Uber debate fractures council following duelling negotiations

After one of the most contentious debates this term, left-leaning councillors say they were blindsided when a deal with the mayor’s office fell through.

Thestar.com
May 8, 2016
By Jennifer Pagliaro and David Rider

Mayor John Tory had a choice: clinch a deal with city council’s right wing that would please Uber and taxi plate owners, or stick with more stringent regulations painstakingly crafted by his officials with left-leaning councillors.

The mayor’s decision, an agreement on the most Uber-friendly regulations on the table, got him a decisive council win this week that loosened rules on the taxi industry and legalized new private companies. It also incinerated relations with some council colleagues, who say the mayor’s talk of a “big tent” is now in shreds and accuse his office of “double dealing” toward a decision that ultimately sold out taxi drivers.

“It is now absolutely clear to me that it is more important to the mayor and his senior staff that they win than it is that they achieve good public policy outcomes,” said Councillor Gord Perks, who was part of orchestrating the agreement that failed.

Tory spokesperson Amanda Galbraith rejected any suggestion that Tory or his staff negotiated in bad faith.

“Throughout this process the mayor has been clear his goal is to build a modern city that puts the needs of the people of this city first,” she said in a statement Friday.

Tory has been “clear he felt the best way to do that is to remain consistent with the recommendations of the hardworking, expert city staff,” she said, adding that the regulation passed by council “represents a win for the travelling public, who have overwhelmingly supported adopting new technology.”

In one of the most contentious debates at city hall so far this term, the licensing and standards committee - filled with councillors like Giorgio Mammoliti and Jim Karygiannis, who have defended the interests of an elite group of taxi plate owners - pushed to ban Uber and other companies from operating legally in the city.

But with the final decision up to council, the mayor’s office approached left-leaning councillors to work on a more balanced agreement - one that would have licensed drivers for companies like Uber while increasing safety standards, protecting taxi drivers and limiting the number of licensed vehicles on the road.

Now those councillors, led by Janet Davis and Gord Perks, say the mayor’s office blindsided them in the final hours, yanking an agreed-upon motion as council debated the regulations, and putting the public interest in the back seat.

The mayor’s office and councillors agree they reached an agreement in principle on the Friday before the vote, with Perks and Tory’s chief of staff, Chris Eby, shaking hands on it.

But from there, the two accounts diverge significantly on how things fell apart.

The mayor’s office says it was Davis who scuttled the deal Monday night, under pressure from taxi industry members not willing to compete with Uber. An hour later, right-wing councillors approached with a proposal of their own, according to the mayor’s office. The decision was made to pursue both options, believing there was no longer any firm agreement with the left but that they preferred that plan.

At 10:30 p.m. Monday, Tory’s policy adviser, Luke Robertson, emailed Perks and Davis a draft motion based on their earlier agreement. Davis emailed back in the early morning, saying some fixes were needed. She told the Star that at that point she didn’t think there were major problems.

At council Tuesday morning, Perks and Robertson worked on technical changes and wording, by text message and in person. Perks says he signed off on the motion and watched it get handed to council clerks at 11 a.m.

He returned to his seat believing that motion would be tabled later in the day.

The mayor’s office says the motion was not finalized and never signed off on by Tory and that an agreement with the right-leaning councillors was reached at 11:30 a.m., when they started writing up a second motion.

When Davis ran into Eby in the hall on the lunch break, at 12:30 p.m., she was told the agreement was off and a different deal had already been made - one involving Karygiannis, Mammoliti and others.

“I was completely taken aback - to say the deal was done when they were walking down the hallway with an alternative proposal,” Davis said.

On Tuesday night, council voted 27-15 to back regulations that ushered legalized Uber services into the city, while deleting many safety requirements imposed on the taxi industry over decades of reforms. It also resurrected ongoing ownership of once-lucrative taxi plates that were in the process of being phased out in favour of a fully owner-operated model.

“Having been here 10 years, this is the single biggest letdown I have in terms of working in a good-faith way to try to advance public policy,” Perks said following the vote.

Tory told reporters after the vote that the worst-case scenario would have been “some kind of deadlock,” with no regulations to deal with Uber and other disruptive technology.

“I had to make sure that I had the number of votes necessary, as you do on every issue every day around here, to pass something,” he said. “So we, needless to say, engaged in conversation with a number of people on the council simply to go and do what I have to do.”

He characterized the vote as a win “with a handsome margin.”

“Any time you can get two-thirds of the councillors, you know, to vote on something, I think that’s a very solid mandate that indicates that a solid majority of the councillors, you know, supported what was done.”

Councillor Joe Mihevc, a left-leaning colleague of Perks and Davis, called it double-dealing and questioned whether the mayor can be trusted as an honest broker.

“The Uber negotiations is a shock for all of us trying to work inside the tent,” said Mihevc. “A tent exists, but the downtown and more progressive voices aren’t welcome inside. The whole thing leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Burned once? Burned twice - there would need to be very clear signs they are acting in good faith before some of us would venture in that direction again.”

In the end, he said, the regulations did not create a “level playing field” as Tory had promised.

“We reduced protections for passengers and made one segment of society more vulnerable,” Mihevc said, referring to changes that include removing mandatory training programs and not compensating drivers for discounted fares.

Tory’s office consulted Uber - and, it says, Lyft, other ride-hailing companies and taxi groups - on the proposed regulations as they were being drafted.

“If government is going to regulate an industry it would be irresponsible not to consult them on the drafting of regulations,” Galbraith says, adding that Uber indicated it could operate under both the frameworks being proposed by councillors on the left and the right.

For those watching the vote counts, there were other signs that peace under the Tory administration may have fractured.

Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who was appointed by Tory and was the architect of earlier taxi reforms, voted most often with the left. In the end, he voted against the new regulations.

He declined to discuss what happened in detail, saying his voting record would “speak for itself.”

“I did support the idea of ride sharing and I did support all the amendments that related to consumer protection,” he said. “I voted my conscience.”