Uber lobbied Ottawa aggressively “from day one”

Sausage-making: the City changes the by-law, willfully ignoring the effects on plate value

The article below is derived from the factum filed by Conway Litigation on April 6, 2023, as its closing statement in the Metro Taxi vs. City of Ottawa case. For ease of reading, Taxi News has deleted the references and footnotes found in the complete original document, which is attached at the bottom as a PDF file. Otherwise, the text has not been edited.

Taxi News will be serializing sections of the Conway factum in the days ahead. The City of Ottawa is scheduled to file its response by June 3rd. July 4th and 5th, 2023 have been reserved for oral submissions.

Read Excerpt #1 “Ottawa’s reponse to Uber was chaotic and unplanned”

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Uber lobbies aggressively from day one

 Once Uber entered the Ottawa market, it was no stranger to those at City Hall. Ms. Hartig testified that one of the reasons the City did not pursue enforcement against Uber was that the

City did not know where to find Uber. However, Uber introduced itself to City Hall as soon it began operating in Ottawa, and the City rolled out the welcome mat. Uber lobbied City Hall continuously and aggressively from September 2014 up to the by-law change in April 2016, and well afterward.

Uber Canada had six registered lobbyists active between September 2014 and April 2016. According to the City’s lobbying registry, officials from the City met with two city councillors and city staff, including Susan Jones, on September 22, 2014. This was 3 days after Uber’s recruiting event at the Westin Hotel. After this meeting, Susan Jones stated that Uber was welcome to operate in Ottawa so long as it obtained a broker’s license.

The welcome mat soon became a red carpet. Chris Schafer, the Canada Policy Lead for Uber, reported 41 separate meetings with city councillors and staff between October 2014 and April 2016.

Mr. Schafer reported 57 communications with Mayor Jim Watson and 36 communications with Councillor Diane Deans, including emails, telephone calls and meetings.

Representatives of Uber met with Mayor Jim Watson five separate times between January 2015 and April 2016—including three times in April 2016, leading up to the by-law change.

Ottawa Citizen Media interview with Susan Jones, dated September 22, 2014, Representatives also met five times and held four phone calls with Councillor Diane Deans during this same period. Tim Hudak, a brand ambassador for Uber, also met with city staff in December 2015.

This extensive lobbying does not only negate the City’s implausible position that it did not know who Uber was, but it also sheds light on the City’s conduct in allowing the decimation of the taxi industry after it had tightly regulated it for decades.

After a 3-year delay, City staff answer controversial Council questions and recommend a comprehensive by-law review, seeking ways to legalize Uber

After the 2012 By-law was passed, Council asked City staff to answer a series of questions about the taxi industry. Staff avoided reporting back on these questions for three years. A draft of the answers was available in 2013, but the staff report—virtually identical—was not presented to Committee until May 2015. Ms. Hartig testified that staff were holding onto the answers until after the 2014 municipal election. This is likely due to the sensitive nature of the questions: three of the five questions pertained to plate value.

The arrival of Uber, and the desire to legalize Uber, provided the impetus to report back and kick off a comprehensive by-law review. Ms. Hartig was the main author of the 2015 report.

In addition to answering the questions posed by Council in 2012, the report recommended a comprehensive by-law review.172 At the time (May 2015), Uber had been illegally operating in Ottawa for about nine months, and enforcement had not been effective at shutting it down.

The staff report stated as follows:

“Given the information and general conclusions contained in this report, as well as the emergence of new technology and other service models since the time of council’s 2012 motions and directions to staff, the Emergency and Protective Services Department proposes to commission a consultant to undertake a comprehensive review of the City of Ottawa’s taxi and limousine regulations, including potential regulations to recognize the emergence of new hailing technologies and transportation-for-a-fee service models.”

The references to emerging technologies were references to Uber. It is clear from the report that at this point, the City was looking for ways to legalize or regulate Uber.

At the same time, the issue of plate values remained very much unresolved.