City’s taxi industry wants Uber to play by the same rules

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This article was published 01/11/2017 (2955 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The taxi industry is evoking the memory of the last cabbie murdered in Winnipeg as its symbol for the highest level of safety in vehicles for hire — including Uber.

Pritam Deol was murdered July 2001 while at work. His death led to the installation of driver shields and, later, cameras in local taxis, Scott McFadyen, spokesman for the Winnipeg Community Taxi Coalition, told a news conference Wednesday.

“It’s a great legacy for my dad — there hasn’t been a taxi-related death” since 2001, said Deol’s son, Gurpreet Deol. “We want to see there is no further death, violence. This needs to apply as a standard across the industry.”

Winnipeg cabbies said all the required safety equipment, including criminal and child-abuse background checks, costs about $5,500 per vehicle, on top of annual insurance exceeding $10,000.

“We’re asking the province and (the City of Winnipeg) to keep all the safety measures in place” when Bill 30 (the Local Vehicles for Hire Act) passes and places Manitoba municipalities in charge of regulating so-called ride-sharing services, McFadyen said.

Government committee hearings into Bill 30 ended Tuesday night, with about 100 speakers still to be heard. McFadyen was critical of the news media for not attending the entire hearing process, which went from 6 p.m. to midnight for four evenings, as well as three hours during the day last Friday.

“It is well-known that taxi driving is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world,” he said. “There is no level of safety in the legislation, giving the City of Winnipeg a blank cheque.”

McFadyen said having the taxi industry’s high safety standards apply to other services would scare Uber and others out of the market.

However, McFadyen said, the cabbies believe Uber is simply a taxi company that doesn’t want to play by the rules: “We take exception with the term ‘ride-sharing.'”

McFadyen said the cabbies have a meeting Nov. 10 with Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, who has also invited Manitoba Public Insurance to attend. MPI recently told a legislature committee it will set a premium rate for ride-sharing services by the end of February.

In the legislature Wednesday, NDP MLA Jim Maloway told Premier Brian Pallister the government had the option of conducting committee sessions last Saturday and Sunday, if it had been interested in squeezing in all of the 267 registered speakers on Bill 30.

Instead, the Tories would not waive the end of proceedings Tuesday night, Maloway said. “For the first time in history, a committee of this legislature did not let every speaker represent.”

Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler heckled that Maloway had agreed to the rules. “You negotiated it,” shouted Schuler, referring to a deal reached last year when Maloway was NDP house leader.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca