About 50 cabbies peacefully protested at City Hall on Wednesday, with some calling on council to hire more bylaw inspectors to bust Uber drivers.

The city put the brakes on the demonstration fairly quickly by making city executive Susan Jones available to the taxi union leadership.

Jones met with Amrik Singh, president of the taxi union, behind closed doors and emerged with the same lines usually delivered by each side: The union wants more Uber drivers charged, and the city says it is, in fact, clamping down on Uber.

The city has laid 148 charges against 64 Uber drivers.

Jones, the acting deputy city manager who has a long history working on the taxi file, assured cabbies more Uber charges will come.

Singh wants more manpower.

“I think the City of Ottawa should hire 10 more inspectors to take Uber’s money,” Singh said.

That’s unlikely for a city facing a projected $41-million deficit this year.

Besides, the city is still sorting out what changes should be made to the taxi bylaw. There should be recommendations to council at the end of the year or in early 2016.

While Singh said the union “believes in peace,” there have been videos of cabbies accosting Uber drivers, Uber customers and bylaw officers.

In a letter to Mayor Jim Watson, the union and cab company Coventry Connections say those ugly actions by some drivers “do not represent what we stand for as a whole.”

West-Way driver Tony Hajjar’s loud voice echoed off City Hall as he lamented Uber’s nearly year-long presence in Ottawa. He suggested cabbies simply won’t pay their permit fees if the city allows Uber to operate unregulated.

“We will not renew our licences. We will act like Uber. We are not going to get safety checks for our cars. We are not going new cars like the city demanded,” Hajjar said angrily.

As for the ongoing taxi bylaw review, Hajjar predicted the results are “not going to be good for anybody.”

Uber, despite being a driving service, doesn’t require its drivers to have municipal taxi permits.

Jones said the city can’t guarantee Uber rides are safe, since Uber cars and drivers aren’t following the same regulatory regime as cabbies.

“We encourage the public to take legal taxi cabs,” Jones said.

The protest was smaller than what many expected, judging by the number of cops, contracted security and corporate security staff hanging around.

Singh said only cabbies who usually drive in the core were asked to protest so that the larger taxi network wasn’t disrupted.

As for the prospects of meeting with Watson -- who has banned taxi union sit-downs until the bullying ends -- Singh wasn’t pushing too hard.

“We always want to see him,” Singh said. “We like the guy,”

jon.willing@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @JonathanWilling

The Sun's Jon Willing reported in real-time via thisOttawa taxi drivers protest Uber live blog during the protest.