Was the VFH review an intentional waste of time?
Chow says June is too soon for update due in March
Update, 7:30am March 22: this article has been updated with a statement from the City of Toronto.
Suddenly, everything makes more sense….
After watching all of yesterday’s Executive Committee meeting and editing video clips of speakers’ remarks and Councillors’ questions, I felt not one single thing that happened on March 19th made any sense at all. It was absolutely Kafka-esque.
The debate around extending the age of Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles to 10 years is such an urgent no-brainer, that first speaker Sajid Mughal suggested to Mayor Chow that she should just put her motion to extend to a vote in order to save everybody’s time.
There was no appetite to consider Mughal’s imminently practical offer. Instead, hours were wasted simply to “kick the can” of vehicle age extension down the road again.
On March 20th, I received a phone call from Taxi industry member Behrouz Khamseh who told me that during a Committee meeting recess he spoke directly to City Manager Paul Johnson.
Khamseh tells Taxi News that Johnson said:
1. That he, Paul Johnson, was the author of the staff report to Committee that came forward on December 10, 2024;
2. That the report was drafted as “fake,” intended to fill the requirement of presenting a report but that no cap on Vehicles for Hire was actually considered then or is being considered now;
3. That the report is dead, will not come back to Committee or Council, and that there will be no cap on the numbers of Vehicles for Hire in Toronto.
(On March 21, the City of Toronto responded to Khamseh’s description of events by claim by writing in an email, “the statements attributed to City Manager Paul Johnson in this context are not true.” Read Toronto’s full response here.)
Whether or not it was Toronto’s intention to use the Vehicle for Hire report as a “fake” or an industry time waster, it’s impossible to say.
What is perfectly clear is that the VFH report which was supposed to be re-submitted to Committee by staff at the end of first quarter was not submitted.
Further, during the March 19th meeting when deputant Glenn DeBaeremaker requested assurance that the report would come back before June 30, 2025, Mayor Chow shrugged it off with remarks that she did not feel the report would be ready by June.
Judging by Olivia Chow’s actions, without Paul Johnson’s words, it’s clear the VFH Review report is not coming forward any time soon. Maybe never. Who knows?
In addition to explaining why no decision was made on March 19th regarding extending the allowable age of Accessible Vans, Johnson’s reported comments answer another big question too.
How could Toronto staff spend a YEAR studying the impact of having 85,000 Vehicles for Hire on city roads and all the massive problems 85,000 vehicles are causing, only to recommend that Toronto freeze the number of licensed Vehicles for Hire AT EXACTLY THE NUMBER WHICH IS CAUSING ALL THE PROBLEMS? Was no one worried that, for example, tax payers might ask why they paid someone’s salary for a year, only to have that highly-paid expert recommend we leave everything exactly the same?
If, indeed, no cap on Vehicles for Hire is being considered, that would not come as a surprise to anyone in the Taxi industry with eyes to see. It might, however, help operators trying to decide whether to invest in a new vehicle or not.
