Ride Hailing news

During the online meeting of Toronto Council held November 10th, Councillor Gord Perks made a stunning admission which appeared to confirm the worst fears of Toronto’s entire Taxi industry.

Perks detailed some of the motivations and actions which occurred when Toronto Council voted to permit ride hailing companies to operate with a set of rules which were different and more lenient than those mandated for Taxis.

Toronto Council voted to direct staff to stop issuing licenses to vehicle for hire drivers until a training program is in place.

The motion, put forward and subsequently amended by Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam passed by a vote of 22-3 with only Councillors Colle, Holyday and Minnan-Wong voting against it.

Training for drivers of vehicles for hire was scheduled to be debated at the November 9, 2021 Toronto City Council meeting, however, it was moved over to be considered as the first private item on Wednesday, November 10th. (The item may need to be considered by Council in camera if a City lawyer is asked to provide advice about an ongoing lawsuit against the City.)

 “We have tons of steel being operated on busy streets, approaching curbside, responding to communication devices, attending to strangers in the backseat, assisting with mobility devices, navigating traffic and congestion.

“That is the nightmare we’re living in this city right now. But drivers are making money doing those things, and they should be trained.”

People who want to make money driving vehicles for a living should be trained to do so safely, says Kristine Hubbard, and it was a mistake for Toronto to have cancelled driver training in 2016.

“The training requirement we’re talking about today was voted on by the council in 2019, in response to multiple fatalities caused by rideshare drivers who were licensed without training. We’re calling for this training to be implemented before any other drivers are licensed. This is what our community wants to see,” Hubbard, who is Operations Manager at Beck Taxi, told a video-conference meeting of the General License and Standards Committee on October 20, 2021.

 Item GL.2611 Back-to-School/Vehicle for hire driver training is on the November 9, 2021 Council Agenda and is being held by Councillor Michael Ford.

Behrouz Kamseh represented the Taxi industry at the Global Day for Climate Justice at Queen’s Park on November 6th. “People were receptive to our message, once we explained it to them,” Kamseh says. “Almost no one realizes that up until

“Everyone wants our environment to be cleaner, with less emissions from automobiles,” says Behrouz Khamseh. “Taxis are very much a part of that solution; up until 2016, there were only 5500 licensed Taxis driving in Toronto. When Uber arrived, Toronto allowed almost 100,000 additional vehicles for hire. The decision to allow this destroyed any progress Toronto might have hoped to make in reducing traffic, congestion, emissions, and pollution.”