The independent consultant helping British Columbia modernize its taxi industry says ride-hailing firms such as Uber and Lyft deserve to operate in the province, but the disruption they pose to the existing companies should be minimized while making life easier for passengers.

Dan Hara, an expert on the taxi industry hired by B.C., said his work will study the multiple ways a regulatory system can allow taxi and Uber drivers to co-exist.

"Whenever there's a new technology that does offer potential benefits and net improvements, it's always possible to allocate those benefits so that there's a win-win-win," he told The Globe and Mail on the phone from Ottawa. "So that users win, customers win and, also, so that providers win; so that people who have sunk their lives into the industry are not suddenly disrupted.

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"We don't have to have disruption."

In 2015, Mr. Hara was hired by the City of Vancouver to issue a report on modernizing the city's taxi industry. ?Unfortunately, he said, the consultation the city facilitated with the taxi industry hinged around the competition for passengers between Vancouver cab companies and ??their suburban counterparts.

"That dominated," he said. "So the bigger elephant in the room [of ride-hailing services] … was not really addressed."

"It's something that needs to be talked about, there's multiple choices including choices which haven't been made by anybody but are there to be taken."

He would not comment on whether he favours a single licence or two separate regimes for the different sectors, but said he is intent on listening to the industry before providing his analysis to the government by early next year.

B.C. Taxi Association president Mohan Singh Kang said his industry is not opposed to ride-hailing companies, but they must meet public-safety standards required of cab drivers and shouldn't be able to vary the rates they charge passengers.

"They can lower the rates, within one minute if they want to, throughout the province or a big city," he said. "The rates for the taxis are set by the [B.C.] Passenger Transportation Board."

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Transportation Minister Claire Trevena told reporters in Victoria on Tuesday that the government's consultation on ride-sharing will not hear from ride-sharing proponents until the taxi industry has made its case. "Let's get this right, let's get this understood and then bring in ride-share," she said.

"We are working toward bringing in legislation about ride-share next year, but we are also looking at how we are going to have to amend six other pieces of legislation, to bring them into the 21st century."

She maintains Uber, Lyft and other similar companies can apply right now for a taxi licence, meaning they would have to follow the same rules as taxi companies, which ensure drivers operate with the proper oversight, training and insurance.

Uber has said it deserves to be included in Mr. Hara's consultation process. The Liberal opposition criticized the government in Question Period for not asking Mr. Hara to consult with the ride-hailing industry itself. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver plans to introduce a private member's bill on Thursday legalizing the ride-hailing industry, which the Liberals have remained open to supporting.

The Liberals' campaign promise to embrace companies such as Uber may have cost the party several seats in Surrey, where the taxi industry, which employs more than 10,000 drivers across B.C., backed the New Democrats.

Ms. Trevena insisted the NDP government's move toward further consultation on the issue was not influenced by the political support it received from taxi drivers in the last election.

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"This has got nothing to do with that. This is has got everything to do with passenger safety, driver safety," she said. "I'm sure people in Metro Vancouver are fed up when they are standing in the rain and are unable to get a taxi, when people are standing at the airport and waiting for a taxi. That's what we are trying to solve by doing this."

On Tuesday, TransLink CEO Kevin Desmond told the crowd at an annual Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon that his agency is never going to be able to provide door-to-door service for everyone, so ride-hailing services are needed to fill in the gaps of Metro Vancouver's public-transportation system.

Asked what he thought of residents becoming increasingly frustrated over the delay in the allowing ride-hailing, Mr. Desmond told the business leaders that all the tools exist to make it easier for people to get around but more has to be done to integrate the various sectors.

"All the travel will be, in a sense, conducted through apps and your cellphone," he said of a transportation concept known as integrated mobility. "We have to be very smart about how that works."

"We also don't want to create a world where the streets of our city are completely overwhelmed by, say, automated ride-share vehicles just in constant motion."