

Joshua Freeman, CP24.com





Toronto taxi drivers are calling for a moratorium on licensing fees for cabs until the city unveils comprehensive regulations and enforcement to deal with both traditional cab services and Uber.

“If the city won’t use the fees drivers pay for enforcement and regulatory equality as currently prescribed, then we’re asking them to begin leveling the playing field by easing expenses along with certain regulations for Toronto’s law-abiding drivers,” Kristine Hubbard, operations manager at Beck Taxi, said in a news release.

While traditional taxis have to pay hefty licensing fees to the city in order to operate, similar fees are not levied against Uber vehicles.

Uber has branded itself a technology company rather than a cab service, even though its drivers compete with cabs for business, often at lower rates.

City council responded in September by amending the municipal code to say that services like Uber still require licenses and that licensed brokers can only connect customers with licensed vehicles.

However Toronto police have said the rules are difficult to enforce because you have to prove each improper transaction.

The city also lowered the minimum cab fare to $3.25 from the previous base fare of $4.25 to make it easier for cabs to compete and city staff are currently developing new bylaws to handle app-based middlemen like Uber and home-sharing service Airbnbn.

But in the meantime, cab drivers and companies continue to seethe amid the status quo.

“Licensed taxi drivers are expected to sit idly by as the city continues to allow black-market taxis to operate in our city and break our laws,” Hubbard said in the release. “Meanwhile, licensed drivers are expected to pay up and abide by Toronto’s by-laws, or face being fined and losing their permits even though taxi drivers and UberX drivers are providing the same service.”

The cab industry estimates a moratorium would cost the city about $3.5 million in lost licensing fees.

Beck has started a petition online for drivers to support the moratorium.

Responding to the move Thursday, Mayor John Tory said he is willing to look at further short-term measures to help taxi drivers and wouldn’t rule anything out.

“I’m willing to look at what we might do to provide some further relief,” Tory told reporters, acknowledging that the licensing fees paid to the city are “not small fees.”

While he stopped short of supporting a moratorium on licensing fees, he added that taxi drivers are likely to eventually see a reduction in fees anyway.

“I am fairly confident that one of the result s of the regulatory review will be changes to these fees… in a downward direction,” Tory said.

He said the city will look at what it can do in the interim to help cab drivers, but urged them to avoid “rumblings” of taxi strikes that could hurt Toronto.