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Although the new regulations are not perfect, and questions remain as to whether the proposal can make it through the pro-taxi Licensing and Standards Committee unscathed, they would go a long way toward placating the taxi industry’s gripes that Uber has been operating illegally and that existing regulations prevent it from competing with the ride-sharing service.

But, of course, you won’t hear any cab drivers singing its praises, since the industry is myopically focused on preserving the government-granted oligopoly that has sheltered it from competition for so long.

After the City of Toronto released its proposal, one taxi operator told reporters that it would bring about the death of the entire industry. “Just by looking at it, off the top of my head, I don’t think there would be a taxi industry,” said Sam Moini of HPM Taxi Ltd., who is also the head of the Fleet Operators Association.

And one driver told the Post that his colleagues would consider going on strike and blocking traffic to prevent the changes from being implemented. “You witnessed what happened before,” he said, referring to a protest staged by taxi drivers that blocked traffic on major thoroughfares for the better part of a day. “It’s going to be exactly the same.”

It is because of this type of rent-seeking behaviour and the hubris of staging protests that snarl city streets to try to get governments to ban a service that helps people get where they are going that I refuse to get into a taxi in the city of Toronto. At some point, cab drivers and the companies they work for need to realize that if they want to keep their customers, they have to provide a service worth paying for, and that trying to use the strong arm of government to derail the freight train of human progress will only work for so long. And they certainly need to do this before driverless cars hit the market and, in another case study of creative destruction at work, put both Uber and the taxi companies out of business.

National Post

jkline@postmedia.com

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