An Ottawa Blueline taxi driver claims a video that showed him lashing out at people he believed to be a Uber driver and a Uber passenger was part of a targeted effort to provoke taxi drivers.

Walid Salika, who is 30 and has driven with Blueline for four years, took voluntary leave beginning Monday after he was caught making threatening comments and swearing on a YouTube video that was widely circulated online.

"If I see you again, you're dead meat. Go follow the law and get a real job. I'm not joking with you," Salika was caught telling a driver before holding open the back door and shouting at the passenger.

"Take a real taxi, you f---ing cheapskate," he said. Both sides then threatened to call police in the profane exchange that runs for one minute and 21 seconds.

WARNING: The video below contains profane language.

A video circulating online claims to show an Ottawa taxi driver threatening an Uber driver and passenger. CBC News has blurred the faces of the people in the video. WARNING: video contains profanity. 0:52

Salika, who will remain on leave until a review is complete, said he was trying to ask the driver to pick up along Wellington Street instead of the taxi stand at the Chateau Laurier hotel, which he pays the dispatcher, Coventry Connections, to use.

He claimed the video, filmed around 1:30 a.m. Saturday outside the hotel, did not include why he was provoked.

"[The driver] started right away saying f-you, f-off, and being very controversial with his language," Salika said, adding he then tried to inform the passenger about the lack of licensing for Uber drivers.

"The customer was a bit intoxicated, didn't respond well to that ... and it just remains this way in a provocative tone. I was just like, just leave, just go, but they didn't want to go ... he was choosing not to drive off."

Driver says he's victim of trap

Salika, who also said he works as a union representative with Unifor Local 1688, said he was set up, citing an online advertisement posted to Kijiji, which has now been deleted. It's not known when the ad was first posted, but was seen by a Twitter user two days after the video was recorded.

The posting claims to seek "ordinary people" to "pose as Uber drivers and patrons" who could make a YouTube video and "intentionally act out a phoney pickup/drop off in front of taxi stands."

This advertisement posted online to Kijiji.ca asks for people to pose as Uber drivers and passengers and record altercations with taxi drivers in Ottawa. (Kijiji.ca) Salika believes he was targeted. The posting claims its purpose is to catch an altercation in a "predetermined amount of time" andbelieves he was targeted.

"I understand now the plan that he had, the scheme he was doing, and why he was so calm and composed. Anyone who objectively watches that video can tell that guy was abnormally calm and composed for someone that was supposedly being threatened, or feeling threatened," Salika said.

"I eventually said to him, 'Get the F out of here, F you,' and I said those words ... I'm not excusing my behaviour, but everyone loses their temper."

Salika went on to say his tolerance threshold had been reached due to what he calls a lack of city reaction to Uber, as well as dealing with racism and "hateful remarks."

Walid Salika, the taxi driver who was filmed threatening who he believed to be an Uber driver picking up a passenger at a taxi stand, told his side of the story on Ottawa Morning. 12:07

Ottawa police launched an investigation over the weekend after a third-party complaint but said it cannot confirm that a Uber driver and passenger were the ones threatened because neither has come forward.

Blueline drivers had been warned by Coventry "to be careful and to avoid violence" in relation to Uber drivers days before the video surfaced online.

On Sunday, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said he was "disgusted" by the video. He also said he asked city staff to try to identify the man in the video and to find out if the city has "the legal ability to remove his licence," if he turned out to be a taxi driver.