Should a taxi driver’s right to earn a living trump the right of passengers to feel safe whenever they get into a cab?

That’s the question at the centre of a little-publicized decision made by the Toronto Licensing Tribunal on Oct. 25.

In carrying out its mandate to “balance the protection of the public interest with the licensee’s need to make a living,” it sided with the driver — even though he is facing multiple criminal charges including sexual assault against a female passenger.

The cases raises at least five alarming questions about oversight of drivers.

Chief among them is whether the tribunal’s mandate gives too much leeway to an unelected, independent, quasi-judicial body of seven citizens.

Kristine Hubbard, operations manager of Toronto’s largest taxi fleet, Beck (which did not employ the driver in question), thinks it does. She suggests there should be automatic suspensions for drivers who run afoul of the law.

That sounds like a sensible start.

As reported last week by CBC News, the case before the tribunal was that of Scarborough cabbie Golam Mustafa.

He was charged with sexual assault, nine counts of fraud, nine counts of using a stolen credit card and nine counts of possession of stolen property in connection with an incident on Aug. 25.

On that day, police report a 32-year-old woman was sexually assaulted after getting into a cab. When she fled the taxi, she left her purse behind.

“The taxi driver then took her credit card and used it at multiple locations to make purchases,” police say.

And that raises the second issue. Mustafa’s case easily might never have even come up before the tribunal. That’s because there is no formal way for the city to know when a taxi driver has been charged with a criminal offence other than having the city’s municipal licensing and standards department (MLS) staff scan police media releases so they can alert the tribunal.

In this case, eagle-eyed staff caught it, reported it to the tribunal and recommended that Mustafa’s licence be suspended.

Instead, the tribunal members chose to place conditions on Mustafa’s licence, including that he not accept unaccompanied females as passengers, not allow a female to sit in the front seat of his cab, not drive overnight, and let MLS know the outcome of his criminal case.

That eyebrow-raising move raises the third and fourth issues.

While those conditions must be visible on Mustafa’s photo card attached to the dash, it’s unlikely, as Hubbard points out, that most passengers even look at the card before getting into the cab.

Further, it provides for no oversight to ensure drivers will live up to the conditions and report back after their legal cases are heard.

Now for the fifth. There is no formal reporting procedure to alert cab companies when drivers are criminally charged, so that they can suspend drivers themselves if they feel it is warranted. Instead, Hubbard says they rely on what they read in the media, where charges may or may not be reported.

Mustafa’s lawyer says he was suspended by the company he drove for (which was not identified) on Nov. 14. But he could still be driving: in addition to the three biggest cab companies there are more than 4,000 independent owners he could work for.

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Sadly, this is not the first case to draw attention to the issue of safety for women in cabs. Media reports and civil and criminal cases point to the fact that women are propositioned, assaulted and even raped all too often by taxi drivers. (Ride-sharing services do not have a better reputation.)

If they and other vulnerable citizens are to feel confident they will arrive safely at their destination when they get into a cab, the tribunal must always err on the side of public safety when it makes its decisions.

It’s time for the city to overhaul the entire oversight procedure for taxi licenses. It should start by rewriting the tribunal’s mandate and setting up formal reporting procedures for any driver facing criminal charges.