Local Sudbury businesses ignored

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Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria spoke about “last mile” transportation while managing never to say the word “Taxi.” Video: Taxi News

Ontario’s Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria visited Sudbury on August 25th, speaking at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon on his way to a Progressive Conservative Party fundraising event in the evening.

Sarkaria took only canned questions from the Chamber organizer, including the one depicted in the video above (transcript below). While discussion “last mile” options for transportation in rural and Northern Ontario, Sarkaria mentioned rideshare but never Taxi, or that fact that dozens of Taxi companies already exist to provide this service and none of them were included in the development of the pilot.

Mike Sanders of Aaron Transportation Group in Sudbury had hoped to ask a question of the Minister, but was told instead to send a letter to Minister Sarkaria’s staff person, which he did. Sanders’ letter is reproduced here with permission:

“Thank you for stopping to chat today. I try to be a professional, so let me apologize for being a bit brusque. I would excuse my sharpness by saying that I’m a business owner that’s nearly killed himself over building this business to become the largest fleet of fully employed taxi-drivers in the country (we also provide shuttle and limo services). I’ve done so within an established regulatory structure. Should changes be required to said regulations (which did not preclude Uber, as you know) there would be – as there’s always been—adequate consultation. So, let me lay it out how I see it and I’d ask you to correct me where I have it wrong:

Uber, through the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and Rubicon Strategy has been pushing for a simplified regulatory framework not just to enter the markets they didn’t view as profitable without such preferential access but also to sidestep pesky municipal oversight (again, preferentially) in markets in which they did already operate.

Ontario, now led by a Premier who doesn’t have much respect for municipal governance and an old pal of Kory Teneycke sets the plan in motion.

The Northlander and the guise of “first/last mile connectivity” would be the perfect justification. And after a sham consultation process in which NONE of the recommendations were implemented (and just a little bit of time), the original pilot communities are expanded from 15 to 75, many of which are nowhere near the Northlander train tracks (on which no train will run for another year or so).

The OPP has no idea how or with what budget they’ll enforce the framework. And what’s already known about Uber and their practices will continue to be true. Drivers will drive refuse to outside an active area for a few dollars after the bonuses subside and they’ll continue to earn pitiful wages.

Drivers will sell/ provide logins to unapproved (and inexperienced) drivers and drive unapproved (and unsafe) cars.

Worse still, unregistered drivers will solicit passengers at stations, airports, even malls. And then, people will go missing. You’ve torn down the protections for passengers and for other road users and you’ve likely cost local transit agencies millions. For what?

If I may also ask the following:

                Is drafting legislation so conspicuously preferential to a US conglomerate over local Canadian companies a good look given the current state of affairs (and, remember, Uride never asked for this and they’ve been doing just fine, so no excuses claiming it’s not in favour of any single company)?

                Why is a “review” already scheduled for less than 30 days after the first rideshare company launched under the pilot? What exactly will the Ministry hope to “review”?

What are your ideas for making sure taxis don’t get left behind? Hopefully they’re better than mine (time machine).

I do look forward to your responses.

Regards,

Mike S.

*****

Full transcript of Minister Sarkaria’s August 25th question and answer on the rideshare pilot:

Chamber: In Northern rural communities, in some cases, you really don’t have a level of access, frankly, particularly when it comes to that first and last mile, to reach a local transportation network. So, again, I know the Chamber and Marie have worked very closely with your team regarding advocacy on that file. And we were very happy to see the Northern Rideshare pilot program launched. So, and Sudbury selected, of course. And I hear from Marie that we already have one service in the community after the program was launched. So, can you share with us at all what the future of the pilot will look like and any next steps after that?

Minister Sarkaria: Yeah, I think for us, it’s about the last file, first file question is something that it doesn’t matter if you’re in Toronto or if you’re in Sudbury you’re in Thunder Bay, it’s probably one of the points of transportation across the world that is one of the toughest to figure out.

And so, when you have the ability to introduce more services, whether that be Rideshare, whether there’ll be other services that tackle the first mile and the last mile, I think it enables a better connectivity to your transportation network across the city, town, or rural community.

So, when we saw that opportunity to be able to do that and reduce some of the regulation that Were overlaying regulation that made it challenging in some of our communities to be able to execute on that, I thought it was, our team thought it was a really good way to maybe support and fill some of those gaps that might exist

And hence you see kind of the Sudbury is one of the first, I would say, members that are participating in that, the Northern Pilot Program that are now operational. So it’s exciting to see. And we’ll continue to monitor that. And ultimately, the most ideal approach would be having one set of regulations that govern the entire province to reduce that uncertainty around different jurisdictions. So that’s something that we’re following very closely as well.

Chamber: Thanks, Minister.