Without enforcement, new laws mean nothing

Tory and Saunders ignored the Law; will Chow and Demkiw restore faith in it?

Coincidentally, as I was doing research and interviewing experts for a hard news article on the topic of “Enforcing the Law” as it relates to the Vehicle for Hire (VFH) review last week, I attended a Zoom webinar on “Justice for Rideshare Drivers.”

The first guest had been asked to speak because she was one of the original rideshare drivers in Ontario in 2015. What was it like, the moderator asked, to be part of that first wave of Uber drivers?

“We were renegades,” the speaker stated merrily. “We were completely illegal; for the entire first year, we were not even insured.” I was floored by her statement, and her honesty.

There was lots of money to be made in that renegade environment, she told the group, until Uber permitted so many drivers on its platform that eventually, no one could make any money. Also, Uber continues to increase the percentage of the fees it skims from drivers while increasing fees and charges, making driving much less lucrative.

So now, in 2024, rideshare drivers are hoping for government intervention and protection from the renegade ways of Uber and Lyft.

Ironically, I did not sign on to the Zoom meeting to write ill of rideshare drivers; in fact, I predict that as time goes by, rideshare drivers will see that the protections Taxi drivers had already largely won over past decades made business sense as well as common sense, and that over time, the two categories of drivers will begin to morph into one. As we are already seeing in Toronto’s current VFH review, rideshare drivers and the labour groups organizing for them are already asking for City-issued licenses; a cap on the number of vehicles permitted to work; and mandated minimum charges to ensure drivers can earn a living wage.

Or, as plate owner David Reti noted wryly during an earlier rideshare drivers’ protest, “Gee, it’s almost as if they want to return to exactly the Taxi system which already existed, before Uber.”

Reti makes a sad point, but a true one. An awful lot of too-trusting Taxi operators lost everything they owned so that Uber drivers could enjoy those “rengade” first years. It took eight long years for Superior Court Justice Marc Smith to decide what every Taxi industry member knew from the start: Uber was a bandit Taxi company, and Ottawa at least was negligent in not enforcing its own laws on Uber.

Toronto operators never even got their day in court.

To the Taxi industry members who were subject to virtually complete devaluation of the plates in which they might have invested $200,000 or $300,000; or to the Accessible drivers who lost all of the ambulatory runs they formerly counted on to subsidize van costs, nothing about Toronto’s utter refusal to enforce its own laws on Uber was remotely amusing or funny. Toronto’s refusal to enforce its own laws was a devastating financial catastrophe for them.

Possibly even worse than the financial catastrophe, though, has been the loss faith in Canada as a nation of laws.

For the Taxi industry, faith in the Rule of Law died with Uber, with Mayor John Tory, and with Police Chief Mark Saunders. To understand the depth of true, absolute disgust and disappointment, talk to a cabbie who pulled up behind an Uber sitting illegally at a cab stand, only to receive a ticket from police for “too many cabs at a cabstand” while the bandit, renegade Uber drove away scot-free.

Or those shaking their heads over reports of sexual assault in which police appealed to the public for help locating the Uber driver.

“Police can’t get that information directly from Uber?” I was asked by an incredulous Taxi driver. “I thought the smartphone data was Uber’s whole point?”

“I left home to get away from that kind of corruption,” I heard from drivers repeatedly. “I brought my family to Canada to get away from it. And yet, here it is again.”

Toronto’s Licensing and Standards Division is two months into its review of the Vehicle for Hire industry, and everyone hopes the resulting report and Council decisions will be helpful and positive for both professional drivers and the consumers who rely upon them.

However, unless the City and police intend to actually ENFORCE any new laws they may write, it will be just a giant waste of everyone’s time and taxpayer dollars.