‘I’ve got the message’: Tory asks cab industry not to proceed with planned protest

Globalnews.ca
Dec. 7, 2015
By Erica Vella

Mayor John Tory is urging Toronto taxi drivers to reconsider a protest planned for this week.

“I would strenuously urge them not to disrupt the city of Toronto, not to disrupt their own livelihood by taking their own time out of work because we are working as fast as we possibly can,” Tory said Monday.

The Wednesday protest includes starting points that will cover the north, south, east and west part of the city, and aims to eventually converge on Queen’s Park and end at City Hall.
However, Tory said the demonstrations “serve no purpose.”

“I fully understand the fact that cab drivers and other members of the cab industry have been adversely affected by the change in market conditions in the introduction of new technologies.”

Tory added that he “got the message” in regards to the urgency of the matter and city officials are working as fast as they can to develop new regulations that would relieve the regulatory burden on cab drivers and apply new regulations to Uber.

Sajid Mughal, president of the iTaxiworkers Association, says drivers are only asking the city to “enforce the bylaw and get an injunction against [Uber].”

“We are not asking for anything impossible ... the bylaw is there and [Uber] is violating the bylaw. Just get the injunction against Uber and enforce the bylaw.”

The city sought an injunction in summer 2015, but was denied.

Protestors have been advised not to disrupt traffic.

“If there are 2000, 3000 cabs on the streets, we have instructed our drivers to make sure they let the traffic pass by, you do not interrupt the traffic, you do not make an inconvenience to the public,” Mughal said.

On Friday, after finishing a three-day hunger strike, members of the taxi industry staged a protest inside of city hall, chanting the words “Uber must go.”

But Tory maintains draft regulations cannot be hurried.

“If you draft up the regulations in too much of a hurry and try to rush it forward before Christmas Eve, you’re going to get a set of regulations that are not thought through properly,” Tory said.

“And the last thing we want to do is move from one difficult situation to another one. We want to do this properly and we have always said from day one that the report rom the licensing people and their new draft regulations were expected back early in the new year and that’s when they will come back.”