MPPs fight the future in the taxi industry
David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 6, 2014, Last Updated: December 6, 2014 8:06 AM EST
Two Ottawa MPPs now have bills at Queen’s Park that would help cities crack down on bandit taxis. They insist their bills aren’t about fighting insurgent car-hiring company Uber, though it’s hard to believe them.
When Ottawa South Liberal John Fraser presented his bill on Wednesday, he swore it was about protecting passenger safety. It’s right there in the name, isn’t it? It’s the Protecting Passenger Safety Act, so it must be. Not about Uber.
“Unifor welcomes Uber bill” read a prompt statement from the union local representing Ottawa taxi drivers. They think it’s a bill about Uber. Uber sure thinks it’s a bill about Uber.
Nepean-Carleton Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod followed on Thursday with a bill that does almost the same thing, the Bandit Cab Safety and Enforcement Act. Both bills crank up the maximum fines on drivers of unlicensed taxis (Fraser’s to $30,000, MacLeod’s to $100,000), allow city enforcers to impound cars, impose driver’s licence suspensions.
“Unsafe bandit taxi cabs predate ride sharing programs like Uber who are using new technology,” reads MacLeod’s explanation of her bill. “Legitimate taxi and ride sharing programs uphold the safety measures within municipal bylaws and the Highway Traffic Act. Municipalities must be able to enforce their own bylaws.”
So, like Fraser, she’s not aiming at Uber. But if she hits it, well, these things happen.
Uber, as a company, operates in a dark-grey area of a city bylaw that regulates both taxi companies and the drivers who work for them. Strictly speaking, Uber provides a smartphone app that connects freelance drivers with willing riders for a small fee, so it’s not a traditional dispatching service in the way the law contemplates.
The drivers pretty plainly run afoul of rules that restrict who can chauffeur passengers for money. With Uber the company, it’s not crystal clear.
Regardless of its exact legal state, though, Uber undermines the purpose of Ottawa’s taxi bylaw. Which is to limit competition among approved drivers so as to guarantee them a reasonable living while meeting city-mandated standards for driver qualifications, vehicles and prices.
As anyone who’s taken a few cabs in the last few years knows, that standard is low. Mainly, the supply-management system in the taxi industry has meant those lucky enough to own taxi plates make a lot of money off the people who actually drive. The system doesn’t work right, but it’s impervious to challenge because the city isn’t issuing more plates.
Anybody who wants to innovate has to work within a system that suppresses innovation.
Uber hasn’t had to care about Ottawa’s system. It operates in 250 cities and just this week raised $1.2 billion in financing, with investments that value the company at $40 billion. That’s more than 10 times the City of Ottawa’s annual budget. It can, if it wants, treat fines like a cost of doing business and keep serving willing customers. As long as those fines are $500, that is. Not $100,000.
Reporters asked Premier Kathleen Wynne about the twin taxi bills this week. One of the premier’s more endearing qualities is she gets really excited about interesting policy problems and you can tell this one grabs her.
“I think this is a fascinating discussion,” she said. “I think we need to talk about it: How does this fit in with our understanding of the regulated taxi industry? I think nobody actually has the answer at this point …. I think it’s great that this issue is coming from all sides of the house.”
The premier is mistaken. The issue she’s talking about isn’t coming from anywhere. What’s coming from both sides of the house is a determination to make sure that issue doesn’t have to be discussed.
Nobody has a proposal for legalizing Uber and its drivers and bringing them under workable regulations, for acknowledging that people who install Uber’s app and summon its drivers aren’t victims but adults making a choice.
Because these are private members’ bills, dissenters are easier to find. Tory MPP Monte McNaughton, for instance, one of MacLeod’s leadership rivals and one of his party’s more fervent free-marketers.
“I just don’t believe that Queen’s Park should be protecting monopolies and defending monopolies,” McNaughton said in an interview. “Companies change, the way companies need to do business needs to change, and with Uber in particular, other companies need to adapt.”
Not if his colleagues can help it.
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Agreed on all fronts. Though technically receiving money for a carpool is part of the underground economy, but I see nothing wrong with it. Taxi drivers are just trying to protect their broken business model - no different than the music industry 15 years ago.
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