book ahead, while Standard taxis are on demand.

It was said that, while there may be sufficient Accessible licenses in the city, ensuring these plates are used primarily for Accessible ser-vice is a challenge.

Of the recommended 21 percent level of accessibility, Hara wrote, “The level of reliability would be a huge increase from today’s gen-erally acknowledged poor, to non-existent service. To ramp up to minimum efficient scale quickly, an early release of 30 plates in the

next two years is recommended.”This latter recommendation put

several industry members up in arms.

Aerofleet Taxi owner Sami Kh-arallah reported that the three Ac-cessible vans in his brokerage are used for Accessible runs just 2 per-cent of the time.

“There are no customers who call and request them. The only people who get calls request-ing Accessible vehicles are Tran-sHelp,” he said. “I don’t see the demand.”

In the seven months since To-ronto issued new Accessible li-censes, he says drivers are report-ing little or no business.

“Before we make any decisions to issue more Accessibles, we have to determine the demand. If the demand is there, why are we not getting it?” he added.

“We worked for almost 15 years with the City on the bylaw. It was a lot of work. I think the bylaw needs a tweaking here and there but we’re going to the core here, especially when it comes to issu-ing Accessibles.”

Drivers on the waiting list com-plained that they would be receiv-ing a plate worth significantly less

than a Standard plate, under this recommendation.

“I’ve been driving since 1989. I’m No. 16 on the priority license,” said Jagdap Singh, age 70.

“I don’t want to spend $60,000 on (one of those vans). So many people don’t like the Accessible vehicles.”

On the list since 1994, Gurvel Singh beefed, “When we applied, we didn’t know we would get an Accessible plate.”

The All-Star Taxi driver claimed that, “Sometimes when they send an Accessible car, the customer sends it back, saying, ‘We are not going to the hospital, or the se-niors’ centre.’

“It’s a big difference between an Accessible, and a normal cab. Mr. Hara forgot to consider the (added) expense for the driver…The taxi driver is not a rich person. They are driving seven days a week, they’re never sitting at home. So please take care of them.”

And owner/operator Yadvendra Sidhu wondered, “Do we need more plates, when no business is there? There’s no point discussing things that are not realistic at this time.”

• see page 13

PVAC receives long-awaited consultant’s report

12 December 2015

Comparing cab business with technology makes no sense• from page 4more responsive services, and a more efficient allocation of re-sources through better matching of consumers and drivers.

“However, these transactions can also raise consumer protection issues, including safety and secu-rity of online payments. It is also important to ensure that consum-ers understand the fees and condi-tions associated with the services.”

The report says. “The Bureau recommends that any regulations applied to new service methods and technologies in the taxi indus-try be designed to allow entry and competition.”

Further it says. “Consumers and taxi operators benefit from compe-tition between traditional and new products and services, and from new methods of delivering these products and services. Regula-tions should be limited to what is needed to protect the public and taxi operators from harm.”

The report states, “Good public policy favours the public interest rather than any one company, in-dividual or industry. We say: set new rules for all players. Do not

impose existing taxi regulations on ridesharing services.”

Kristine Hubbard, Operations Manager for Beck Taxi, Toronto’s largest taxicab company, calls the White Paper “Ridiculous.”

She particularly noted the pa-per’s comparison of taxicabs with VHS vs DVD vs online streaming technologies is like comparing, “apples to oranges.”

The point is that people are driv-ing people for hire, whether in a fully-licensed taxicab or in an unlicensed and unregulated Uber vehicle.

“We’re not talking about ride-sharing,” she fumed.

She said it causes her to question the Competition Bureau’s under-standing of the industry Canada-wide, and particularly in the coun-try’s largest taxi market, Toronto, and the challenges it is facing.

She points out that Toronto al-ready has too many legal cabs in the market, Uber is making the problem of oversupply worse, and it is directly leading to lower cab driver incomes across the board, as well as increased street conges-tion, among other things.

Beck Taxi, she said, is no longer accepting new cars into the com-pany, as it wants to allow its ex-isting drivers to earn the best pos-sible income.

“What company doesn’t want to expand?” she asked, then answered her own question, saying allow-ing more divers into the company at this time would dilute existing driver’s incomes even further and Beck is not willing to do that.

She also agrees that all vehicles serving the public for hire must be properly insured with commercial insurance, the drivers must have proper background checks, and vehicles must be properly safety inspected for the protection of the public.

But she is also perplexed by the Bureau’s assumption that open en-try and loosened fare restrictions will lead somehow to lower fare prices.

She points out that in every oth-er city in the world where deregu-lation or open entry has been tried, it has led to higher fares, poorer driver quality, poorer quality ve-hicles and diminished customer service.

Hubbard points out that enforce-ment is not the answer, at least in Toronto, where licensing authori-ties and the Mayor himself have stated they are unable to enforce exiting bylaws governing taxis.

(They say the problem is too big for existing manpower to deal with, and earlier this summer City Council authorized hiring an ad-ditional 10 bylaw enforcement of-ficers.)

Toronto police, Council was informed by Municipal Licensing and Standards Executive Director Tracey Cook, are not willing to devote scarce resources to deal-ing with the City’s bylaw problem with Uber.

When asked by City Council to respect a newly passed bylaw cov-ering electronic dispatching and cease operations until new regu-lations could be developed, Uber declined.

Toronto City Councillor Jim Karygiannis is openly concerned about the City’s exposure to liabil-ity if an unlicensed Uber vehicle gets into a personal injury acci-dent, due to lack of enforcement of existing bylaws.

At the November 26th meeting of the Licensing and Standards Committee, his motion was passed asking for a report from the City’s legal department and others con-cerned about the “implications” of the City of Calgary’s ability to get a court injunction halting Uber op-erations there.

“If the City of Calgary can ob-tain a temporary injunction against Uber operations, why can’t the City of Toronto?” said Mr. Karygi-annis. “I think we have a fiduciary duty to examine the Calgary deci-sion; compare the by-laws of the two cities and provinces; and, ex-amine the arguments put forward.”

Further he stated, “Calgary has been able to protect its citizens; I want to ensure that the City of To-ronto examines every avenue to protect our citizens.”

Mr. Karygiannis commented, “I am concerned that, if there were to be an accident and someone was seriously injured, the City of To-ronto could be found liable due to negligence of duty. We must take every opportunity to ensure the City of Toronto is not put in a po-sition to be found negligent.”

13 December 2015

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Accessible operators overlooked in Hara report• from page 11

Long-time Accessible driver Ron Baumber noted that the only category of existing plates that does not get a thorough vetting in Hara’s report is that of the 40 Ac-cessible taxi plates currently on the road, being operated by inde-pendents.

“These operators are bound by current regulations to work en-tirely at the discretion of the bro-ker – they may not change brokers, and the plate can be taken away at any time by the broker without any compensation,” he wrote.

“The PVAC would be remiss in its stated mission to consider the rights of all taxi operators (if these issues aren’t addressed).”

To better manage the number of Mississauga plates going forward, Hara recommended the adoption of a simpler issuance formula – to replace an existing formula based on 22 different growth factors. He suggested a formula based on population growth, and growth in passenger volumes at Pearson In-

ternational Airport.He also recommended that Mis-

sissauga consider getting out of the formula approach entirely, in favour of the Australian system of “Entry Management through license fees. Here, the City no lon-ger sets a fixed number of plates, but guards against excessive entry by setting a significant annual li-censing fee. He says it offers Mis-sissauga the opportunity to choose the level of profitability it wants to maintain from the taxi industry, while allowing cabbies the oppor-tunity to commit to the industry and buy a plate if they wish.”

He said this model is commonly used in other industries.

“This proposal represents a se-rious change in direction for the Mississauga taxi industry,” Sex-smith observed.

“Having all new plates rented to car owners might prove to be too good a source of annual income for the City to pass up, and we might have seen the last of future increases in taxi plate ownership.”

“I think that we must try to fend off any consideration of the City taking over plate leasing, but I fear the writing is on the wall here. Municipalities are sort of agreed this is a cash cow that will never die,” he continued. “On the plus side, keeping a viable cash cow industry (and the incidental main-tenance of plate values) going may be the incentive that the City needs to vigorously take on the rideshar-ing operators, as there is money for the city in the taxi industry.”

Hara recommended no meter rate increase for 2015, given that industry costs have risen 13.8 per-cent since the last adjustment in 2010.”

“The industry is largely negative on the idea, due to the increase in operating costs,” he wrote. “Aver-age fees currently are within rea-son compared to regional peers.

And prior to Uber’s expansion into Mississauga, the industry was able to make a sufficient profit at pres-ent rates to support a significant plate value.”

However, the consultant sug-gested that, if requested by indus-try representatives, taxis should be permitted to charge less than the official meter rate. He acknowl-edged several potential flaws with this idea (because it could cre-ate confusion for the public, and a race to the bottom among the companies), but advocated that, “Outweighing these traditional considerations is the need to free companies up to meet the compe-tition during this TNC-generated crisis period.”

He observed that a sizable por-tion of the current client base is using taxis out of necessity – not simply for convenience – and that

raising fares has a direct impact on such clients, which could “price them out of the market.”

PVAC vice chair, Councillor Carolyn Parrish suggested, “We’ve got a crazy mix of private market, and government regulation.”

“What happened is, we’ve over-regulated the taxi industry to the point we’ve put the meter too high -- and that’s why Uber X does so well. It seems completely wrong to me.”

Sexsmith said that Hara’s re-port, in sum, represents “a serious change in direction for the Missis-sauga taxi industry.”

“(But) it presents some attrac-tive alternatives to the Toronto situation, because it’s geared on supply and demand rather than the issuing of taxi plates in the future hope the problem will improve,” he added.

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ASC meeting Dec. 7• from page 6operation, pricing, fairness, com-petition, contracting services and accessibility requirements. For these reasons the Town of Oakville has undertaken a comprehensive review of its taxi bylaw, and has consulted with the public, taxi drivers and owners.

On Monday, December 7, 2015, ASC will consider a staff recom-mendation to investigate open entry deregulation of the taxicab industry. Anyone wishing to speak to this matter at the meeting is in-vited to do so. Written comments may also be submitted for distri-bution at the meeting and should be directed to the Town Clerk, no later than noon on Monday, De-

cember 7, 2015, by email at town-clerk@oakville.ca, or by mail: Town Clerk, 1225 Trafalgar Rd., Oakville, ON, L6H 0H3.

The decision of the ASC will be forwarded to Council for con-sideration on Monday, December 14, 2015 at 7 p.m. in the Council Chamber.

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Letters to The Editor

Entry regulations essential• from page 6offering a classic and tragic exam-ple of such political, economic and social foolhardiness.

Entry regulations reduce traffic congestion, pollution and noise; mitigate against unsafe drivers and vehicles; enhance consumer protection; and promote orderly service.

By sharp contrast, open entry floods the market with excess cabs in the face of rampant opportun-ism. In turn, this triggers a steep drop in driver revenue, as well as a corresponding decline in ve-

hicle quality, mechanical fitness and appearance. Finally, driver demeanour shifts from friendly to downright surly due to the effects of chronic fatigue and stress aris-ing from continually operating on the edge.

Is open entry being studied as a possible means of appeasing Uber, and thus circumvent an enforce-ment challenge? After all, Uber has made it abundantly clear it will not subscribe to any measure aimed at limiting the number of af-filiated drivers in its Uber X opera-tion.

Why on earth destroy the liveli-hoods of local cabbies to accom-modate a global corporate pariah that openly flouts the law, whether municipal, provincial, federal and international? Surely, the rule of law is the foundation on which civil society is constructed.

In addition to destroying live-lihoods, open entry effectively wipes out the value inherent in a standard transferable taxi plate. So much for the owner’s pension. Is this any way to treat longstanding members of the taxi industry who have provided years of service, all the while playing by the Town’s rules?

Quite frankly the mere mention of open entry is akin to shout-ing “Fire!!” in a crowded theatre, given the sheer panic it creates for members of the taxi industry and their families. Oakville’s cabbies deserve much better, as do the people of this Town.

Thank you,Peter Pellier

To the editor,(Editor’s note: This is an open letter to Toronto Mayor John Tory from the Toronto Taxi Al-liance.)

Dear Mayor Tory:

No doubt you are aware that the City of Calgary successfully obtained an

injunction prohibiting the illegal operation of Uber X in that city.

Today, the members of the To-ronto Taxi Alliance call upon the City of Toronto to do the same: ap-ply for an injunction in the Supe-rior Court prohibiting Uber from carrying on its illegal operation in our city.

There is a strong and compelling public interest why the City must seek this remedy to protect resi-dents from an illegal, unlicensed and uninsured operation.

With winter upon us, and wors-ening driving conditions, these un-

trained Uber X drivers will be op-erating cars that are not regularly inspected and may not have safety features such as winter tires (as all taxis are required to have). There is increased risk for an accident to take place when weather condi-tions deteriorate.

Additionally, allowing upwards of 20,000 uninsured Uber X driv-ers on our roads is a potentially dangerous ingredient that adds more congestion on our roads while putting the traveling public at risk.

Further, Uber’s continual refus-al to suspend its Uber X program constitutes a flagrant and blatant disregard for the law and places Torontonians at risk.

When the City applied for such an injunction one year ago, the Court held that the definition of “taxicab broker” in the Munici-pal Code did not clearly capture

Uber’s activity. However, on October 2, 2015, the Code was amended to remedy that deficien-cy. Yet despite a request by the City to cease its illegal operations, Uber has refused to do so.

Therefore it is imperative that City staff re-apply for an injunc-tion against Uber X and its illegal operations immediately.

Mayor Tory, Toronto has seen and applauded the results of the exercise of political will demon-strated when you announced that you were working with Toronto Police Services to crackdown on parking infractions in our city.

We believe that if the same po-litical will is applied to stopping illegal and uninsured Uber X driv-

ers, this activity can be stopped. Calgary has proved that this is pos-sible. Calgary is putting the safety of its citizens first— Toronto must do the same.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Gail Souter, PresidentToronto Taxi Alliance

TTA calls on Mayor Tory to step up and shut down Uber’s operations

Uber reaching out to new CanadiansTo the editor,(Editor’s note: This is an open letter from Toronto Councillor Jim Karygiannis to community organizations assisting in the settlement of new Canadians.)

Dear Community Partner,

I t has come to my attention that UBER is reaching out to settlement service pro-

vider partners and asking if they can rent a meeting space and encouraging you to assist them in getting Uber X drivers.

Uber operates as a Transporta-tion Network Company in Canada competing with licensed taxi cab operators. Uber operates outside provincial and municipal laws. They are a company that oper-ates cars that pretend to be taxis. They are reaching out to unsus-pecting new immigrants and of-fering them work using their own

vehicles to transport passengers. They require the drivers to have a valid driver’s license, their own vehicle and private insurance on their cars. Insurance companies do not cover drivers, with private vehicle insurance, if they are us-ing their vehicle to transport peo-ple for a fee without having com-mercial insurance (which only licensed cabbies have).

Uber operates outside rules, laws and regulations. Their driv-ers are not insured, do not pos-sess police checks for vulnerable people and Uber does not pay federal tax (HST). Uber is mis-leading drivers saying they can earn large sums of money, while not advising them that they will be breaking the law and could be charged by municipal bylaw offi-cers. Uber X also does not advise prospective drivers that their ve-

hicle insurance will not be valid if they are in an accident when they are operating as an Uber X driver. This will leave the driver responsible for all damages re-lated to the accident.

I would be delighted to provide additional information to you upon request. In the meantime, please do not allow Uber to re-cruit Uber X drivers from your clients for it may cause them dif-ficulties with the law.

I can be reached at my direct email jim@karygiannis.net

Office email: councillor_karygiannis@toronto.ca

Phone 416-392-1374.Jim Karygiannis,

Councillor, Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt

15 December 2015Letters to The Editor

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To the editor,

The impact of Uber X on the livelihoods of cabbies throughout the GTA has

been well-documented. As has the fact this global corporate pa-riah continues to mock the rule of law, compromising consumer health and safety in the process. With the Uber noose tightening around our necks, it is hoped both our elected representatives and the courts will muster the necessary wherewithal to wres-tle this lawbreaker to the ground sooner than later.

In the meantime, every effort must be made by the taxi industry at large to stay afloat - a feat best accomplished by the provision of excellent service, on the one hand, and carefully controlled expenses, on the other.

Drivers can be their own worst enemies when offering poor ser-vice – whether failing to open doors; refusing certain methods of payment; turning down short trips; exhibiting discourtesy and incivility; failing to take the most direct route; or operating dirty cars. Nothing will drive customers into the open arms of Uber faster.

Regarding expenses, save insur-ance premiums, licence fees and the HST, expenses can be con-trolled to a greater or lesser extent via decisions we make as brokers, owners and fleet operators. Ef-ficiency and fairness have never

been more critical to our overall economic well-being.

Internal costs, such as brokerage fees, plate rental fees and shift rates are completely within our con-trol. It behooves those in charge to

govern themselves accordingly by setting rates that accurately reflect prevailing market conditions.

Given Uber has attracted a size-able piece of the taxi pie, under-standably, revenues are down. It

follows the amount charged driv-ers, correspondingly, should reflect the decline in business. After all, one cannot squeeze blood out of a stone.

Drivers are the heart and soul of

the business. Without them, there is no taxi industry - a point seem-ingly lost on those who choose to ignore the unassailable forces of supply and demand.

Peter D. Pellier

Industry must take own steps to combat Uber

To the editor,My name is Roy Ambury and I am a former ride-share driver.

In the 1970’s, long before 2009 when Uber was founded by Tra-vis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, I was working at Kingston Spin-ners. Because the same workers stayed on the same shifts, I drove three other people to and from work. They gave me gas money. I was concerned about the legal-ity and safety of my passengers, so I added to my private use in-surance to cover this activity.

This is what ride-sharing is. This is just as legal as carpool-ing to go to a conference. Uber is what ride sharing is not.

Because Uber matches up random (in the best sense of the word) passengers and random drivers, it is a taxi brokerage. It must be made to act like a taxi brokerage by paying broker-age fees, and its drivers must be made to act like taxi drivers by

getting CPIC’s, having vehicles inspected, paying HST, etc. In addition, Uber drivers must be held to the same standards as taxi drivers are. We don’t mind some competition, but price competi-tion is unfair when one sector is regulated, and another sector is free to undercut fares most of the time and to charge up to six times the price at other times. I don’t have room here to specify other defects in Uber.

We need a level playing field. 218 taxis in Kingston are enough 90 percent of the time. Let’s stop Uber in Kingston. We are a lot faster than big city taxis, and Uber cars are nothing more than unnecessary additions to the number of taxis sitting idle on the sides of Kingston streets a lot of the time.

Uber can be stopped, at least on the local level. The Broward County Sun Sentinel in Florida reported that commissioners

passed a sweeping new law regu-lating app-based ride services such as Uber, despite the com-pany’s threat to leave town. After the law passed, Uber spokesman Bill Gibbons said, “We cannot operate in Broward County if such onerous regulations are en-forced…”

The new regulations legalize services including Uber and Lyft, whose drivers use their personal vehicles. But the law left intact tough provisions for Uber, in-cluding:

• Enhanced background check standards to require finger-printing. This requirement eliminated a “significant’’ number of Uber drivers when Columbus, Ohio, implemented the rule. Any driver who ap-plies for a license will be al-lowed to carry passengers under a temporary two-week license until the background

check is complete.• Scrapped a requirement for li-

ability insurance for drivers, but required drivers to follow state law, which requires 24-hour commercial insurance.

• Upgraded vehicle inspection standards for all cars for hire, including Uber and cabs.

• Raised the standards for driv-ers, excluding those with seri-ous criminal backgrounds or poor driver histories.

•Stripped the county’s Consumer Protection Board of some of its authority to grant chauffeur registrations to drivers who were rejected by county staff. My hope is that proposed Pro-

vincial legislation can accom-plish something similar.

Roy Ambury

Kingston cabs want Uber stopped

Drivers Wanted, Full or Part Time, Beck, Diamond or Royal, also taxi plate for lease. Call John or Peter at 416-365-2121.

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Looking for Toronto Taxi Plate to lease. We pay top dollar. Guaranteed to pay all traffic tickets. Call Sunny at 416-616-0537.

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Drivers wanted night or day. Beck, Crown, or Diamond. Call Sam or Hos-sein @ HPM Taxi. 416-899-7054 or 416-725-1919.

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Traffic ticket court date set downtown for $10. Call 416 363 9597.

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Standard Toronto taxi plate for sale. Call 905-493-6066 anytime.

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Toronto Standard plate for lease by owner, 905-451-5230

Taxi Plates for Lease. 416-723-1191 anytime.

Taxi fleet plate for lease. Contact 647-321-4473 during business hours.

DRIVER IS NEEDED for a wheelchair ac-cessible taxi doing exclusively Wheel-trans contract work.Can start immediately. Flexible hours. 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan with side entry. Must have good driving record. Call 416-818-7818 between 10:00 am to 11:00 pm. Please leave a message if I don’t answer.

16 December 2015

Committee members are: Cesar Palacio (Chair), Glenn De Baeremaeker, Jim Karygiannis (Vice-Chair),

Giorgio Mammoliti and Josh Matlow. MEETINGS IN COMMITTEE ROOM 1

Secretariat Contact: Dela Ting, 10th floor, West Tower, City Hall100 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON M5H 2N2

email: lsc@toronto.ca, or by phone at 416-397-4592 or by fax at 416-392-1879

L&S MEETING SCHEDULE 2016

The following is the list of scheduled meetings of the Licensing and Standards Committee for 2016.

Dec., 2015 no meeting scheduled

Friday, January 22 - 9:30am

Tuesday, March 8 - 9:30am

Thursday, April 14 - 9:30am

Thursday, May 19 - 9:30am

Monday, June 27 - 9:30am

Wednesday, Sept., 21 - 9:30am

Monday, October 25 - 9:30am

Wednesday, Nov., 30 - 9:30am

Dec., 2016 no meeting scheduled

Friday January 22, 9:30am

To the editor,

The taxi industry ignores the hundreds of com-plaints against taxis for

refusing short fares and the mo-nopoly the industry represents. As long as the industry contin-ues to provide sub-standard ser-vice, Uber is not going away.

Roger Heron

Taxi industry should wise up

To the editor,(MPP and former Ontario Con-servative Party leader Tim Hu-dak recently introduced a pri-vate members bill that would force Ontario municipalities to permit Uber’s operations.)

Tim Hudak. Know the name?He’s that “law-maker,” who

brags about supporting law-break-ing. (A regular Uber user.)

Though not quite courageous enough to openly break the law himself, he doesn’t shirk from paying others to do so, so long as he can save a few dollars on a cab ride.

It’s all so out in the open now. Was it Clinton who said that he didn’t inhale? Now it’s becom-ing commonly accepted for poli-ticians, not just to admit, but to openly brag about supporting il-

legal activities. (This, after all of the bullshit about Rob Ford.) And if they happen to like those illegal activities, well, they are politi-cians. They will just re-write the law to make it legal. Great work if you can get it.

I wish I could write the laws. If I could write the laws, most poli-ticians would be behind bars right now. And I don’t mean that they would be serving liquor in some-body’s basement “liquor sharing” establishment. Though, come to think of it, that would at least be honest work.

You can’t make this stuff up.I wish Hudak were a smoker.

And that smoking were more pop-ular. I just know he’d be out there on the Indian reserves, buying truckloads of untaxed cigarettes and “sharing” them with his con-

stituents, promising to make it all legal, too.

The only thing I am left wonder-ing about is, why doesn’t Hudak

just go ahead and switch to the party that more closely resonates with his true political soul, the On-tario Liberals?

Regards,Hans Wienhold

A.K.A. Uncle Block Et. Al.www.blockrants.com

Hudak a fine example of a law-makerLetters to The Editor

TAXI DRIVERS WANTED

for Day and Night Shifts forRoyal & Beck Taxis

Call Avtar at416-566-0548

Confusing regulations delay application for taxi licenseTo the editor,

The City of Toronto is discouraging people from obtaining a taxi

driver’s license. I’m writing this letter in order to highlight some of the difficulties I have faced trying to get my taxi li-cense.

I applied for Taxicab license at MLS, 850 Coxwell Ave., in the month of June, 2015. Due to unknown reasons I was given a schedule of training by end of October 2015. By that time, I had presented a valid work permit as a piece of identify. (I think this was my mistake.)

After a few months, I got a call that my training had been re-scheduled to an earlier date. By that time, I had applied for a renewal of work permit. I got my training & when I went to

the licensing office to get my li-cense, I was asked to present my work permit. My work permit was expired by that time & I’m still waiting for the new work permit. The officer at the service desk (Mr. James) told me that I should have a valid work permit to get my license. (Unfortunate-ly, I had not presented my work permit at the first visit because no one asked me to show it.)

This was OK for me. As a good resident of Canada, I should fol-low the rules. A few days later, as I was waiting for the bus at a TTC stand, I saw a City adver-tisement which clearly says that the City of Toronto will issue li-censes to all residents of Toronto regardless of immigration status. I took this to mean that I was qualified to get my taxi license.

I visited the office again & pre-

sented the advertisement. Initial-ly, Mr. James at the service desk accepted it and told me to wait until he consulted his supervisor. He came back and explained I am still required to have a valid work permit. I didn’t argue and went home to wait for my work permit.

After few days, I got a letter from the City saying that my taxi license application will be expiring soon & I should submit my work permit ASAP to get the license. It was quite surpris-ing. I had done everything else required of me and was only waiting to receive my new work permit.

I find this completely strange. If I had applied for a job with Uber, Uber would have hired me almost immediately and today I would be a successful Uber driv-er. However, I accept that Uber is illegal and I must obtain a legal source of income controlled by law. Unfortunately, due to some confused laws or officials, the City of Toronto is indirectly sup-porting illegal sources of income, including Uber.

Zaki Ud Din

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AiRpORt peAk peRiOd peRmits

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Call Andy at 416-803-8130

Joel Barr, Majeed Shidfar, Sam Moini, Asafo Addai and Javid Wali went to Toronto Mayor John Tory’s office on November 25th to deliver a letter demanding the City immediately apply for an injunction to stop illegal, uninsured UberX operating in Toronto. A copy of their letter appears on page 14.

Toronto Taxi Alliance