A coalition of taxi companies has asked a judge to strike down Toronto city council’s overhaul of the local industry.

The Toronto Taxi Alliance, which includes cab owners, fleet operators, and big brokerages like Beck and Diamond, argues that councillors broke the law by failing to give advance notice of the significant — and contentious — amendments they proposed and approved at a meeting in February.

“Council acted in bad faith as it acted unreasonably, arbitrarily, and without the degree of fairness, openness and impartiality required of a municipal government,” Alliance lawyers said in an April court filing.

The city did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, an advocate of the reforms, said the industry representatives are merely “sore that they lost.”

The February meeting followed a three-year process of study, consultation and repeated delay. Council regularly makes policy on the fly: once a topic is opened for debate, members introduce all kinds of related motions on the voting floor.

The Alliance, however, argues that councillors should have referred the matter back to city officials if they were interested in making major changes to the officials’ previous recommendations. Their motions rapidly accelerated the reform program.

Officials had recommended that people who hold lucrative “standard” licences be allowed to keep them; council imposed a 2024 deadline to convert to the new, less-valuable Toronto Taxi Licence (TTL). Officials proposed a 2019 start date for standard licences to be turned into the TTL upon sale; council changed the date to July 1, 2014.

“The nature and magnitude of the potential and inevitable financial impact on the entire taxicab industry,” Alliance lawyers said, “made it essential, on grounds of not only the law, but of natural justice and fairness, for the city to give, at the very least, notice to those to be affected by the changes, of their proposed consideration of the proposals, and an opportunity for industry input and response.”

The lawsuit does not suggest the changes themselves are illegal, only council’s decision-making process.

“If their argument is simply that we didn’t cross the T’s and dot the I’s, then, in the event that our decision is struck down, we’ll just bring it back to council and do it all over again,” Minnan-Wong said.

The reforms are highly popular among drivers who hold the restrictive “ambassador” licence. They will now be able to trade it in for the new TTL.

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