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FreePublications Mail Registration No.

40050017

Is anybody listening?

Last month besieged Toronto taxi drivers gained a powerful new ally in their battle with Silicon Valley behemoth Uber Technologies, the Toronto transit

workers union. In a December 15 press release, union president Bob Kinnear slammed Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne for, “shamelessly surrendering to the gypsy-taxi service Uber, instead of protecting public

safety, the rule of the law, their primary responsibility as elected leaders.”

See story, page 3 • Editorial, page 6

January 2016 Vol. 31 No. 1

Uber’s friends inhigh places… page 7

Transit workersjoin the fray… page 3

Taxi drivers speakloud and clear… page 2

by Mike Beggs

The highly publicized De-cember 9 demonstration by licensed taxi drivers

upset many Torontonians with the gridlock it created. But in the end, this day-long protest achieved something the industry has never been granted before – a meeting with the Police Chief (Mark Saunders) -- to address its pressing concerns over the City’s failure to enforce its own bylaw against Uber X operators.

The cabbies took it to the streets after pleading with city hall for the past year to crack down on Uber X drivers, taking days off work at-tending Council and the Licensing and Standards Committee to press the case for action, and showing their good faith during the sum-mer’s PanAm Games, when they abided by Mayor John Tory’s re-quest to not shut down the roads in protest.

And while the meeting with Saunders ultimately bore no fruit for them, just pushing the City’s hand that far represented a suc-cess – despite criticisms in some circles that it simply drove further consumers over to Uber.

“The demonstration was great. But it fell upon deaf ears,” said Lawrence Eisenberg, owner of Lucky 7 Taxi. “The Police Chief

isn’t going to do anything about it anyhow.”

“It was disrupting traffic, but what does it matter? ‘We’ll meet with you’. He’s already been told to do nothing. Thank you for the meeting.”

Organizers of the protest apolo-gized to the public for the incon-venience, but said, “it was forced on us.”

Starting at 7:30 a.m., taxi and limo drivers from across the GTA snarled the highway commute downtown from all four direc-tions, and circled Queen’s Park and city hall, before spending a day in volatile protest at Nathan Phillips Square.

In possibly the rowdiest demon-stration since the G7 Summit, they gathered angrily outside city hall, shouting through megaphones and chanting for Mayor John Tory to come down and talk to them face-to-face.

Sajid Mughal, president of the iTaxiworkers Association said that, with 2,500 to 3,000 cabs par-ticipating, this demonstration was “unprecedented”.

“We are out of jobs, out of mon-ey. What we are here for is to ask you to use your own bylaw. Stop this illegal activity. We expect them to regulate Uber,” he said. “Go to the court and get an injunc-

tion. That’s all we’re asking. This is more than one year we’ve been asking, but he’s not getting the message.

“We had a hunger strike. Un-fortunately, the Mayor is not will-ing to listen. Tell the public, this is illegal. Why are they using this service?”

On hand to show support, To-ronto Taxi Alliance spokesman Sam Moini told CP 24, “The in-dustry is not going to roll over and die. (Uber is) 100 percent illegal. They’re the lawbreakers. We’re the ones being treated as the bad guys here.”

As the angry drivers shouted “Shame, Shame”, and “Come Down Tory”, the Mayor appeared in his office overlooking the square, on break from Council. The angry drivers surged forward as if to storm the front doors, with security and a few city councillors stepping in to calm them down.

“When the politicians aren’t lis-tening, are we surprised people get emotional,” Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti asked.

He expressed frustration with the bureaucrats “wanting to run the show”, when they’ve been di-rected by Council to enforce the bylaw.

“Do your job and enforce,” he added.

One disheartened driver said, “There’s nothing left. He doesn’t care about the poor people. He’s looking out right now.”

“Uber is from the U.S. The Mayor is supposed to work for this city, not for San Francisco,” said Zia, a 22-year man.

An ex-dispatcher named Lenny observed, “This wouldn’t be hap-pening if city council took action. What is Uber doing, they’re un-dercutting.”

Inside city hall, the Mayor called a press conference, asking the drivers to stand down and stop their protest, expressing his con-cerns about public safety. The Po-lice Chief did likewise.

Tory said the protest was, “inap-propriate and didn’t advance the issue.” He claimed that Licensing staff are working at “breakneck speed” to craft the new bylaw rec-ommendations, which could be expected early in 2016.

“I am confident the people doing this work are working as fast as they can. And we probably aren’t going to be able to ban Uber,” he stated. “We are trying to achieve that regulatory balance. It’s hard work. It’s complex work.

“I understand the frustrations being faced by taxi drivers.”

Stressing that he himself he is a lawyer, he added, “The worst thing we could do is go and seek another injunction, and fail. Our lawyers are not giving us advice to seek an injunction.”

With motorists fuming, a police officer on a bike struck by a taxi on Yonge Street (receiving minor injuries), and a licensed driver hanging off the side of a suspected Uber X car and being dragged for a block (with no injuries), Tory in-sisted, “These demonstrations are dangerous, and do a disservice to the drivers.”

However, the mass of drivers proceeded inside to the ongoing session of Council, where they were soon escorted out after hurl-ing further insults at the Mayor. They proceeded to the intersec-tion of Queen and Bay Streets, where they staged a raucous “sit-in”, bringing traffic to a standstill. They only disbanded at 7:30 p.m., after Tory agreed to arrange a meeting with the Police Chief for two days later (with Municipal Li-censing & Standards executive di-rector Tracey Cook on hand as his intermediary).

But with 190 charges against Uber X drivers outstanding, the Chief told the industry he was “handcuffed” in efforts to crack down on Uber X. He said he would have to wait for the outcome of

those cases, before developing the next enforcement tack.

While Saunders considered the meeting to be “constructive”, in-dustry leaders came away dissat-isfied, still wanting the Chief to

declare Uber X illegal and begin arresting its drivers.

In the eyes of Scarboro City Cab vice president Gurjeet Dhillon, the day-long demonstration left a double-edged impression.

“I think it’s both, to be hon-est,” she told Taxi News. “I think it definitely did alienate some customers, and caused a lot of in-convenience to the public. But at the same time, I also understand the drivers’ need to do something. They have tried to reach out to the regulator around the table, and get them to understand the chaos be-ing caused -- because they’re fol-lowing the rules, and they’re los-ing everything. And Uber is not, and has been allowed to go about its business.”

The protest seemed to split pub-lic opinion down the middle.

“I guess you could say positive attention is a good thing, but if you don’t get it, negative attention seems to work,” observed long-time owner/operator Frank Kelly.

A young women in Nathan Phil-lips Square said, “I love Uber. It’s just convenient, and cheaper.”

But when asked how she felt to see the licensed drivers dem-onstrating in the background, she only answered, “I’ve got to go.”

• see page 10

2 January 2016

‘I am confident the

people (revising the

bylaw) are working

as fast as they can.

And we probably

aren’t going to be

able to ban Uber,’

said the Mayor.

‘We are trying

to achieve that

regulatory balance.

It’s hard work. It’s

complex work.’

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What if industry gave City a little dose of it’s own medicine?

By Mike Beggs

The Toronto taxi industry may have found a pow-erful new ally in its fight

against Uber.In a December 15 press re-

lease, Bob Kinnear, president of the Toronto transit workers union, slammed Mayor John Tory and Premier Kathleen Wynne for, “shamelessly surrendering to the gypsy-taxi service Uber, instead of protecting public safety, the rule of the law, their primary responsibil-ity as elected leaders.”

His comments came the day af-ter Uber rolled out its new Uber-Hop service, which is offering $5 flat rate rides on set routes to and from the financial district during morning and evening rush hour. Uber has started out by servic-ing such high-density areas as the Distillery District, Liberty Village, Fort York, and CityPlace, taking up to four customers at a time in mini-vans and SUV’s, but has earmarked several other potential routes, “underserviced” by the TTC.

TTC lawyers are now exploring whether UberHop is in contraven-tion of the City of Toronto Act, which guarantees the TTC a mo-nopoly on public transit services (with such exceptions as charter, tour, and shuttle buses). Into his fifth term as head of the Local 113 of the Amalgamated Transit Work-ers, Kinnear lashed out against our leaders for allowing this, and the controversial Uber X service – which has put the licensed in-dustry in peril, despite the fact it clearly violates the Toronto bylaw,

as passed on September 30.“Tory and Wynne are simply

wimping out, there’s no better word for it,” he stated.

“They should simply pass a new provincial law, and City ordinance that will shut Uber down until it abides by the law and offers ser-vices on a level playing field, and PAYS a huge penalty for giving our government “the one-finger salute” as Tory said in October.

“What happened to THAT John Tory, who has basically announced that he is now surrendering to this American company? He’s hiding behind a weak Crown prosecution

that can be changed by a new law.”Uber Canada GM Ian Black told

the Toronto Star there’s a “huge in-terest” in people needing simpler and cheaper commutes, and that there are many routes not properly served by transit.

UberHop appears similar to Line Six, a crowd-sourced transporta-tion service which had a success-ful pilot project last year, before ultimately being abandoned due to legal concerns. But Black told the Star, UberHop is just carrying more people at once in its regular Uber vehicles, and is by no means a public transit service.

Tory expressed his support for UberHop, reiterating his position that our laws need to keep up with technology. He told Metro, the reality is, “there are places in the city that are not as well-served by public transit, as they need to be.”

And in a guest column in the Toronto Sun on December 21, Ni-agara West-Glanbrook MPP Tim Hudak (author of Private Mem-bers Bill 131, pushing “Opportu-nity In The Sharing Economy”), declared it, “sad”, that the TTC’s union and lawyers are attempting to shut down UberHop. “If the TTC worked well, there would be no UberHop in the first place,” he told The Sun.

Kinnear observed that the Lib-eral government had “no problem” legislating away transit workers’ right to collective bargaining in a heartbeat in 2011, referring to Bill 150.

“They didn’t like the law, they simply changed it. Wynne voted for it,” he continued. “Now, the

Premier is just throwing her hands up in the air and saying, ‘Hey, it’s technology. What are you going to do, eh?’

“(And), can you believe that the Mayor of Canada’s largest city says he doesn’t have the resources to shut down people who are oper-ating outside the bylaw? Uber is laughing at him all the way to the bank.”

His comments echoed those of Toronto Taxi Alliance spokesman

Sam Moini during the December 15 driver demonstration, when he noted, “There are 20,000 unin-sured vehicles on the road. (For the Mayor) to go out in public and say, ‘We can’t enforce our laws’ is sending a really bad message to Torontonians.”

Kinnear also blasted Tory for stating that, “choice is always a good thing for people.”

“Is it a good thing that people • see page 20

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by Mike Beggs

I t was a precursor to the mas-sive December 9 taxi driver demonstration that snarled

traffic across Toronto. But a peaceful, four-day hunger strike by a handful of drivers in Na-than Phillips Square served to underscore the desperate ur-gency of the industry’s call for Mayor John Tory and the gov-erning authorities to crack down on Uber X.

From December 1 to 4, a group of drivers (including Asafo Addai, Behrouz Khamseh, Sukhvir Thet-hi, Sirajul Haq, Danny Ryan, and Krishna Pullai) took part in this fast outside city hall, organized by the drivers’ group Taxi Action (with the support of almost all the industry’s fleet operators, broker-ages, and taxi drivers).

Having lost more than half their revenues to the convenient, cut-rate Uber X service over the past year, the drivers’ main objective was, “to bring soft pressure on the City to recognize they should ask for an injunction against Uber.”

After having a similar a Supe-rior Court application turned down last year, on September 30 Toronto Council passed a motion for staff to examine how to bring Uber into the bylaw over the next six months – but also passed a motion declar-ing Uber X illegal (a position put forward by Mayor John Tory him-self).

Addai deemed their strike a suc-cess, for drawing attention to this all-important issue.

“The Mayor commented on it, and that was enough,” he says. “We got his attention, and that was all we were asking for.”

On Day 2, Tory told the media he didn’t regard their actions as a way to speed up the process of bringing Uber under regulatory purview.

And while this may have been a passive demonstration, the driv-ers had to live through some harsh conditions -- including heavy pres-sure from security staff at city hall, to adhere to the bylaw.

The protesters set up a tent which the authorities soon took down; and they were subsequently shuttled “back and forth like a ten-nis ball.” On Night 1, they were al-lowed to sleep on a covered stage to shelter from the rain; but from then on slept in sleeping bags on the hard concrete of Nathan Phil-lips Square. Security came by ev-ery night at midnight to wake them up, as per bylaw regulations.

“Not only did we not eat, we were not allowed to sleep also,” Addai relates.

“As long as we stayed vigilant, they were okay with that. We had to take turns sleeping, and have some guys stay awake….The se-curity guards were very, very ag-gressive.”

Councillors Jim Karygiannis, Giorgio Mammoliti, and Janet Davis turned out at a press con-ference, to show their support for the drivers. Also on hand, Toronto Taxi Alliance spokesperson Rita Smith said the councillors were “very encouraging”, and urged the drivers not to break any rules.

“The fact they came out and spoke and understood their plight, you could see the morale of the drivers lift,” she says.

“(Councillor) Karygiannis came out the first night, and stayed for seven hours with the drivers. It wasn’t just lip service.”

The protest wrapped up after 75 hours, with the drivers sharing cer-emonial tea and cookies.

But not before a near tragedy, when Haq suffered a heart attack and was rushed to hospital. He had ended up in hospital two nights previously, but rejoined the protest the following day.

“How sad when these men of in-tegrity put their bodies on the line, to the point of having heart attacks to lobby the politicians,” Smith adds.

“It’s very sad when people get that desperate,” agrees veteran

owner/operator Frank Kelly.City Taxi owner Avtar Sekhon

was among the industry members who dropped down to show their support in the war against Uber X.

“The Mayor said they’re illegal. Why don’t you shut them down?” he said.

“What are we supposed to do, if they don’t listen?”

Khamseh, the president of Taxi Action, says there could be further protests from the city’s cabbies.

“We have a campaign here, the campaign is not over yet. We do all these things to inform the public, and bring justice to this issue,” he comments.

“The Mayor doesn’t realize what he’s doing. It’s becoming so obvious, Toronto has a really one-sided Mayor.”

According to Khamseh, their next step is waiting to see if a court challenge materializes.

“They’re all trying to buy time,” he says of the city hall fathers. “What I don’t understand is, we have 5,400 licensed taxis, and the drivers can’t make a living. The City did a study a few years ago that found out we have enough taxis. So what’s the idea here, for the City to go do another study that (answers) to Uber?” he adds.

“I think there’s something else going on,” he alleges. “I think the City is looking for a new source of revenues. They want to deregu-late the taxi industry, and rent out thousands and thousands of plates to the drivers.”

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Specialty Service Inc.

by Mike Beggs

A staff recommendation to consider an Open En-try Deregulation of the

Town’s taxi industry received a rough ride at the December 7 meeting of Oakville’s Admin-istrative Services Committee (ASC).

The Committee was addressing a November 18 report, “The Taxi Industry and Emerging Technolo-gies”, in which the Clerk’s De-partment recommended that staff investigate Open Entry Deregu-lation (Option No. 3 among four being considered) and report back to Council by the third quarter of 2016.

While Uber X has been a big hit with GTA consumers, the compa-ny’s brazen disregard for bylaws, taxes and proper commercial in-surance has infuriated and dis-tressed their licensed counterparts – who say they’ve lost as much as half of their business to this San Francisco-based interloper.

The four options examined by Oakville staff for dealing with so-called Transportation Network Companies (TNC’s) include: 1. Status Quo 2. License TNC’s and their vehicles3. Open entry deregulation4. Deregulate taxi industry

Although the committee ulti-mately approved Mayor Rob Bur-ton’s recommendation to imple-ment Option No. 2, even the mere mention of the “D” word had in-dustry members up in arms.

In a November 22 letter to the town, Oakville resident (and Mis-sissauga plate-holder) Peter Pellier stood behind the status quo.

“Striking a balance between the provision of timely service and the opportunity to ensure a reasonable living represents sound policy, widely embraced by municipali-ties from Victoria to St. John’s,” he wrote.

“Given the fact study after study demonstrates the deleterious con-sequences associated with the open entry regulatory model, why is staff even investigating the pos-sibility of recommending it?”

On the road since 1974, owner/operator Al Prior agreed that,

“their recommendations are com-pletely out of line.” He questioned why the Town is considering adopting a model designed in the U.S., “whereas other Ontario mu-nicipalities are not.”

“This (staff report) is supposed to come out in the third quarter of 2016. How can we compete with a company worth $52-billion?” he asked.

Long-time owner/operator James Bolan echoed the recurring concerns about Uber X’ safety standards, insurance, and surge pricing during peak and crisis pe-riods.

“Here in Canada, we’re known as compassionate people. You’ve heard stories about how Uber takes that compassion and com-pletely destroys it,” he said. “Uber suddenly goes out and quadruples its price, and that’s when we need them the most.”

He noted that licensed cabbies have already taken a hit in recent years, with the Town having re-duced the plate per population ra-tio from 1to 2,800 people, to 1 per 1,300.

“My recommendation is leave this thing as it is. Let the taxi driv-ers do the driving. We’ve got GPS, too,” he added.

Driver Ergun Duzenli ques-tioned Bylaw services manager Jim Barry, “How many staff does he operate with in the town of Oakville? Does he need 10, or 100 members? If he has 100, and is working only two hours a week, how can people make a living?

“We are the regular people, we’re trying to make a living and we don’t really need open entry,” he said. “Anybody can drive ille-gally with Uber X, with no bound-aries.”

Ex-Oakville driver Cuaranjit Sandhu argued that the Town al-ready has “a lot of taxis”. And while licensed drivers “quietly go about their work”, he alleged that Uber, “comes across as a vigilante, and a bully.”

“I ask the councillors to look at the licensed drivers as grass roots ambassadors promoting the town of Oakville,” he added. “We can’t afford to fail on these issues any-more. Uber is playing the race to

the bottom game.”The Town of Oakville has regu-

lated taxis since 1965.A town-wide survey was con-

ducted in September 2015 ad-dressing issues of customer satis-faction, safety, accessibility, and the use of Uber. ‘Throughout the consultation, the growing impact of Uber was identified as the larg-est threat to the taxicab industry,” the report reads.

Staff advocated that “A strategy to deal with emerging technolo-gies for ridesharing programs is required, before further changes can be made to Oakville’s taxicab bylaw.”

“Staff believes that Option No. 3 can best address taxicab industry concerns, and recommends further investigation, including an imple-mentation strategy.”

The report noted that commer-cial insurance has been one of the most significant health and safety concerns for the public, when us-ing a TNC. And in late October, Aviva Insurance announced it has begun cracking down on Uber X drivers caught without commer-cial insurance, and voided the pol-icies of two such drivers.

In a deputation, Chris Scha-fer, Uber’s manager of Canadian public policy advised that Uber has an interim insurance policy in place, which provides $5-million in contingent liability insurance for its drivers, if an accident oc-curs. Under this “umbrella” plan, he explained a driver’s personal policy would be the first avenue of coverage, and where a driver’s policy denies the claim, Uber’s contingent policy would become primary.

“We’re now working with Intact Insurance on something similar to the U.S. pay-as-you-go plan, al-lowing ridesharing insurance to be significantly cheaper,” he added. “Unlike taxi drivers, (our partners) aren’t out there 24x7, most Uber drivers drive 10 hours per week, or less. An extensive 24-hour cover-age doesn’t make sense.”

Uber is now regulated in more than 60 U.S. jurisdictions. While indicating his support for a licens-ing regime, Schafer said there are some areas (including supply caps,

and price caps) that would not fit with Uber’s business model.

Staff advised that, “It is un-likely either licensing option (No. 1 or 2) would result in a positive stakeholder outcome, or long-term resolution.” They questioned how effective enforcement could be against Uber X operators.

“Open entry deregulation re-moves limits on the number of taxi plates, while maintaining con-sumer protection, and health and safety standards,” the report reads.

“Taxi numbers may fluctuate based on demand, but all licensed vehicles would meet a predeter-mined regulatory standard.”

Variations of open entry deregu-lation have been implemented in such U.S. cities as Washington, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Orange County, and Sacramento. “The most significant concern of open entry deregulation is an overpopu-lation of licensed taxi operators, resulting in lower incomes and re-duced service quality,” the report continued.

Schafer observed that while Op-tion 2 “can get you there”, “No. 3, frankly, is a constructive conversa-tion to be had, “and a way to level the playing field that doesn’t stick

heads in the sand” about the popu-larity of this new app technology.

He noted that Niagara West-Glanbrook MPP Tim Hudak’s Pri-vate Members Bill 131(the Oppor-tunity In The Sharing Economy Act) supporting services like Uber and Air BnB, has passed second reading and is headed to commit-tee.

“The intent of that piece of leg-islation says there are benefits to the sharing economy, and to (regu-late it) province-wide,” he told the Committee. “It’s so we don’t have a million jurisdictions with different laws, recognizing that transportation isn’t so localized anymore.”

According to Schafer, Uber now does 1 million trips a month across the GTA, and is adding 15,000 to 20,000 new users a week. Though the survey found Oakville has ad-equate taxi service. Schafer claims his company’s ETA on a call is un-der 4 minutes.

“People like it. People want it. It’s beneficial from a consumer’s perspective,” he added.

However, 90 percent of the peo-ple surveyed said they were happy with the taxi service in Oakville.

• see page 16

Oakville to study licensing TNCs and their vehicles

6 January 2016 Editorial John Q. Duffy

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To the editor,

On August 28th, 1963, an estimated 250,000 pro-testors, led by Dr. Martin

Luther King, marched on Wash-ington in search of fundamen-tal justice. It culminated in Dr. King’s historic, “I have a dream” speech that led directly to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Doubt-less, commuter traffic was incon-venienced on that fateful day.

On Wednesday, December 9th, members of the Toronto taxi in-dustry, at their wit’s end over the City’s abject failure to uphold the rule of law as it applies to Uber Technologies Inc., staged a protest that, perforce, disrupted commuter traffic. Like those who marched on Washington, their objective was a desire for fundamental justice.

Currently, Uber operates in di-

rect contravention of Toronto’s Municipal Code 545, Articles V11 and V111, which regulates the pro-vision of taxicab service. When told to cease and desist, Uber flatly refused, choosing instead to ignore consumer health, safety and pro-tection in favour of boosting prof-its. This entails the outright thiev-ery of business that is the rightful purview of licensed cabbies.

When the rule of law has been so flagrantly flouted; when the economic well-being of thou-sands of licensed cabbies has been thrown into complete disarray by the actions of a lawbreaker, surely, the commuting public cannot cry foul because their lives have been temporarily disrupted by those seeking justice through legitimate means.

Peter D. Pellier

Don’t blame strikers for seeking fundamental justice

To the editor,

I find it paradoxical that regu-latory bodies such as the City of Toronto, and oversight

bodies such as the Competition Bureau, sanction any consider-

ation of actions that would be contrary to the public good.

Surge pricing of a public ser-vice that is considered an essential service by a large portion of the population is a concept that will

• see page 17

Concept of greater public good lost in Uber debate

Much happened over the past month we find very interesting, for a number of reasons.

Mayor John Tory publically expressed frustration with Uber over the lack of progress in ongoing discussions (negotiations?) over proposed new city regulations governing Uber and its various operations in the city. He said he was starting to think Uber is acting “in bad faith” with its apparent stalling tactics.

Here’s a thought for the City to consider: since it is the government, with both the power and responsibility to ensure the public is served safely and well, the guiding principle is that the public interest comes first, not the wishes of any individual company. So the appropriate thing to do is bring in the law and duke it out, if need be, in court. It is not a negotiation. The regulated may not like the laws, but just like with regular taxis, they must be told to obey the law, or else.

Finally, and belatedly, Tracey Cook, Executive Director of Mu-nicipal, Licensing and Standards, the regulatory body responsible for enforcing licensing bylaws, has come out and stated that Uber is not a licensed brokerage under law passed in September 2015, and Uber X is an illegal service. She stated her enforcement officers would be enforcing the law as it now stands.

After an 11 hour, noisy and highly disruptive demonstration by taxi and limousine drivers, not just from Toronto but also from the Airport and surrounding municipalities, a meeting of a few representatives of the taxi industry with Police Chief Saunders was granted.

The Chief later said the meeting was “informative.” But he offered scant comfort to the industry that he would (or could) do anything substantial to enforce the laws. He is waiting for various court cases to be resolved before he decides how police will handle allegedly ille-gal app-based passenger services. Taxi representatives at the meeting, like ITW’s Sajid Mughal and fleet operator Sam Moini, later hinted at further disruptions should visible enforcement progress not be seen

On the really big downside, many in the general public were not impressed with the demo, with some saying they would start using Uber if cab drivers acted this way. One note: many in the media said the protest was “anti-Uber.” In fact, the protest was against City Hall inaction in dealing with the Uber situation, with Mayor Tory taking most of the blame.

Meanwhile, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FIS-CO), which oversees insurance matters provincially, is cautioning Uber drivers and the public about the risks they are taking with im-properly insured vehicles.

FISCO states, “Ride-Sharing Drivers & Passengers: Standard Auto Insurance Policy excludes coverage when the automobile is used to carry paying passengers or used as a taxi.” (We are told Uber has informed its drivers that it will cover them in cases of accidents. We have no details of this coverage.)

FISCO also states, “If you are intending to participate in a ride-sharing service as a driver, you should check with your auto insurance representative to ensure you have proper insurance that protects the driver, passenger and others. It’s also a good idea to seek independent legal advice before you sign on. Ensure you are fully informed before participating in a ride-sharing service.”

Uber has launched its “UberHop” shuttle service, in a direct chal-lenge to the Toronto Transit Commission’s legal monopoly on people moving services. (Where have we heard this before? Oh, in these pages months ago.) We expect TTC lawyers are working overtime on this one.

Finally, we are increasingly concerned about M.P.P. Tim Hudak’s Bill 131 that effectively would legalize Uber-type services, among other businesses, (towing, AirBnB, etc.) while effectively gutting mu-nicipal zoning and licensing bylaws province-wide.

Our comment on all of this is that the world is rapidly changing and old business and governance models must adapt or become irrelevant. This does not mean the world must bow down to Uber’s self-serving free market business model, however. Government must adapt by moving promptly to insure essential regulatory controls are in place to protect the public interest and there is absolutely no way the public interest will be served by Uber’s rapacious demands for an open entry regulatory system. Happy New Year!

Is anybody listening?

Further details of the Private Members Bill put for-ward by Conservative MPP Tim Hudak (Bill 131, Opportunity in the Sharing Economy Act, 2015)

dealing with the so-called ridesharing economy and for hire transportation services are now available, and it is worse legislation than I had imagined it could be.

Some observers don’t think the bill will go anywhere and that it may die in committee, or be so modified as to be rela-tively innocuous. I’m not so sure, particularly as the Prov-ince knows it has a huge mess on its hands, particularly with taxis in Ontario.

I am pretty sure some aspects of the bill will get huge opposition from the hotel industry province-wide. I’m also expecting massive opposition from the established taxicab industry and huge support from Uber and like app-based dispatch services.

In fact, it is a grab bag wish list that does not only deal with taxis. It also deals with AirBnB and tow trucks, among other services. The thing is 37 pages long and takes a long time to read and comprehend.

This is a gross oversimplification, but the way I see it now, (subject to change as I look at it more) it is a blueprint to take transportation and road services and hotel licensing away from municipalities across the province, and regulate these businesses at the provincial level.

Among other effects, it will take licensing revenues out of the hands of cities and put this money into provincial gov-ernment coffers, directly or indirectly. I am certain, unless the bill is hugely modified, cab drivers and the quality of the service they provide, will quickly go downhill. As well, and beyond any doubt, taxicab plate owners are going to be bankrupted should this bill be passed.

The bill is so complicated, it is impossible to summarize intelligently in this short space, so I’ll just deal a bit with some of the taxi-related portions of the proposed law, specifically Trans-portation Network Companies (app-based service providers).

It also has some gaping holes demanding answers, which I will briefly touch on right now. Who is going to enforce these new laws? The O.P.P? MLS-style Enforce-ment Officers? Who is going to inspect vehicles for mechanical fitness? How often? Who is going to train taxicab drivers, if they are

trained at all? How much will licenses cost? Is this just an excuse to impose idiotic, and universally

failed, open-entry on taxis (in particular).

Who is going to be responsible for wheelchair and other accessible transportation, including purchase of the vehi-cles, and are able-bodied customers going to use these vans as they are not using them now?

What are the insurance requirements going to be? Who is going to set fares (cities are prohibited from setting fares for TNCs)?

I’ll also spend the time in January to report fully on what Hudak is proposing, with possible government support.

First, “Transportation Network” companies (like Uber and Lyft) would be provincially licensed.

“Transportation network” means, according to the draft act, “a digital network or other electronic means that allows persons to arrange to receive transportation, for compensa-tion, in a transportation network vehicle.”

Drivers working for them will have an “operating permit” issued by the company, must have proper insurance and a clean criminal and driving record. (No municipal license

is required.) The company can revoke this permit without appeal. (This is a union organizer’s delight!)

It looks as if the TNC’s will NOT be required to provide accessible vehicles. They will not be called taxis.

In short, cities will be kicked out of the licensing business, at least for app-based TNCs.

This proposed Act might just as well have been drafted by the TNCs with the legislature being told to pass it or else.

A further note, possibly on the positive side: having the Province control taxis, limos and wheelchair accessible services, etc., could mean they will be better regulated. They couldn’t do worse than the City Of Toronto has done over the decades, could they?

We all can recall previous resounding models of good government from the Liberal Party, what with EHealth, and AirOrang, and power plant closures, and some stupid tech-nology building that is costing us millions, (the list does go on and on) can’t we?

Finally, we still have no idea if and/or how Metrolinx will fit into the picture. I would not be at all surprised if taxis, limos and tow trucks were not, at least in Southern Ontario, folded under the Metrolinx umbrella, with a license that allows open access to all markets, perhaps between Niagara Falls and Port Hope, and up to Barrie. It actually would make some kind of sense to do this.

I’ve run out of space and there is so very much more that needs saying about this Act so more at a future date.

No hearing date(s) have yet been set for the public and/or affected industries to make their views known to the gov-ernment. Those who do want to make deputations to the committee do, however, need to get their names on to the committee’s list, the sooner the better.

Contact Information For the Standing Committee on Fi-nance and Economic Affairs dealing with Bill 131 is: Phone Number: 416-325-3500. And the Committee Secretary’s Email is isrkkoch@ola.org.

I do urge all to look at this bill as proposed, and if you have comments, pass them along. You will undoubtedly notice things I have missed. Go to the Committee on Economic Affairs website at www.ontla.on.ca.

I hope for a happy and pros-perous New Year for all.

7 January 2016Comment

REAR VIEW

By John Proos

I t was the morning of December 14th and the number one item on the news was Uber. I started to channel-surf the news stations, both TV and talk-radio. It was

all Uber, Uber, Uber; millions of dollars worth of free publicity from media shills. Indeed, our tech-innovative benefactor was launching “Uber-hop”, the latest addi-tion to our warm and fuzzy “sharing” economy. Five passenger Uber vans would leave four selected condo hubs taking “sharers” at five dollars each to the down-town bank towers during the rush hours. News items in-cluded the footnote that cabdrivers are upset yet again.

I clicked onto CTV and there was “investigative” reporter John Musselman posing in front of a line-up of empty cabs on the Distillery cab stand on Trinity Street facing Mill Street. He mindlessly recited the Uber promotion. Never oc-

curred to him to walk over to a cab and ask the driver how much it would run on the meter to go to Bay and Wellington. It would be seven or eight dollars depending on traffic and red lights. So a legal taxi, that can legally take four passen-gers, would cost each passenger only two dollars. A legal van-taxi would charge two dollars more for the fifth pas-senger. But it would still come to two dollars each. So why would five strangers pay a total of $25 to Uber?

If this type of sharing was viable, why didn’t it catch on long ago? Those taxis are always sitting there. Why don’t the first four people just climb into the top legal cab on the stand and pay two dollars each? Because it is too difficult to co-ordinate. In this rapid age of instant impulse gratifica-tion, seconds count. One of the touted advantages of Uber is that the passenger does not have to spend ten seconds fumbling around in his pocket for cash to pay a cab driver. With Uber it is on your credit card. You just exit and save all

those seconds. You can forget about quickly and efficiently gathering five strangers into an Uber van and charging them five dollars each.

From the condo canyon named Liberty Village to King-Bay-Wellington Village the fare would run maybe twelve dollars on a legal taxi meter depending again on streetcars and red lights. This still beats Uber and don’t think those well-heeled, grasping banksters, corporate lawyers and stockbrokers do not care about saving loonies. The more they get, the more they want. This Uber start-up is not vi-able and I am sure they know it. But the million dollars of saturation media coverage is worth it. Just as it was during the Uber car-pool back during the Pan American Games. If that model was any success, it would still be in use today.

This all reminds me of Dial-a-bus, an Ontario government brainwave from thirty years ago. The concept sounded great

• see page 13

Uber knows very well it pays to have friends in high places

Hudak’s proposed ‘sharing economy’ a can of worms for everybody

8 January 2016

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Accessibility advocates have argued for years that on-demand car compa-

nies don’t serve people with dis-abilities well. Now there’s a fig-ure to back them up. According to a recent report, the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles for hire in San Francisco fell sig-nificantly in the past few years, all while services like Uber and Lyft were rapidly expanding in the area.

“This is more urgent than people realize,” Carol Tyson, policy direc-tor for the United Spinal Associa-tion, told The Huffington Post.

Tyson, the author of a Mobility-Lab.org post about this issue, sits on the Disability Advisory Com-mittee for the District of Columbia Taxicab Commission. That group’s report, published in October, said that San Francisco’s wheelchair-friendly cabs dropped from 100 in 2013 to just 64 in 2015.

While Uber has introduced lim-ited offerings for passengers with disabilities in some cities, it and other on-demand car services don’t currently operate under the same accessibility rules that cab com-panies do. There’s no mandate for Uber, Lyft or similar startups to in-clude wheelchair-ready cars in their fleets. What’s more, the potential for on-demand startups to drive taxi companies into bankruptcy is

no longer theoretical: More than 1 million Uber drivers now handle 2 million rides every day around the world.

If what’s happened in San Fran-cisco is replicated in other cities, more than 3.3 million American adults who use a wheelchair will be affected. If that’s the outcome, on-demand services like Uber will have made life harder for these people.

Taxi companies are considered a means of public accommodation under the Americans with Dis-abilities Act (ADA) and therefore must include accessible cars in their fleets. Uber acknowledged to HuffPost that it is subject to and complies with the law as a technol-ogy company, ensuring that its apps --but not its vehicles -- are acces-sible to Americans with disabilities.

That position may not sit well in some cities.

“Private sedan operators are a part of the District’s transportation ecosystem and, as such, must be accessible to customers with a dis-ability,” Neville Waters, a spokes-person at the Taxicab Commission of the District of Columbia, told HuffPost.

Uber hasn’t been sitting idle on this issue. As Wired reported in Au-gust, Uber now operates UberAs-sist pilots in seven U.S. cities and five Australian cities, offering cars designed to better meet the needs of

senior citizens and people with dis-abilities. Unlike an accessible van, however, UberAssist vehicles don’t have ramps: They accommodate only folding wheelchairs, walkers and scooters.

Uber also provides its drivers with accessibility materials, and a section of its Code of Conduct pro-hibits discrimination when serving riders with disabilities.

Lyft did not reply to repeated re-quests for comment on this or other issues.

Neither ride-hailing company provided data on the total number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles available through their apps or daily rides requested in these par-ticular cars. (In the past, Uber has lobbied against being forced to dis-close ridership data to regulators.)

“Uber is committed to providing increased transportation options for everyone through the use of Uber’s app,” a company spokesperson said. “Our cross-functional accessi-bility team is dedicated to leverag-ing technology to increase the mo-bility, efficiency and freedom of all riders and drivers with accessibility needs.”

What that actually means in prac-tice will be tested in the year ahead.

While the D.C. advisory commit-tee’s research found that demand for taxi medallions for wheelchair-accessible cars had plummeted in New York City, the Big Apple’s

Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) expects cabs to provide ac-cessibility options well into the fu-ture.

“The NYC TLC and mayoral administration have committed to a 50 percent wheelchair-accessible taxi fleet by the year 2020, accom-plished through the attrition and scheduled replacement of retir-ing cabs,” Allan J. Fromberg, the TLC’s deputy commissioner for public affairs, told HuffPost. The city plans to offer a $14,000 sub-sidy to individuals for purchasing a wheelchair-accessible version of NYC’s new standard taxi model.

Other cities are using federal funds, tax credits, incentives and governmental mandates to support and increase the number of public wheelchair-accessible vehicles on the roads.

For instance, although D.C. has struggled to meet its deadlines, as of Nov. 6, the city has awarded 90 grants to purchase new wheelchair-accessible cabs, retrofit existing ve-hicles or offset rental costs.

Now that Uber is expressing in-terest in city paratransit networks, the company’s policies are receiv-ing more scrutiny from regulators.

“My real concern as a disability advocate is that this is a company that is refusing to admit it needs to comply with the ADA, either as a transportation company or public accommodation,” Tyson told Huff-

Post, “and yet this is a company that wants to provide service to dis-abled Americans.”

Uber, Airbnb and other pillars of the “on-demand economy” like to argue that self-regulation will be enough to protect consumers on these platforms, but it’s not clear that it’s working here.

The trouble is that when cities have tried to regulate these startups, the companies now mobilize the public using their own platforms to defeat laws they dislike, in addi-tion to lobbying for favorable rules in statehouses across the United States.

If we allow this public debate to be framed as a binary choice be-tween protecting incumbent cab companies against nimble innova-tors, the public will lose. On-de-mand startups can reduce discrimi-nation or embed it more deeply, depending on how they’re made and regulated. The companies that run them can also be key partners for cities to pool demand, reduce congestion and, one day, maybe even remove the need for car own-ership altogether.

Governments of the people, for the people, should work with these new engines of the economy to achieve desired societal outcomes. If cities don’t shift their response to this issue into overdrive, our neighbors may be left waiting at the curb.

Uber identified as being bad news for disability community

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by Mike Beggs

Industry members railed against the consideration of “Policy Alternatives for the

Regulation of Transportation Network Companies”, as laid out by consultant Matt Daus at the December 7 meeting of Mis-sissauga’s Public Vehicle Advi-sory Committee (PVAC).

With the firm Windels Marx, Lane & Mittendorf LLP , Daus walked the committee through seven such options to (principally) deal with Uber X service, which has made a massive impact in To-ronto and across the GTA over the past year.

Those alternatives include:• Capture Option, which would

capture TNC’s under current regulations, using amendments.

• Capture Option (Modified) under which TNC’s would be regulat-ed as brokers, and adhere to taxi and limo rules.

• New Licensing Category Op-tion (Equal Regulation) under which TNC’s would be consid-ered TNC brokers under a new license category

• New Licensing Category (Un-equal Regulation) providing a self-regulating framework for TNC’s to operate

• Pilot Project Option – under which TNCs would be intro-duced to the city for a prescribed period of time, while addressing service problems and gaps in the For Hire Vehicle and taxi indus-tries.

• Complete Deregulation Option.• Provincial Regulation Option.

Veteran owner Peter Pellier is among many who insist the City’s existing regulatory system is working just fine. In a recent let-ter to the PVAC, he stood behind the “Capture” model (Option 1), “which effectively regards Uber X for what it truly is, namely a taxi company currently operating in complete and total violation of the bylaw.”

He maintains Page 25 of the Windels Marx report “says it all”, where it’s noted that on two sepa-rate occasions Mississauga regu-latory officials approached Uber, advising them they were in viola-tion of the Public Vehicle Licens-ing Bylaw, only to be summarily ignored.

“No attempt whatsoever should be made to accommodate Uber’s business model, whether via amendments to the bylaw, or via the introduction of a parallel bylaw designed to deal with so-called “Transportation Network Companies”. To do so would have catastrophic consequences for

members of the local taxi indus-try,” he wrote.

“The traditional approach to dealing with lawbreakers is to stop them in their tracks, via the crimi-nal justice system…Since when do lawmakers accommodate law-breakers?”

Speaking for the Peel Taxi As-sociation, All-Star Taxi manager Mark Sexsmith concurred that the first Capture option would be best.

“We believe Mississauga and Brampton have done an excellent job moving forward with and man-aging their bylaws, and we would like to keep that system in place,” he said in a deputation. “If ride-sharing companies want to skirt the existing rules, we feel this is not the way things should be done in Canada.”

A-1 Airline Taxi & Van Fleet Services management observed that, “The City of Mississauga, historically, has had one of the most stable, fair and equitable taxi systems in Ontario” and that, “the new market entrants (Uber X) have taken the stability out of the industry, and have significantly damaged the faith in the system, in which industry members have trusted for years.”

Daus himself cited the parallel consultant’s report by Dan Hara & Associates which found that Mis-sissauga has “good” dispatching response times (with 90 percent of calls answered within 15 min-utes”), and an existing supply of plates that is “near the high end” (with 8.9 cabs per 10,000 people, compared to 3.3 cabs per 10,000 in Burlington).

He explained that the Capture option – currently being consid-ered by licensing staff in Toronto and Waterloo – would, on paper, bring the highly popular Uber X service to an end. But he warned, “There’s still going to be folks out there unlicensed.”

“It allows an element of self-regulation,” he explained. “There’s less regulation on TNC’s.”

He noted the controversial op-tion of Deregulation has been tried in many countries around the world, most of which (Ireland, New Zealand) have sought reregu-lation because the results were so disastrous.

“With Deregulation you elimi-nate licensing enforcement costs, but now you could have external costs related to traffic, pollution, labour, etc.,” he said.

“Any person can go on the road, with no obligation to be wheelchair accessible. And, there is confusion for consumers.”

For option 4, setting up regula-

tions for TNC’s, he reports that ap-proximately 20 U.S. states have ad-opted this “cookie cutter system”.

“It allows an element of self-regulation. There’s less regulation typically on TNC’s,” he says.

“There are issues if you don’t have the right levels of taxis. It could be a real problem.”

Having filed a 36-page response to the Windels Marx report, Uber Canada public policy manager Chris Schafer reiterated his claims that today’s app technology has al-lowed Uber to eliminate some of the traditional middle men from the process, and pass the savings on to consumers (a position refut-ed by many taxi industry members, who put the cost savings down to Uber X drivers not paying HST or expensive commercial insurance ).

With Uber taking an upfront fee of 20 to 25 percent per fare from its drivers, PVAC drivers rep Karam Punian observed, “It’s fair to say, Uber is a middle man.”

Schafer asserted that in its recent report, the Competition Bureau of Canada “got it right” in calling for the accommodation of Uber in city bylaws to encourage competition, and, “that its report should be add-ed to the conversation.”

But in a recent letter, Pellier urged the Competition Bureau to reconsider its position, stating that, “Both the travelling public and li-censed cabbies deserve far better than what you have proposed. The catastrophic effects of open entry fly in the face of public interest, common decency, and fundamen-tal justice.

“Open entry is predicated on the misbegotten belief that the taxi market is infinite in size. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Schafer also suggested that Uber’s technology offers the in-dustry, “a chance to do things dif-ferently than in the past.”

For example, he said the taxi industry may put new drivers through an onerous two to three-week training course, but, “Uber wins on all aspects of customer service.”

He argued that rather than crack-ing down on Uber, municipalities should no longer “handcuff “ li-censed cabs with stringent regula-tions. And he claimed that, with its drivers handling 1 million trips a month in Ontario, Uber’s $5-mil-lion contingent insurance is, “do-ing the job.”

“The reality is consumers like this service,” he added. “Do we stick our heads in the sand and pretend things haven’t changed?”

But PVAC Elected At Large rep Harsimar Singh Sethi countered

that, “(Uber), they do whatever they want. To change our good working system, I don’t under-stand that. Why?”

“Even the Third World coun-tries, they control this problem. I would request what we have start-ed, let’s finish it.”

In a letter to the Committee, PVAC citizen member Al Cormier argued that Uber seems to be well-received by the general public, and, “we have to think of how it can co-exist with conventional taxi services.”

“I would urge you to think not only of new regulations, or revi-sions to existing regulations but to also think of regulations that may have outlived their usefulness

and could be removed,” he wrote. “I am thinking of the number of taxis and fare levels in particular. By way of example, we do not set a limit on the number of restau-rants in Mississauga, nor do we set menu prices. We exercise enough control for the consumer through health regulations.

“And I have serious difficulty in seeing how one city can provide enough enforcement to success-fully curtail all technology apps that might negatively impact on the current taxi business model in their community.”

He also suggested that a PVAC subcommittee be struck to deal with this issue.

• see page 16

Mississauga’s PVAC grapples with Uber policy options

10 January 2016

• from page 2However, a young man named Simon

said he doesn’t use Uber.“I definitely think it needs to be regulat-

ed,” he stated. “It’s completely disingenu-ous to say one company can come down over another, and should be held to differ-ent standards. They’re undercutting.”

A retiree named Dan said he hasn’t tried Uber, but offered, “I think it’s pretty pa-thetic. The taxi guys work so hard. These guys pay a big fee every year. I just can’t figure out how Uber gets away with what they do.”

Standing outside an office on Yonge Street, Brock observed, “Things change. (But) it’s just encouraging more people to work for less, and less wages. I’m not a fan”

An Uber spokesperson suggested the cab industry would have been better served by working with the City and Uber on how to accommodate this new technol-ogy into the bylaw. Uber further responded by launching its latest unlicensed service, UberHop, which runs along four TTC bus routes, stirring up the ire of TTC transit workers union president Bob Kinnear.

Councillor Janet Davis suggested that with Uber X illegal as of September 30, Uber is acting in bad faith by keeping these “bandit” cabs on the road – and that the company still hasn’t taken out a bro-kerage license.

“We should have dealt with this in Oc-tober, not the spring,” she complained.

And, what’s next, after this year from hell for licensed taxi operators?

“It’s all bad news in the cab industry,” Kelly says. “John Tory talks about To-ronto being a world-class city. It’s not, because he’s treating people like second-class citizens.”

“Business is bad and the drivers are go-ing to get more desperate. Obviously, the issue is not going to go away. January is always notoriously slow -- and this is the worst Christmas season I’ve seen.”

Dhillon agreed that, “Definitely, we’re all feeling the pinch. The cash calls, the customers are not there, definitely. We’re in the holiday season. It’s a time to cel-ebrate, and we should be reaping in the benefits.”

Involved in the Toronto taxi industry since 1994, she suggested the City’s drop-

Hunger strikers Danny Ryan, Behrouz Khamseh, Sukhvir Theti, Sirajul Haq and Asafo Addai

11 January 2016

ping the ball on Uber is nothing new.“I mean, honestly, it’s technology and yes,

they are filling in some gaps. I understand that,” she said. “What I don’t see is the double stan-dard. We have an industry of people who follow the rules, and a company that doesn’t. I don’t un-derstand the City not supporting the system and the industry they created.”

“Why this is happening is, these people don’t have the knowledge of how the industry came about,” she continued. “The politicians are look-ing at this from a vacuum. They’re not seeing the big picture.”

City Taxi owner Avtar Sekhon noted that cit-ies like Mississauga, Hamilton, and Kitchener-Waterloo are watching what’s happening in To-ronto, and wondering why the bylaw isn’t being enforced against Uber X, when it was passed unanimously by Council.

“It’s the Mayor,” he alleged. “And Tracey Cook is (reportedly) taking home $180,000 a year. She’s going to speak the same language as the Mayor.”

Eisenberg’s solution?“If you want the City to listen to you, stop pay-

ing the renewals for the drivers. When they have to take everybody to court, what are they doing to do? Uber is running around doing it.”

12 January 2016

by Rita Smith

These weeks have been so busy, I have not found much time to write down what

I am thinking in all of this Taxi/Uber debacle.

The element that stands out most clearly, and most poignantly to me is the respect the taxi drivers have for the rule of law. The vast major-ity obey it to the LETTER – not just because they’ll be ticketed and fined and towed and dragged into court if they don’t; most actually have a deep respect for the laws of the land and want to see others obey them the same way they do.

This is the source of their great-est frustration with Uber X: Uber X disregards all laws. Municipal, provincial, federal. Traffic, insur-ance, taxation; Uber flouts the law at every turn. EVERY turn.

It’s not hard, looking at any crowd shot of a gathering of cab drivers, to see that the vast ma-jority of them come from other places. They love Canada and the Canadian dream; they came here with a purpose and they are work-ing hard, really hard, to realize the dream for themselves and their families.

Drivers who come here from na-

tions in which the political class directs the police force and uses it to their own political ends HATE this immoral link. “I came to Can-ada to get away from that,” I have heard so many times.

They are devastated – emotion-ally destroyed – to see this dynam-ic at work in their beloved Canada. John Tory has been a vocal, stri-dent supporter of one private sec-tor business – Uber – since the day after his election. His former cam-paign manager works for Uber. The Chief of Police is refusing to lay charges on Uber drivers break-ing multiple laws. You can read

into this anything you want: immi-grants from corrupt nations know something stinks when they see it, and they are outraged to be seeing it in Toronto. “I came to Canada to get away from that.” And yet, here it is again. This is not just a crush-ing disappointment, but a crisis of faith of epic proportions.

In addition to the deep disap-pointment at the failure of the Rule of Law in Toronto, the driv-ers know that much of the ecstatic acceptance of Uber (beyond the half-price scheme they are being allowed to implement, for which any cab driver would lose his li-cence) is the fact that many more Uber drivers are so-called original Canadians, as in white Canadians.

“It’s so nice to have a driver whose English I can understand” and “I’m so tired of smelly taxis and the reek of ethnic food” are common comments I have seen dozens of times following multi-ple news articles. The hurtful, bla-tantly racist subtext of these com-plaints could not be more obvious, and every brown taxi driver gets the message loud and clear.

Five brave men of principle and integrity staged a hunger strike outside City Hall in the first week of December. They got a little me-dia coverage; Jim Karygiannis, Giorgio Mammoliti and Janet Davis came out to listen to them and encourage them. They slept on cold concrete for three nights and went without food for four days. The oldest of them, Sirajul Haq (“Everybody just calls him Haq”), collapsed and was taken to hospi-tal in an ambulance.

A week later, 2,500 cab drivers demonstrated in downtown To-ronto, blocking traffic and chant-ing in the Council Chamber. This received considerably more me-dia attention. The Chief of Police, who had flatly refused to meet with the industry previously, was quickly asked by John Tory to set up a meeting. Surely a lesson has been learned: peaceful protest is ignored. Anarchist mayhem rules the day.

But, “I came to Canada to get away from that.”

Welcome to Toronto.

Ugly subtext of Uber battle does not reflect well on Torontonians

13 January 2016

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• from page 7on paper and in government of-fices. Suburban residents could just pick up the phone and dial a mini-bus cruising suburbia to take them to the nearest subway station. Great for the environment and for reducing traffic congestion. Only it was totally unviable financially and resulted in total failure. I still recall the shiny Dial-a-bus proudly on display at the Better Living Centre at the CNE. It was painted in government green with white stripes and a pretty trillium on the door. It went extinct in a hurry, just like the dodo bird, just like Den-zil Minnan-Wong’s print-out taxi meter.

Not to be left out was Uber’s top salesman, John Tory, who inciden-tally doubles as Toronto’s mayor. In a TV sound-bite, Tory proudly proclaimed that Uber had 300,000 customers and 16,000 drivers and therefore you can’t just ban them. The scenario is unfolding just as scripted. The name of the game is delay, delay, delay. City council has voted that Uber is operating illegally, but there is no enforce-ment. New legislation is coming in three months; no, six months;

no, next year. With Uber’s billions they can buy all the influence, delays and laws they want. Uber doesn’t have to obey the law. On the contrary, the City must change the laws to suit Uber.

At this same time, the Ontario nanny-state is also moving for-ward with the times. In a smarmy, syrupy-sweet tone of voice more appropriate for addressing a kin-dergarten class, chief nanny Kath-leen Wynne announced to the sheeple that they are now allowed to buy beer in grocery stores. But not just any grocery store. Only a select few that can navigate the bureaucratic red tape. And then you can only buy six-packs. After all, the government’s social engi-neering role is to ensure “social re-sponsibility” among the citizenry. Can’t lengthen the leash too far.

Yes, the government control freaks are very concerned about maintaining “social responsibil-ity.” The government’s primary task is to ensure “consumer pro-tection” and “public safety.” This is why you can only buy a six-pack at a grocery store. Public safety, of course. On the other hand, On-tario residents can now be driven

around in a bandit-taxi opera-tion that requires no licensing, no commercial insurance, no vehicle inspections, no driver vetting; amongst other illegalities. This is the influence Uber can wield with their billions. Likewise, during the media frenzy over Uber-hop, not one single reporter asked about all

these Uber vans having no munici-pal licenses, no commercial insur-ance, no mechanical inspections. Are they all that stupid or do they know when to keep quiet?

Who could have predicted that the City and its police force would selectively stop enforcing such fun-damental laws? Actually, anybody aware of the extent of government corruption could have predicted it. On this theme, I conclude with one final note about how our govern-ments are really run.

Usually the Ontario Liberals work together in a buddy sys-tem with unions, be they teach-ers’ unions or public bureaucrat unions. This follows from the fact that they all feed voraciously from the same taxpayer-funded trough. Periodically the monopoly-privi-leged public unions get too greedy and spats occur with the provin-cial Liberals. Sometimes the dirty laundry is aired in public. Such was the case last December, 2014, when the Ontario Public Services Employees Union placed the fol-lowing ad in the Toronto Star. I quote: “Last week, Ontario’s Audi-tor General reported that our Lib-eral government has paid $8 billion too much for 75 major infrastruc-ture projects. The Liberals picked private companies to manage and finance the construction of schools

and hospitals. Then they let go of the purse strings. Now we all have to pay.

“It is the most expensive scandal in our history. It was no accident. The Liberals have created a boom-ing ‘privatization industry’ that sees government as its very own cash cow. It’s an exclusive group of law firms and accountants, bankers and builders, think tanks and former politicians. They are not elected. But they are shaping government decisions. And they are getting rich doing it. The money they are rak-ing in comes right out of the public services we all pay for. We need to know who is pushing these shady deals. We need to know who is agreeing to them. We need to know how the two sides come together.”

This is the way government op-erates in the backrooms, behind the scenes. In such an environment of corruption is it any wonder that Uber’s billions get the results they desire? The result is that tens of thousands of Ontario cabdrivers are losing their incomes, often together with pension plans represented by plate ownership. Lifelong middle class jobs are eliminated to be re-placed by unstable, unreliable, part-time, top-up transient Mcjobs with no security of income for anyone other than a handful of American billionaires.

14 January 2016

Press ReleaseDecember 21, 2015 – The Toronto Taxi Alliance (TTA) has developed a list of suggested “2016 New Year’s Reso-lutions,” to improve customer service and is sharing them with the industry in an effort to address some of the most common complaints heard in the past year.

“We’ve heard lots from the public this year, and we are listening,” says Gail Souter, president of the TTA. “We have developed a 6 Point Plan to promote positive changes in the taxi industry. While public safety remains the taxi industry’s most important concern, our 6 Point Plan will focus on:• accepting the first available customer regardless of where they are going;• providing cars which are clean inside and out;• maintaining a courteous, attentive attitude;• ensuring drivers’ cellphones are turned off while a cus-tomer is aboard;• readily accept all forms of payment – cash, credit card or debit; • respecting cyclists and staying out of bike lanes.

“From street hails to telephone dispatch to smartphone apps and all other innovations of the taxi industry across the decades, we have worked to evolve and improve service levels. Toronto has one of the best taxi services in the world that is fully inclusive; but we can do better, and we are lis-tening to consumers.”

Souter notes that Toronto’s licensed taxi industry contin-ues to invest in and deliver fundamental services residents have come to expect from ground transportation providers including:• inclusive, traditional services to seniors and individuals who can’t access smart phone apps;• inclusive payment options by cash, credit or debit card;• inclusive, on-demand accessible service for people with disabilities;

• maintaining licensed, inspected vehicles;• providing drivers who have extensive police background checks; • operating with expensive commercial insurance for the safety of the public.

With regard to refusal of short fares, Souter believes the current situation is being caused by a combination of lack of enforcement by City bylaw officers and the extreme plunge in income drivers have seen since Uber X arrived in To-ronto. “Drivers who are making half of what they made last year are taking the risk of refusing short fares because to stay afloat financially, they really need those longer fares. This dynamic is terrible for our industry, very bad public re-lations at a time when we need to be doing the best job pos-sible. We encourage anyone refused a short fare to record the cab number which is on the door, and report it to the cab brokerage and/or the City. With a combination of public awareness and enforcement, we can fix this problem.”

The second action item on the list is the smell of taxi cabs: “They are public vehicles, most of them on the road 24/7 for their five year life cycle. It’s a challenge, but again, we can work on it.”

The TTA has made an arrangement with Mr. Shine, the car wash under Toronto City Hall, to develop a “30/30” package: Mr. Shine manager Peter Avramis says, “We’ve put together a special taxi package at $23.99 plus HST, which includes detailing and deodorizing, and it will take less than 30 minutes.” (The standard detail package costs $50 and takes an hour, which is too long for working cab-bies to be off the road.)

“We also validate parking, so taxi drivers can get in free, pay less than $30 for a comprehensive clean including de-odorizing, and be out in 30 minutes. We call it the ‘Mr. Shine Express Taxi Service,’” Avramis says.

With regard to encouraging drivers to adopt a more

friendly attitude, Souter is working with industry partners to develop a training program which will invite drivers to work on their people skills and attitudes.

“Some of our drivers are great, 100 percent committed to providing pleasant service. Others could use a refresher. We believe every person is responsible for their own attitude and everyone can choose to do better, for the benefit of their own profitability and for the benefit of the taxi industry as a whole,” she points out. “Our customers deserve a pleasant ride with an attentive driver.”

Encouraging drivers to stay off of their cell phones is part of good service, she notes. “Taxi drivers work long hours when most Canadians are already home. They miss their families and often use cell phones to stay in touch. How-ever, riders mention how much they dislike this. We urge drivers to use their cell phones at times when they do not have a fare in their cab.”

With regard to having a working credit card machine, “This is a necessity in 2015. The popularity of apps which allow riders to pay through a pre-registered credit card has exploded. Every cab driver in Toronto needs to have a work-ing credit card machine and the TTA is in discussions with service providers to work out a convenient deal with cab-bies.”

Souter does note, however, that most senior citizens and many other people do not wish to use credit cards for taxi fares. “We have to make sure they have a cash option,” she points out.

Bike lanes are a relatively recent phenomenon, and cab drivers have traditionally been allowed extra access to the inside lanes of Toronto streets in order to pick up or dis-charge passengers, Souter points out. “So drivers and cy-clists are learning how to share the curb lane. It’s a ‘growing pain’ for Toronto, one that everyone supports. It’s a matter of awareness and education.”

TTA launches new campaign to improve customer service

15 January 2016

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To the editor.(Editor’s note: This is an open letter to John Pecman, Commis-sioner of Competition, Competi-tion Bureau Canada, regarding the bureau’s recent White Paper on the regulation of the taxi in-dustry.)

Dear Mr. Pecman:

By way of introduction, I have been a member of the Mississauga taxi

industry since 1969, currently retired, but still in possession of my taxicab owner’s licences. Both the City or Mississauga and the Town of Oakville, where I live, are in the throes of de-ciding how to handle so-called ridesharing companies, such as Uber Technologies, whose Uber X operation currently operates at will, in the absence of mu-nicipal and provincial regula-tions, much to the detriment of both the travelling public, and hard-working members of as-sorted taxi industries across the country.

In a recent statement, which carries the gravitas of the Com-petition Bureau, you urged accep-tance of an open entry system, as a means of accommodating Uber X, and similar so-called technol-ogy platform companies, who are in the business of providing taxi service to the general public, dem-onstrating no regard for the del-eterious consequences of such a proposal to licensed cabbies across Canada, whose livelihoods would be significantly impacted.

Regulating the number of cabs operating in each municipality by striking a balance between the de-mand for service and the opportu-nity to earn a reasonable living, is sound public policy that has served Canadian communities well for several decades. It effectively ad-dresses principles associated with consumer safety and protection. A regulated cab is operated by a driv-er who has been screened, trained and licensed; the cab itself is prop-erly insured, subject to periodic mechanical fitness inspections and age limitation provisions, and is equipped with a video surveillance camera, all in the public interest. Such regulation comes at a cost to the operator, and so, to ensure a re-turn on investment, the number of licensed cabs is controlled.

In jurisdictions where open

entry was introduced - Dublin, Ireland, being a classic example - opportunism raised its ugly head, resulting in a flooding of the mar-ket with excess cabs. Revenues decreased precipitously, resulting in a corresponding decline in the quality of service. Obliged to work excessive hours merely to pay op-erating expenses, the travelling public found themselves dealing with exhausted, surly drivers and substandard cabs, hardly a desir-able state of affairs. Resulting pressure brought to bear on local officials left no choice but to aban-don open entry in favour of a re-turn to regulated entry.

Open entry is predicated on the misbegotten belief the taxi market is infinite in size. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more cabs that are introduced into a lo-cal market, the smaller the slice of the pie for each operator. It’s just a matter of time before quality ser-vice is compromised, as struggling drivers cut corners just to remain afloat.

As for Uber, the company has made it abundantly clear it will abide by no regulations that limit the number of affiliated drivers. It has operated in open defiance of the law, in the process, making a mockery of consumer safety and protection, and, in the process, jeopardizing the livelihoods of li-censed cabbies from Victoria to St. John’s. It begs the question, why would the Competition Bureau ad-vocate on behalf of a company that has demonstrated no regard for the rule of law - the very bedrock on which civil society is perched.

With all due respect, both the

travelling public and licensed cab-bies deserve far better than what you have proposed. The cata-strophic effects of open entry fly in the face of the public interest, common decency and fundamen-tal justice.

I urge you to reconsider your position in this matter.

(Editor’s note: This second letter to the Competition Bureau was written by Pellier December 17 in response to Pecman’s reply to the above letter. It is addressed, on Pecman’s instruction, to Cath-erine Hariton, Competition Law Officer, Competition Bureau Canada.)Dear Ms. Hariton,

In the second paragraph of Mr. Pecman’s December 15th re-sponse to my letter of December 5th, 2015, it states: “The Bureau, as an independent law enforce-ment agency, ensures that Cana-dian businesses and consumers prosper in a competitive and in-novative marketplace” - the key word being “prosper”.

With respect to the provision of vehicle-for-hire services, years of experience clearly demonstrate that consumer safety and protec-tion is maximized when entry controls are in place. The evidence is incontrovertible. “Transition-ing towards an ‘open entry’ sys-tem”, as recommended in your White Paper on the Regulation of the Taxi Industry, totally disre-gards prevailing economic reality. Rather than enhancing the public good, enabling the market to be flooded with cabs/TNCs – the in-evitable consequence of open en-try – would result in a precipitous decline in the quality of service.

Notwithstanding the Competi-tion Bureau deems controlled en-try to be “the most restrictive ap-proach that regulations can take”, the fact remains, for the past sever-

al decades, it has worked. In those municipalities where the number of cabs has been carefully regu-lated, not only has the public been well-served, but also, members of the taxi industry have earned a rea-sonable living. In short, both sides have prospered, to use your term.

While the Bureau urges regula-tors to “consider alternative regu-latory options that are less restric-tive to competition among taxis and TNCs”, with all due respect, there is absolutely no evidence to support such a measure will bear fruit.

If anything, since Uber’s illegal entry into the taxi market, dur-ing which time the company has operated at will, in the total ab-sence of any regulations, adding literally thousands of additional vehicles-for-hire to local streets, the livelihoods of cabbies across the country have been significant-ly impacted. The reason is simple. There isn’t enough business to go around.

In promoting entry deregulation for the taxi industry, the Compe-

tition Bureau has failed to do its homework, and, as such, is pro-moting a policy where nobody wins - certainly not the travelling public, who will be exposed to substandard vehicles operated by frustrated, overworked drivers, and certainly not those who pro-vide the service, unable as they will be to pay their professional and personal operating expenses.

TNCs, such as Uber, are more than welcome to set up shop. That said, they cannot and must not be allowed to run roughshod over those who have diligently plied their trade for years, all the while, playing by rules arrived at through due diligence – rules aimed at balancing the needs of all stakeholders.

Rather than entry deregula-tion that will only lead to imbal-ance and market destabilization, the Competition Bureau should be promoting policies that sup-port controlled entry and market stability, thus ensuring that “Ca-nadian businesses and consumers prosper”.

Competition Bureau Canada didn’t do its homework

CabStandby Peter Pellier

16 January 2016

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Province-wide solution needed• from page 9

Committee vice chair, Council-lor Carolyn Parrish asserted that the Taxi-Uber war will require a

“province-wide solution” – be-tween such issues as HST, and possible financial compensation to licensed plate-holders. And she successfully moved that Mayor Bonnie Crombie be requested to forward the Windels Marx report to Premier Kathleen Wynne.

“(We need to) solve the prob-lem for the whole of the province -- not just Toronto, not just Missis-sauga,” she said.

“The province is the only one with deep enough pockets to pay for all these plates. This comes with a deep responsibility to a lot of drivers who are barely making a living. It’s not fair.”

Furthermore, she argued that the City must continue to charge

and prosecute every Uber X driver caught picking up. And she asked Staff if it’s possible for the City to send a letter to these drivers’ insur-ance companies, stating that they were found driving for commer-cial pay.

“I think that would scare some drivers off,” she added.

Her motion to receive the report passed unanimously.

A week after the meeting, PVAC chair Ron Starr told Taxi News, “We’ve got to push harder on this. We’re letting the whole industry down. We have to work with the business.

“We intend to make sure there’s some way of making it an even playing field.

Uber hiding behind technology• from page 5

And Bolan alleged that with the many grey areas in its operations, “Uber seems to be hiding behind its technology.”

“Technology evolves, but it doesn’t mean technology can come in and break the law,” he said. “This town has a bylaw that has

been working. For these people to come in and completely thumb their noses at us people who put it together, it’s really something. They should be acknowledging the law.”

He warned, “If you let Uber in (under Open Entry), you’re not talking a 1 to 1,300 ratio, you’re making it infinite.”

A 42-year veteran, Prior agreed that, “There’s really not that much technology needed the way I run my business, and customers keep calling me. I don’t see why the Town considers technology to be the be all, and end all.”

The father of two says he and his fellow drivers are, “suffering big time because of this.”

“I was making more back in 1974,” he added. “How is that progress? All of this is taking away people’s livelihoods.”

Another long-time driver em-phasized that he and his 300 li-censed peers are professional, full-

time drivers putting in marathon hours to survive, while, “Uber X drivers are driving for their vaca-tion money.”

“What is going to happen to us, drivers that are trying to work and feed our families?” he asked. “I’ve been driving for over 40 years, and I have nowhere to go.”

In moving that staff explore Op-tion 2, Burton advised, “The in-dustry needs to understand, we’re dealing with a disruptive technol-ogy, and hard work is going to be needed to meet the competition here.”

Suggesting you, “can’t close

your eyes” to these technological advances, Councillor Marc Grant said Option 2, offers the industry, “a little way to move ahead.”

ASC Chair, Councillor Sean O’Meara agreed that, “Uber is here. It’s not that we’re going to stop it, and there’s a court case that shows that (in Toronto).

“The question before us is, how do we deal with this in an equita-ble manner? And I think the May-or has hit the nail on the head.”

Burton’s motion, that staff in-vestigate Option 2 and report back to Council as soon as possible, was approved by a 7-0 count.

All the bestfrom all of us at

Taxi News

17 January 2016

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

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To the editor,

Uber can be fought off very effectively. But does the taxi industry

have the wherewithal to do it? They need to sell the brand of licensed taxis better:1) Get Metrolinx to build and manage a taxi hailing app for the GTHA region. The app should in-clude a driver rating system and a payment system.2) Install Presto readers in cabs to allow payment by Presto.3) Mandate vehicle types. To ac-commodate for disabilities and meet clean energy requirements. 4) Allow higher fares based on ve-hicle types. A van should charge more than a car.5) Mandate a common paint scheme to more easily identify li-censed cabs.6) Impose a dress and grooming standard for drivers.

7) Require a certain language pro-ficiency level.8) Require a test of city knowl-edge. Doesn’t have to be as bad as London, UK, but the test should allow for a basic level of service, with knowledge of all landmarks and quickest routes during various traffic conditions.9) Last and more importantly: get rid of the medallion/license plate system. Allow anybody who wants to provide service in Toronto, to get a taxi license as long as they meet all the above standards and other safety standards (driver re-cord, criminal background check). Require requalification every year.

Do all the above and Uber won’t stand a chance in Toronto. Keep protesting and resisting change and Uber will run over the taxi in-dustry in Toronto.

Keith Lobo

To the editor,

A s Chief Magistrate of this city, and a mem-ber of the Ontario bar,

Mayor John Tory holds not only a legal obligation but above all an ethical one to speak out against the Silicon Valley bullying Goliaths, Uber and UberX for operating illicit “ride sharing” posing as a taxi service.

One wonders: why is this Mayor taken in by trendy, phony, illicit exploiters like Uber and UberX? And what is his problem with long established regulatory protections designed to protect public health and safety?

It was the Mayor and his mile a minute tongue that persuaded a majority of Council to throw our regulatory system out the win-dow to cater to an American fly-by-night. Tory better re-evaluate which side of the border his pa-triotism lies. To be sure the USA would tell a Toronto fly-by-night where to go.

Tory: “Uber puts the consumer first.” Does that mean saving a few dollars and precious minutes

of time? I don’t buy it, the impli-cation that taxi-taking Toronto-nians are that cheap and gullible.

In my day, I drove some of the wealthiest Canadians in the coun-ty and some of the most influen-tial. In fact, they liked to hail a taxi in downtown and enjoyed a conversation with the driver as they relaxed. By Tory’s rea-soning, a taxi is no longer good enough. Has Toronto become a city of snobs?

Yes many younger people trend to Uber or UberX. They haven’t got it yet: The risk. Many of them have been ripped off, but are too ashamed to admit it. Maybe they feel using the illicit Ubers is cool: no roof light, no traditional colours, none of the ungainly equipment required for wheel-chair accessibility which make for an extremely stiff ride– these things turn them off. However, there are many, many more nega-tives reported by people who use Ubers, compared to the Toronto Taxi Industry, which has a very low percentage of complaints.

Toronto’s Council and bureau-crats are to blame for the abso-

lute mess our industry is in. Both were lazy but pretended to be enthusiastic about regulating in the best interest of the public and the industry, all the while sneak-ily responding to every call for reform by issuing more and more taxi licenses. All this succeeded in doing was topping up the City’s treasury while driving taxi drivers’ income into the ground. The repercussion: Toronto’s taxi industry is so embarrassingly in-adequate it can’t even provide a passable living for its members in 2015/16, never mind fend off the likes of Uber X.

Our industry can level Uber/UberX and any other service il-licitly thrown at it, but it’s not going to succeed as long as we are shackled by undermining, incompetent political and regula-tory oversight.

We can drive the Ubers out of existence, if politicians and their bureaucrats care to do what they were voted in to do: act with gen-uine consideration for the public interest and enforce the laws.

Bob Boyd

Uber’s surge pricing not in public interest• from page 6reduce the quality of life of many of our citizens that are least able to cope with the ever rising costs of just staying alive in large cities. Surge pricing at 1:00 AM may be a viable concept for the bar hopper out on a Friday night, but certainly

is not for a shift worker going to work in a marginally remunerative occupation, or for the low income individual trying to get a sick child to the emergency department.

Would the Competition Bureau or the City of Toronto come out wildly in favour of competition

between stores selling inspected meat products and rivals selling uninspected product of dubious origins? Would the Law Society jump up in favour of on line “law experts” that undercut the tradi-tional legal system with uncertified “professional legal advisers”? The

list goes on and on, but the bottom line is that unless we are prepared to revert to the 19th century mar-kets of unbridled private enter-prise, we must not retreat from the challenges that e-commerce enter-prises present to regulatory bodies.

These challenges are not for the regulatory faint of heart, and it is fair to say that many old school politicians and regulators are hid-ing their ineptitude behind a screen of indifference, betrayal of their responsibilities, and false declara-tions of progressivism. The trag-edy of the situation is that those least able to weather economic fallout from the regulatory storm clouds in regard to the new forms

of commerce are exactly those who will suffer the most from the hesitation, indecision and retro-grade thinking of those in charge.

We cannot stand by while hap-less politicians and bureaucrats write the sequel to the Orwellian “1984”.

Can our present day adminis-trators match the resolve that was shown by their predecessors in forging a society that was gov-erned by the concept of the greater good for all participants in the economy through regulation of ba-sic standards of public welfare.

Best regards,Mark Sexsmith

Letters to The Editor

Man up and do your job, Mayor Tory

Resist change and Uber will roll over Toronto

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Letters to The Editor

To the editor,(Editor’s note: This is an open letter to the Chair and members of Mississauga’s Public Vehicle Advisory Committee.)

Notwithstanding one of the most successful marketing campaigns

devised in recent years, where

companies, such as Uber, have all but convinced both the trav-elling public and municipal regulators that, somehow, their business model places them above the law, the fact is they are providing a taxi service, plain and simple – one that threatens the very livelihoods of

cabbies around the world.Page 25 of the Windels Report

says it all. On two separate occa-sions, Mississauga regulatory of-ficials approached Uber, advising them they were in violation of the Public Vehicle Licensing Bylaw. In each instance, Uber flashed the middle finger and continued to

operate at will. So much for the rule of law. So much for respect-ing the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working Mississauga cab-bies who continue to play by the rules.

And now, the City has be-fore it a report that lists a series of recommendations, several of which seek to accommodate the lawbreaker. Since when do law-makers accommodate lawbreak-ers? Since when does the City of Mississauga tolerate such a naked exercise of raw power - one that runs roughshod over public poli-cy diligently crafted over time?

To their credit, the framers of the Windels Report performed due diligence by outlining all available options. That said, it is the City’s final decision regard-ing how to handle Uber. The tra-ditional approach to dealing with lawbreakers is to stop them in their tracks via the criminal jus-tice system. Arguably, Uber has earned such treatment, given its willful disregard for the Public Vehicle Licensing Bylaw.

No attempt whatsoever should be made to accommodate Uber’s business model, whether via amendments to the Bylaw, or via the introduction of a paral-

lel Bylaw designed to deal with so-called ‘transportation network companies’, a term concocted to move Uber et al out of the legal spotlight. To do so would have catastrophic consequences for members of the local taxi indus-try.

When it comes time to render a decision in this matter, I will ar-gue strenuously for the adoption of Option 1 - the Capture Option. This effectively regards Uber X for what it truly is; namely, a taxi company, currently operating in complete and total violation of the Bylaw.

For all its marketing and adver-tising smarts aimed at portraying the company as desirable, at the end of the day, Uber is a corpo-rate bully with no regard for any-thing else but its own bottom line. Is Mississauga going to play ball with a global pariah that openly threatens to decimate the eco-nomic self-preservation of cab-bies everywhere? One certainly hopes not.

Thank you,Peter D. Pellier

Since when do lawmakers accommodate lawbreakers?

To the editor,

What many commenta-tors miss in the de-bate over the conflict

between the e-commerce ride providers and the traditional taxi industry is the fact that this is a situation that can be laid squarely at the feet of Toronto’s government, which time an time again has botched their manage-ment of this file.

While each and every aspect of the Toronto taxi industry is gov-erned by City rules and regula-tions, the newcomers face zero – yes zero – control. No HST, no income tax, questionable insur-ance, and no City mandated regu-lations concerning rates, vehicle or driver standards. And herein

lies the price differential, which is the key factor in the growth of the non-regulated FHV’s (for hire vehicles).

However, instead of addressing the fact that their mismanagement of the taxi file has in itself brought the industry to near ruin, the City flies off into a fantasy land where they imagine that somehow they can devise a protocol in which 5,000-plus taxis (which in itself is a massive over supply) can meet City standards and compete against thousands of amateur driv-ers operating at a fraction of the costs, with no municipal oversight.

The citizens of Toronto should be careful of what they dream of – cheap taxis – because when the last taxi driver packs it in and drives

for Uber or one of its knock offs, they will wake up to the reality of unregulated vehicles, drivers and fares, and will run screaming to the Toronto government to come to their rescue with re-regulation.

Who was it that said you only get what you pay for?? Wake up Toronto! Or keep sending 25 per-cent of your taxi fares to a San Francisco company, which has duped thousands of desperate part timers into providing free rolling stock and underpaid labour to en-rich a group that has thus far suc-cessfully disproved the notion that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

Mark Sexsmith

Has Uber fooled everybody?

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To the editor,

I don’t drive. As such, I use cabs a lot. Because of this, about 10 years ago I put

a cab on the road, not to drive personally, but as an investment experiment.

I no longer have the cab, so I have no bias in my position. I still remember the hoops and expense I had to go through to get that vehi-cle on the road as a taxi. Although free market competition and prog-ress can be a pain in the butt, I do support it.

Unfortunately, most who sup-port Uber and vilify taxi driv-ers don’t realize this is not a free market fight. The battlefield is massively skewed to the favour of Uber. Taxi drivers are regulated by

the government to require expen-sive plates, fleet insurance, radio dues, a vehicle less than five years old that must have a back seat of a specific width, annual training, etc. So long as the government re-quires taxi drivers to have all this, it is not a free market and this is not a fair fight.

Although I understand your frus-tration, I don’t believe the protests yesterday gained you much sup-port, quite the opposite. Perhaps a better plan would be to somehow get all 5,000 or so drivers in Toron-to together, have them all sign up for Uber and then drop your plates, fleet insurance, links to your dis-patch, everything. Still do your 12 hour days, still sit on old posts and collect fares. Each driver may pull

in less per day, but their expenses will be near zero other than gas.

Furthermore, you want to see a lot of powerful people in Toronto shit their pants when their insur-ance company looses several hun-dred fleet customers overnight? You’ll see many very powerful people with 10 and 20 or more quarter of a million dollar plates stand up and take notice when their plates no longer make income and are now worthless. Just a thought. Best of luck to all of you.

John Casey

Battle with Uber massively skewed

To the editor,

Hans Wienhold forwarded to me the latest issue of your newspaper. I en-

joyed it very much, and felt that it honestly addressed many of the issues we here in Hamilton are faced with also. I’ve talked to Mike Beggs on the phone in the past when Hans gave him my number. I appreciated his ef-forts to get input from those of us outside Toronto.

I think the mayors, city councils, and licensing personnel from all cities should be forced to read and address the content of this particu-lar article for starters: taxinews.com/proposedprovinci

As I pointed out when I shared that article on my Google+ page, “this sums up the utter stupidity of gov’t regulating that which they have no demonstrable proof – i.e.

the number of wheelchair acces-sible taxis”. While I’m not familiar with the Toronto scene, I’m very familiar with the Hamilton one. Here, DARTS provides minimal and crappy service, thus the gov’t is mandating all cabs to be acces-sible by a certain date.

The above cited article high-lights how in Toronto (a much

bigger market) most of the pres-ently limited number of accessible cabs are very under utilized and most non-wheelchair passengers don’t want to use them. I estimate wheelchair trips to be maybe five percent of the population - which is likely a high guess - so why do 100 percent of cabs have to be wheelchair accessible by a certain date? This will kill the industry, or what’s left of it after Uber kills most of it.

I mentioned to Hans that both of us have observed at certain times, daily, the hospital entrances being plugged with multiple DARTS (Disabled Area Regional Transit) vehicles, each being capable of taking at least four passengers in wheelchairs but never taking more than one. Thus the City and the HSR (Hamilton’s TTC equivalent) spent loads of money on these bus-es, only to have them totally under utilized - and still the passengers in wheelchairs tell taxi drivers that DARTS service is terrible. It has

to be booked at least a week in advance and if the passenger’s ap-pointment is cancelled or changed, and they cancel DARTS, it’s diffi-cult to get rebooked if the new ap-pointment is close to the old one. These difficulties, of course, can be blamed on the inefficient use of DARTS buses capable of ac-commodating multiple passengers only carrying one at a time.

As I stated, the City would’ve been further ahead to purchase wheelchair taxi vans, and with the difference in price between them

and DARTS buses, the City could have purchased more vans, and thus provided better service.

As your writers have pointed out, because DARTS is union-ized, like the HSR, that poses yet another roadblock to improved service as the drivers don’t want to increase their workload.

Again, thanks to Taxi News and its writers’ efforts to address the problems the taxi industry faces courtesy of gov’t.

Paul Morris

Hamilton cabs face same frustrations with government oversight

20 January 2016

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Tory and Wynne are wimps• from page 3choose to not vaccinate their chil-dren against infectious diseases? Is it a good thing that companies get to choose whether they obey health and safety laws?” he asked. “Why bother to even have a gov-ernment, if it won’t even enforce the laws?”

And he criticized Wynne for downplaying the economic and safety hazards of an unregulated public transit framework by call-ing Uber a “ride sharing service”, instead of an unregulated business that somehow mysteriously ties into tackling climate change.

“As if putting more cars on the road will help reduce congestion and deal with climate change. Is she serious?” he added.

He said his union will now work with taxi driver organizations, civic leaders and community or-ganizations to, “stop American billionaires from telling us how to run our city.”

Several taxi industry figures deemed Local 113’s intervention to be a positive development for their cause.

“I think the TTC is a stronger or-ganization, and they have the will and the power, they can put a lot of push on the Mayor,” said Taxi Ac-tion president Behrouz Khamseh.

“It’s pathetic what’s going on, a lot of unlicensed people picking up passengers for pay. How do you fight it when you have a Mayor that supports these people?”

Veteran driver Asafo Addai agreed Kinnear could be a timely ally.

“The TTC has a monopoly, and Uber is breaking that monopoly,” he observed.

“I think we’re all in the same boat.”

Long-time owner/operator Frank Kelly deemed it “fantas-tic” to hear the union head speak out about municipal and provin-cial leaders turning a blind eye to Uber’s many indiscretions.

“He’s right. You have laws, laws that we have lived by, and appar-ently John Tory can say, ‘Times change’,” he commented.

A year later, he still wonders why the Mayor has supported Uber, instead of the licensed taxi industry.

“Will they shut down Uber? No , apparently Tory is going to make a new bylaw to accommodate Uber,” he added. “Uber hasn’t stopped (operating Uber X), and once the City brings out the new bylaw they’re not going to pay at-tention to it either. They’re not go-ing to get commercial insurance. They’re not going to change.”

“As far as John Tory represent-ing the City of Toronto, he also represents the cab people,” he con-tinued. “You can’t represent one group of people, and not others.”

Lucky 7 Taxi owner Lawrence Eisenberg was also guardedly op-timistic this could bear fruit for the industry.

“I’m hopeful,” he said. “But at the moment, the public couldn’t care less. The younger people, they’re only interested in nickels and dimes. That’s why it’s falling on deaf ears.”

Veteran Hamilton owner Hans Wienhold agreed Kinnear makes some valid points. He alleged the politicians overseeing the taxi in-dustry are, “ignorant busybodies that stick their noses into things they have minimal knowledge of, and cause massive disruption.”

“I agree they’re acting like wimps. They’re doing the Sergeant

Schultz’ thing, ‘I know nothing, I see nothing.’ (From the 1970’s TV show Hogan’s Heroes.) They’re showing their true colours,” he commented.

While not really a union sup-porter, he said it will be good for the industry to have some muscle behind it.

“We don’t have the crony power they allegedly have,” he suggest-ed. “We’re a disorganized group of individuals just being totally raped by this Uber platform. The human damage (is incredible).”

‘As if putting more cars on the road will help reduce congestion and deal with climate change. Is she serious?’