Having 82,000 Vehicles for Hire (VFH) on Toronto streets is an irrational idea, Co-op Cabs’ representative Glenn De Baeremaeker to Mayor Chow and Executive Committee on December 10^th.

“Councillor Colle moved a motion about a year ago for a a cap of 52,000, so I suppose if they had written the staff report a year ago, the cap would have been 52,000. But they wrote the report now, and they said, ‘As of December 1, it’s 82,000.’

“That’s not a real rationale,” pointed out De Baeremaeker, a former Toronto Councillor.

In his three minutes of remarks, De Baeremaeker raised points including regulating fares to protect consumers.

“It’s very important that the city’s taxicab and tariff fair rates should apply, shall apply to all riders on all platforms. You’ve been doing it for 50 years…we can’t cheat you. We can’t rip you off. We don’t care if you’re a vulnerable person or an uneducated or uninformed person, we pay a flat rate. Uber rips you off every time they pick you up, because we have a regulated fare; they don’t.”

Mayor Chow asked several questions of De Baeremaeker, including “How would the city regulate fares?  Because Uber is a platform. It can charge whatever the market can bear.”

“You allow it to charge whatever the market bears,” replied De Baeremaeker, to audience applause.

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Full transcript of Co-op Cabs’ Glenn De Baeremaeker, remarks and questions and answers with Mayor Olivia Chow:

Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of committee. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to all of us who are trying to help you make this industry sustainable and equitable at the same time, and as a former TTC member of some 13 years and a member of the licensing committee of eight years, I certainly heard about taxis, taxis, taxis over my tenure at City Hall.

I’m here today on behalf of Co-op Cabs, like our name implies, we are a cooperative. We are representing 900 people, 900 families who are members of our cooperative, and just like a housing co-op or credit union, we exist solely to help those people make a decent living.

Our money doesn’t go off to Wall Street down in the US or to Saudi Arabian hedge fund managers are if we make a profit, they’re solely for the drivers that we represent here today.

I’d like to say as well, we agree with a cap, but the cap that the staff have given you of 82,000 is just wrong. The rationale in the report is, well, “That’s what it is today.”

Councillor Cole moved a motion about a year agot : it (a cap of) 52,000, so I suppose if they had written the staff report a year ago, the cap would have been 52,000 but they wrote the report now, and they said, “As of December 1, it’s 82,000,” that’s not a real rationale.

What is a real rationale is the city of Toronto commissioned report from 2014 that identified that 5000 cabs, taxis, vehicles were sufficient to meet all the needs of the City of Toronto in a sustainable way; we support that number. The city has grown since then, 10 years ago, by 11per cent (but) the number of vehicles on the road in this industry have grown by 400 per cent.

So, we believe the number should be 16,650, based on the report that you commissioned about a decade ago.

There should be no exemptions for EVs. EV that’s a poison pill or a loophole, from my perspective, because I support EVs. But what you want to do is you want to have a cap. And within that cap, within that family, EVs, if you come in with the door with an EV and I come in with an internal combustion engine, the EV goes first. So EVs should be first in line.

The second thing we think you should do is regulate fares to protect passengers. It’s very important that the city’s taxicab and tariff fair rates should apply, shall apply to all riders on all platforms. You’ve been doing it for 50 years. If Co Op picks up you, or a member of your family, or one of the families that we support at the Autism Center that I help in Scarborough, we pay you a set rate. We can’t cheat you. We can’t rip you off.

We don’t care if you’re a vulnerable person or an uneducated or uninformed person, we pay a flat rate. Uber rips you off every time they pick you up, because we have a regulated fear they don’t.

….And, I’m at three minutes. Thank you, Madam Mayor, we have submitted our letter to staff as well.

Questions and Answers with Mayor Chow:

Chow: “Question to you: So how would the city regulate fares?  Because Uber is a platform. It can charge whatever the market can bear.

GDB: You allow it to charge whatever the market bears.

(room breaks into applause) “You can allow you could allow Co-op Cabs or Beck, who just spoke before me.

You could allow other companies to charge whatever they want, too, but you don’t, because part of your mandate is to protect the public. I you read the staff report, when you go through the staff report…protection of the public from predatory pricing has always been a core value, a foundational element of your regulations. And for the last 50 years, every human being who has got into a taxi cab has been protected by the City of Toronto because you regulated the fares.

Our 900 drivers, we can’t charge you more because we don’t, because we think you’re a tourist to the city, whether it’s raining, snowing, windy, cold, or on a Taylor Swift concert night, we can’t charge you anymore. We can’t surge price. Surge price. Surge pricing is predatory pricing, and it rips people off, and it’s unfair and it attacks the most vulnerable. If you’re a 70 year old senior citizen coming down an apartment building in my community in Scarborough center, guess what? They’re going to charge you more because you know the least. So the people who are the weakest, who know the least get hurt the most. So it’s very simple. You allow Uber to charge whatever it wants. You can just say all rides picked up from here to there have can be regulated, same, same as everybody, every other business that provides the exact same serviceand.

Chow: The staff report that is in front of us does not address that issue…

GDB: No consumer protection, which is part of the MLS mandate. So, on the committee for eight years, if you ask your staff, is consumer protection part of our core mandate, they’re going to tell you, “Yes.”

Unfortunately, it’s this component, it is not in the staff report.

Chow: I hear you. What about the aspect of centralized dispatch service?

GDB: Two quick things. One, speaking right after me is Abdul Mohammed, who is the CEO of co op cabs, who is going to speak specifically about accessible transit. But we believe there should be one Central Dispatch, and that should be the Wheel-Trans dispatch.

You already have a dispatch. Why do you want to reinvent the wheel? Why do you want to spend an extra million dollars a year for nothing extra? You already have the infrastructure. You already have the knowledge. That call center operates 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, and the staff are recommending that you create another one.

We think it would be better handled, maybe referred back to staff, to talk to TTC staff, to come up with a model that will save taxpayers money and provide people with better service you already have.

I’ll give you a quick example you already have today. Right now, you have a few hundred Wheel-Trans vehicles operated by the TTC scattered all through the city, North York, Scarborough to Etobicoke downtown.

Well, if you had an accessible service and you called the existing dispatch, they could dispatch automatically. They’ve already got vehicles. They already have drivers. They’re set up for the Open Payment System. Everything already exists, and it’s again, as a former TTC Commissioner, it was one of the things I was very proud of, the level of service we provided people who had mobility issues.

And now, of course, that’s been expanded to people who have cognitive issues. So, the TTC has a good, successful model. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Chow: One of the recommendations number 9, 10, 11 – all of that is on taxicab owner licenses. Do you have an opinion on that?

GDB: Yes, we believe that there’s some discussion in terms of the existing taxi plates that are out there that people own.

So many of them now are on the shelf because you just can’t make any money to operate them. And again, I have some history as a former councillor, the City of Toronto, for the last 50 years, created the market for those plates.

The City of Toronto allowed those to be bought and sold on the open market. They allowed it, and I think it was a mistake. They allowed one individual like me to buy 10 plates, 20 plates, 30 plates. That’s where the exploitation happened. In my opinion, you have one person owning 30 plates, and all the drivers have to come and beg to drive through that person. And in my opinion, there was some exploitation. It shouldn’t have happened that way.

They should have allowed one person one plate, but that’s history. I can’t, I can’t change the past. What we’re going to do now is, what we’re asking the city to do is buy back the plates and charge $1.50 per ride, so that it’s not coming from the taxpayer, it’s coming from Uber.

Those plates that are out there now that are being unused, they’re owned by 70 year old people who were told by the TTC to purchase those plates for a pension plan and they’ve been wiped out…(we’re asking Toronto) to purchase those plates back and then give them out to another driver, but no ability to sell them on an open market.

Chow: And you’re supportive of that?

GDB: Absolutely yes.

Chow: Okay, so the recommendation that is in front of us, I think 10 you’re okay with…?

GDB: Yes, okay, in terms of that, we just don’t want this part of the report implies that the city is going to take them back at I’ll call it, confiscate them, take them back from people who aren’t driving them.

If you do that, you’re wiping out the meager life savings of people who’ve worked in the industry for 40 years. They’re now 70 years old. That was supposed to be their pension. So, they quote, “put them on the shelf” because they’re not using them.

But at the end of the day, the city told immigrants, wave after wave of immigrants from the first Jewish Canadian refugees that came to this country, and onwards. So, we’re saying, buy the plates back, let them retire in dignity, and then reissue those plates, as the provinces of Quebec has purchased plates.

Chow: Thank you so much. Thank you for answering those questions.