Irony, fairness and fighting
Two Taxi trials launched on one day….what are the odds?
My stomach is churning.
Belatedly, I read Michelle Mandel’s update news clip from the Toronto Sun about the killer of beloved Oshawa cabbie Mike Ryan. Memories of the trial replay in my mind like the actual video we viewed in court on January 4th, 2023.
I recall that in the early moments of proceedings, the Crown lawyer asked Ryan’s widow Linda if she would like to leave the courtroom. This struck me as odd; I assumed the very reason that she was seated in the Oshawa courtroom was that she wanted to hear the testimony.
A moment later, video taken by Ryan’s dashcam began playing and I understood why the Crown had taken the compassionate step of ensuring Linda was not in the room to view it.
Surely, it was the most horrific few moments of video I’ve ever witnessed. The fear, the chaos, the gibberish language, the panic and the blast felt like I imagine Hell would feel. That was the last moment of Michael Ryan’s life. His wife had already endured his loss; she did not need to be punished by carrying around this infernal vision for eternity, too.
It’s hard to imagine anyone more vulnerable than a cabbie, trapped within a few square feet behind a steering wheel, a sitting duck for any sane or insane person motivated to cause him harm. It’s hard to imagine that anyone wants to drive strangers for a living; it’s still astonishing to me that they do.
Over the centuries, the western world arrived at a fair and reasonable Social Contract with professional drivers: the drivers would assume an enormous amount of physical and financial risk, in exchange for the opportunity to earn a fair living providing safe transportation. Defining what constituted “fair” and “safe” was an ongoing conversation in every community, but being able to eat, live indoors, maintain a decent vehicle and be alive at the end of a shift was the foundation of the legal Taxi industry. This deal is the difference between hitch-hiking, gypsy cabs, and a regulated professional driving service.
In one of the most ironic twists of my professional career, two Taxi court cases launched on January 4, 2023. The murder of Mike Ryan in Oshawa was one of them.
On the very same day in Ottawa, Metro Taxi vs. the City of Ottawa was also finally beginning after a SEVEN YEAR WAIT since it had been filed in 2016. This was the case filed by Taxi operators who accused the City of ignoring its own by-laws in its haste to legalize Uber, a bandit Taxi company.
On breaks, I paced the halls of the Oshawa Courthouse while I was following the proceedings of the Ottawa Courthouse by Zoom on my iPhone.
Whether I was covering the murder trial of innocent suburban Accessible Taxi driver who had kindly agreed to take “one last trip” before quitting for the day, or the meticulously prepared arguments of expensive legal geniuses in the nation’s capital, I realized they were about the same basic idea: the Social Contract communities make with professional drivers.
Either we want to keep them safe, or we don’t. Either we want them to earn a decent wage, or we don’t. Either we are going to honour the agreements we negotiate with them, or we aren’t.
Either we’re going to pay to ensure they can help us keep impaired drivers off the road, and shuttle COVID-infected nurses and doctors to Quarantine Centres during lockdowns, or we’re not.
On January 4, 2023, I despaired that Canadians had no intention of honouring the deal they made with Taxi operators and business owners over a century ago. Were we really, on the exact same day, going to review the horrific death of one conscientious professional driver in Oshawa and simultaneously in Ottawa, the right of government regulators to ignore the laws it wrote to protect such drivers?
Yes. Yes, we were. Yes, we did. What are the odds? More importantly, what were the results?
Today, I can report, that Mike Ryan’s killer is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital and so far, as Michelle Mandel reports, Ontario isn’t planning to let him wander out any time soon.
On May 13, 2024, Superior Court Justice Marc Smith decided that Uber was “a bandit taxi company” and that Ottawa was “negligent” in not enforcing its own by-laws.
Sadly, I also report, Mike Ryan’s wife and kids will be forever without the beloved centre of their family universe, and Ottawa has not yet paid a dime in damages to any Taxi operator.
So, I can’t say this is a column about fairness, or grand finales. I guess I could say it’s a column about continuing to fight. Hopefully, that’s a victory in its own right.
