In bowing to Uber, Toronto City Council approved one of the most bizarre bylaws in Toronto’s history

July 15 will mark the first anniversary of one of the most absurd pieces of legislation Toronto has ever passed.

Thirty years ago, when I was reporting for the Taxi News, it was great to see steady advances being made in taxi driver safety and consumer protection.

Sadly, when Chapter 546 of the Vehicle for Hire By-Law became the law last July 15, Toronto tossed aside decades of advances in taxi security, while throwing customers under the bus, pardon the pun.

One reason is that, under Chapter 546, the city’s mechanical inspection station closed on Dec. 31 last year.

It was the place that inspected the security cameras in taxi cabs.

So now, every cab is required to have a $1,500 security camera, which no longer needs to be inspected to make sure it’s working.

Responsible taxi fleet owners will still do this on their own initiative, but Toronto eliminated the need for it.

Stranger still, the new bylaw allows taxi meters to be unsealed and uninspected.

This means although there is a meter in every taxi, they can be advancing at different rates.

One fleet owner told me the variance can be as much as 20%.

Which begs the question, why bother having meters at all?

Taxi driver training has also been cancelled.

In April, 2016, Toronto believed taxi drivers required 17 days of training.

A month later, it decided drivers needed no training, and no assessment of their English language skills.

With the training requirement eliminated, hundreds of people took advantage of the change to race to the municipal licensing and standards office to get a taxi driver’s license, with no pesky prerequisites.

Taxi companies were inundated with people waving a taxi driver’s license and asking to lease a cab.

Some had only received their driver’s license the day before.

One man brought his wife, who spoke no English, and said: “My wife and I would both like to drive taxis. Can we have the keys, please?”

Beck Taxi was so concerned about this completely foreseeable onslaught of untrained drivers, it partnered with Centennial College to create an industry-designed training program, which all of its new drivers are required to take.

Now for some background.

In 2011, Toronto launched a consultation into changes required in the taxi industry. It lasted five years.

There were a lot of busy city bureaucrats running lots of meetings.

By 2016, Uber had entered the market and a whole new set of consultations was required.

That lasted five months and resulted in a report which basically allowing an unlimited number of vehicles for hire on Toronto roads.

We skyrocketed from about 5,000 cars to 35,000. Gridlock, anyone?

Ironically, the only areas the taxi industry did not want to change were security-related items related to training, licensing and cameras, which all took a pounding in the new bylaw.

The city’s new, two-tiered bylaw, designed to accommodate Uber, has led to these problems, with predictable results.

Recently, we’ve seen more taxi drivers ignoring the law, refusing short fares, or requiring a minimum fare, basically rejecting the city’s authority to set fares and rules.

It’s not right, but many feel since Uber was accommodated after breaking the rules, why should they obey them?

Mayor John Tory and city council should have seen this coming.

They didn’t and its consumers who are paying the price.

Smith has worked as a communications professional in business, government and politics since 1985. She blogs on food, family and life at ritagracesmith.com