SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CROWN CORPORATIONS · 2018-06-07 · Vancouver Taxi Association C....

Second Session, 41st Parliament

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS(HANSARD)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON

CROWN CORPORATIONS

VancouverMonday, January 8, 2018

Issue No. 3

BOWINN MA, MLA, CHAIR

ISSN 1499-4194

MEMBERSHIPCrown Corporations

Chair: Bowinn Ma (North Vancouver–Lonsdale, NDP)

Deputy Chair: Stephanie Cadieux (Surrey South, BC Liberal)

Members: Spencer Chandra Herbert (Vancouver–West End, NDP)Jas Johal (Richmond-Queensborough, BC Liberal)Ravi Kahlon (Delta North, NDP)Peter Milobar (Kamloops–North Thompson, BC Liberal)Rachna Singh (Surrey–Green Timbers, NDP)Jordan Sturdy (West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, BC Liberal)Dr. Andrew Weaver (Oak Bay–Gordon Head, BC Green Party)

Clerk: Susan Sourial

CONTENTS

Monday, January 8, 2018Page

Presentations on Ride-sharing......................................................................................................................................................9Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure

K. VanderkuipS. Haywood

Benn ProctorB. Proctor

Vancouver Taxi AssociationC. BauerE. Bari

B.C. Taxi AssociationM. KangD. Guilbault

Sumeet GulatiS. Gulati

City of EnderbyB. SchreinerT. Bengtson

B.C. Chamber of CommerceV. Litwin

UberM. van Hemmen

MINUTESSelect Standing Committee on

Crown Corporations

Monday, January 8, 20189:00 a.m.

320 Strategy Room, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue580 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Present: Bowinn Ma, MLA (Chair); Stephanie Cadieux, MLA (Deputy Chair); Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA;Jas Johal, MLA; Ravi Kahlon, MLA; Peter Milobar, MLA; Rachna Singh, MLA; Jordan Sturdy, MLA;Dr. Andrew Weaver, MLA

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 9:01 a.m.

2. Opening remarks by Bowinn Ma, MLA, Chair.

3. The following witnesses appeared before the Committee and answered questions:

1) Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure:

Passenger Transportation Branch Kristin Vanderkuip

Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement Steven Haywood

2) Benn Proctor

3) Vancouver Taxi Association Carolyn BauerKulwant SahotaRobbie DhillonEmon Bari

4. The Committee recessed from 11:09 a.m. to 11:17 a.m.

4) BC Taxi Association Mohan Singh KangDon Guilbault

5) Sumeet Gulati

6) City of Enderby Tate BengtsonBrian Schreiner

5. The Committee recessed from 12:41 p.m. to 1:34 p.m.

7) BC Chamber of Commerce Val Litwin

8) Uber Canada Michael van Hemmen

6. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 3:03 p.m.

Bowinn Ma, MLAChair

Susan SourialClerk Assistant — Committees and

Interparliamentary Relations

MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 2018

The committee met at 9:01 a.m.

[B. Ma in the chair.]

B. Ma (Chair): Good morning. My name is Bowinn Ma.I am the MLA for North Vancouver–Lonsdale and the Chairof the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations.We will be just getting started right now.

I’d like to begin with the recognition that our meetingtoday takes place on the traditional territories of theMusqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We, here,are an all-party parliamentary committee of the LegislativeAssembly with a mandate to examine, inquire into and makerecommendations on ride-sharing in British Columbia, andwe must issue a report by February 15, 2018.

The committee is meeting to hear from expert witnesseson the following questions. One, what is the impact thatride-hailing would have on different communities aroundthe province? Two, what regulatory regime should be estab-lished to allow ride-hailing to operate in B.C.? All of theinformation received will be carefully considered by thecommittee as it prepares its report to the LegislativeAssembly.

I’m going to tell you a little bit about the meeting format.In general, with the exception of the first presentation today,each meeting will consist of a 15-minute presentation, fol-lowed by 15 minutes for questions from committee mem-bers. I will give you a one-minute warning to wrap up whenyou’re nearing your allotted time for presentations.

Please note all meetings are recorded and transcribed byHansard Services. A complete transcript of the proceedingswill be posted on the committee’s website. These meetingsare also broadcast as live audio via our website.

I’m going to now ask each member of the committee tointroduce themselves. I’m going to start at this end, with Mr.Sturdy.

J. Sturdy: Jordan Sturdy, MLA, West Vancouver–Sea toSky.

J. Johal: Jas Johal, MLA for Richmond-Queensborough.

P. Milobar: Peter Milobar, MLA for Kamloops–NorthThompson.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): Stephanie Cadieux, MLA,Surrey South.

S. Chandra Herbert: Spencer Chandra Herbert, MLA,Vancouver–West End, Coal Harbour.

R. Singh: Rachna Singh, MLA, Surrey–Green Timbers.

R. Kahlon: Ravi Kahlon, MLA, Delta North.

B. Ma (Chair): Fantastic. Assisting the committee todayare Susan Sourial and Stephanie Raymond from the Par-liamentary Committees Office. Michael Baer and SimonDeLaat, from Hansard Services, are also here to record theproceedings.

On behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank thepresenters who have taken their time to be with us today.And I would like to introduce our first presenters. Theseare actually two presenters who are doing a joint presenta-tion. For that reason, they will be given 30 minutes for theirpresentation, followed by 30 minutes for Q and A. All meet-ings afterwards will be 15 minutes and 15 minutes.

We have Kristin Vanderkuip, Ministry of Transportationand Infrastructure, passenger safety branch. We’ve gotSteven Haywood, Ministry of Transportation and Infrastruc-ture, commercial vehicle safety and enforcement.

Please proceed.

Presentations on Ride-sharing

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATIONAND INFRASTRUCTURE

K. Vanderkuip: Thank you. Just for the record, I’m fromthe passenger transportation branch.

B. Ma (Chair): Oh, my apologies.

K. Vanderkuip: That’s okay. Just so the record is accurate.[9:05 a.m.]

We’ve been asked to come this morning and provide abackground of information for you on the commercial trans-portation industry in the province, focusing on passenger-directed vehicles. That’s mainly taxis and limousines. We’llfocus primarily on the taxi background right now.

I’ll start the presentation, my colleague Steven will takeover and present, and then we’ll have questions afterwards.Some questions that may come up during my presentationthat Steven may answer in his, so we’ll save the questions tillthe end.

We’ll talk today about the current regulatory structure,some key industry information, as well as some key regulat-ory considerations. Now you all have the package of inform-ation before you. We will go quickly through that but feelfree during the question period…. A lot of it will be review. Ithink I’ve presented to a number of you in the past. It will bereview, so if you have any questions, we can go back into thepresentation and dig a little deeper for you, if that helps.

The current laws. We understand that this is a complexindustry. There are six key pieces of legislation that impactthe industry. Those regulate things like business licensing,commercial licensing — so provincial licensing — the supplyof vehicles, where vehicles can pick up, where they can oper-ate in the province, vehicle safety and inspection, insuranceand permitting. One of those permitting aspects that’s keyis chauffer permitting. That’s the background check process,

9

which is a municipal authority, and that’s covered in thesepieces of legislation.

At a very high level, the regulatory jurisdictions that applyfor an operator…. When I use the term “operator” today,I’m talking about the business that operates the service. Thebusinesses need to apply and be deemed fit, proper and cap-able — that’s an assessment done by the province — and thenalso need a business licence from the municipality or muni-cipalities that they work in.

In terms of vehicle, the jurisdictions for safety — that’s aprovincial jurisdiction. Things like age and appearance of thevehicle are a local government jurisdiction. Then the supply,how many vehicles and the types of vehicles that are avail-able, is actually a concurrent jurisdiction. There’s no jurisdic-tion that overrules the other one. They can have two differ-ent numbers between the municipality or local governmentand the province.

For drivers — drivers’ on-road skills — their actual driv-ing skills and their medical fitness are a provincial juris-diction. Hours of service, which Steven will talk a bit moreabout, is a provincial jurisdiction as well.

Customer service issues, in terms of the driver’s customerservice skills, service to people with different needs — amunicipal authority would set the training for things likethat.

Then criminal record check. Background checks are doneby the local government through the local police agency.

So you’ll see that there is very much overlapping of juris-dictions. Some are fairly clear. Some are concurrent and docreate friction when there’s overlap there.

I just want to give you an idea of what it takes to operatein the province of B.C., just at a very high level, and someof the costs associated with that. In order to operate — we’retalking about a business operating now — first, you needto come in to the province, and you need to apply for asafety certificate. You apply to commercial vehicle safety andenforcement, you pay $200, you show that you have anunderstanding of the safety requirements of the nationalsafety code requirements in the province, and if you’re suc-cessful, you are given a safety certificate in the province.

Once you have that, you can then apply for a passengertransportation licence at the provincial level. You applythrough the Ministry of Transportation, but you’re actuallyapplying to the Passenger Transportation Board, which is anindependent tribunal. We’ll talk a little bit about what theboard is looking for when you apply for a licence.

Should you be successful in getting a licence, you wouldthen go to the local government and meet the local businesslicensing requirements for your business, and possibly foreach individual vehicle as well, for your company. If youwork in multiple municipalities, you would need to havemultiple business licences.

[9:10 a.m.]In terms of the provincial passenger transportation

licence — and I’ll leave it to local governments to talk to youabout their own business licensing — you need to show….

As an applicant, you need to prove that there’s a public needfor the service — that you as a company or an individual arefit, proper and capable of providing that service. You mayhave heard the term “fit and proper” in London. They have asimilar fit-proper test.

Sound economic conditions is the third test. That wouldmean that the service wouldn’t provide an unfair or destruct-ive competition or that there would be a negative impact tothe industry.

Then if the licence is approved, if you’ve been able toprovide the evidence…. The board doesn’t collect evidencethemselves and doesn’t say: “This is what the market needs.”They rely on the applicants to prove that there’s a need inthe market. There’s no number. There’s no “this is the cap onhow many licences can be issued at a provincial level.” Somemunicipalities do have a cap, but there isn’t one provincially.It is up to the applicant to show there is a public need.

Once a licence is approved, the board then sets the termsand conditions of a licence for a licence holder. That mayinclude things like the fares that they can charge, how manyvehicles and the types of vehicles that they can operate, thenumber or percentage of eco-friendly vehicles, the numberor percentage of accessible vehicles that are required, wherepassengers can pick up and drop off. I’ll tell you. Generally,you can drop off anywhere in the province of B.C. or beyond.It tends to be for drop-off. Pickup is quite restricted. We usethe term “boundaries” for that. So you’ll hear that a lot —about boundaries, cross-boundary, that sort of thing.

Then other service requirements would be set. Things liketaxi cameras are set by the board — whether or not you needto have a taxi camera as well as the requirements for the taxicameras that you install. Any signage that you need to haveon the vehicle, whether you need to have a meter, whetheryou need to have a top light…. All of that can be set by theboard. They can require any sort of information or signageavailable to the passenger, things like…. The taxi bill of rightsis also a ministry program, but the board decides who doesor doesn’t need to participate in that process.

That’s the licensing. Now, in terms of the vehicle — we’lltalk more about vehicle safety with Steven — you need tohave provincial inspection on each passenger-directedvehicle operating in the province. You need to have thatevery six months right now. These are done by designatedinspection facilities. They’re not done by the province.They’re inspection facilities that are certified by the province.Those inspection facilities can charge what they want forthose inspections. So $125 to $150 is a good estimate. Cana-dian Tire charges $125.

Then once you’ve got an inspection and a licence, you canapply for your insurance. Now, if you don’t have a licencein a national safety code, generally ICBC can’t sell you theinsurance, so they’ll sell you insurance for a taxi. An averageright now is, as it says there, $7,700. That’s the average inB.C. In the GVRD, it’s $11,200. Remember that there arefleet discounts factored in there, and different companieswould have different experience ratings. But we’ll let insur-

10 Crown Corporations Monday, January 8, 2018

ance talk about insurance. I’m not the expert there.Some municipalities also have a municipal inspection.

This tends to be an appearance inspection. Also a meterinspection. The local governments do the meter test. They’llcheck for calibration of the meters. In my research, I couldn’tfind a fee for that. It would be part of the licensing fees forthe vehicles. But they would need to have that as well.

What’s needed to drive? If you want to be a driver ofone of these vehicles, the first step is a full class 5 driver’slicence. You must have an unrestricted class 5 driver’s licenceto even get near any of the next steps in the process. Thatis a challenge for people coming into the country without ahistory of driving experience. It does take a little longer toget through that if you need to start your graduated class 5licence when you move to the country. If you wanted to talkabout drivers, you can bring in some experts on that.

[9:15 a.m.]The next step is a class 4 restricted driver’s licence. That

does involve a medical examination. Those medical examin-ations happen at a regular interval, and they increase withage. The interval shortens as a driver ages. That costs about$200. That’s the cost of the driver’s licence as well as the costof the medical. Again, your physician can charge what theywish for a medical assessment.

Customer service training. This is not a universal require-ment. This would be a requirement set by the local gov-ernments. In Metro Vancouver, drivers require the TaxiHostPro, which is through the Justice Institute. It is only a LowerMainland course that’s available, and the cost for that courseis $560.

Elsewhere there wouldn’t be a customer service trainingrequirement. There may be a requirement for drivers to havetraining on accessible service through their own company.Some people use the local association to come in and dotraining for their drivers, but the only standard training rightnow is the Justice Institute TaxiHost Pro.

After that, there’s a chauffeur permit. There are about 110municipalities that have taxis and limousines that operate intheir jurisdiction. About 40 percent of those have a chauf-feur permit of any type. A chauffeur permit tends to includea background check. That’s a criminal background check aswell as a driving background check. That’s looking at yourabstract. Time intervals for these vary between jurisdictions.They can be every two years, every three years or every oneyear. It varies. The standard isn’t set by anyone other thanthat local government or that local police. We know the cost,but the ins and outs of what each local government decideson is up to them.

In terms of safety and the regulators for safety, you’vegot the Passenger Transportation Board. I talked a little bitabout requiring taxi cameras and different equipment. ThePassenger Transportation Board, within their mandate, hasthat mandate to implement public safety policy initiatives.Then we’ve got commercial vehicle safety and enforcement.The national safety code safety certificate, which Steven willbe talking about, is required by all commercial passenger

vehicle operators in the province. There’s no exemption fromthat.

Passenger transportation registrar. That’s myself. I’m theregistrar and executive director of the branch. I probablyshould have said that a while ago. As the registrar, I must besatisfied that vehicles operating under a licence are properlyinsured and inspected. We do a check once a year, when alicence is renewed. When it’s issued and then annually as it’srenewed, we make sure that there is insurance and that aninspection is done on the vehicle.

Then police. As I said, in 40 percent of the municipalities,there is a criminal record or driving record check of thedriver. It is the local police that have the authority to do thatunder the Motor Vehicle Act.

Enforcement. Obviously, a lot of the same entities as well.Commercial vehicle safety and enforcement will talk aboutthe compliance audits and roadside inspections. The pas-senger transportation branch and commercial vehicle safetyand enforcement work in lockstep with this industry. Wecollaborate on targeted enforcement. Some examples. Beforegraduation season, we do some limousine checks and — Idon’t tend to use this term — “party bus” checks. Then there’salso participation with local governments on rotating taxichecks as well.

Myself, as the registrar…. We have the authority to invest-igate complaints. I’ll talk a little bit about some of the stat-istics about the complaints we received in 2017 so that youhave a background on that. I do have the authority to issueadministrative fines and penalties. Fines go up to $1,500 — alittle pitch here, $1,500 isn’t very high — and suspension. Wecan suspend or cancel a licence. The board also has the abil-ity to do fitness reviews of a company if they find that they’renot fit and proper. If the registrar finds that they’re not fit andproper, we can suspend or cancel a licence for that reason aswell.

[9:20 a.m.]Police also have the authority to enforce the Passenger

Transportation Act, the Liquor Control and Licensing Act, ifthat applies, as well as the Motor Vehicle Act. They have theability to enforce any of that if they see issues. We do workclosely with the police on investigations from time to time.

With that very quick overview of the taxi industry in Brit-ish Columbia…. I know it’s review for a lot of you. As I said,about 110 municipalities in the province have taxi service.There are about 215 licensees currently in the province, andthose 215 companies or individuals operate almost 3,200taxis in the province.

In terms of a breakdown, if you look at the distribution,65 percent of those vehicles are in Metro Vancouver, another14 percent on Vancouver Island. Prince George and Kelownahave a 3 percent share each, and then the rest are spreadthrough smaller communities throughout the province.

We estimate that the industry employs about 8,000drivers. As well, there are a number of dispatch staff andoffice staff that work for these companies.

Now, as promised, some public feedback that we’ve

Monday, January 8, 2018 Crown Corporations 11

received. We do receive complaints either directly to thebranch or through Consumer Protection B.C. We work withConsumer Protection B.C. because they’re the conduit for allcomplaints through the taxi bill of rights. That number isposted in the vehicles, and individuals can call, email or sub-mit a form with a complaint. Those are triaged through Con-sumer Protection and then referred on to us.

I said that there are about 3,200 vehicles operating in theprovince. The ones in Metro Vancouver tend to be 24-7; theones outside tend to work shorter shifts. But we receivedexactly 295 taxi complaints in 2017. You see the breakdownthere. I don’t think I need to go through that.

Driver behaviour and trip refusal are always the top two,year over year, and then some issues related to payments andrates. We do get some wait-time complaints, but the numberis never as high as some of the behavioural ones.

Accessibility complaints. You’ll see we’ve received four.That would include a person who doesn’t feel that their chairis safely secured in the vehicle. It’s not an uncommon com-plaint. The other could be that a service dog is refused.

Let me just clarify some of the terms that I’ll be using.Ride-hail, for me, is a dispatch or app service — the way thatan individual hails a ride now. Technically, hail means this.It means I’m putting my hand up and calling for a ride. Butwe’re talking about an electronic hail here.

I use “commercial ride-share” when I talk about the actualservice that’s going on, just for clarity. There’s ride-sharewhich is car pool, which is a different thing. We do havelegislation around car pool. But those are the terms that I’llbe using: ride-hail service and then commercial ride-sharefor the actual door-to-door trip.

Ride-hail services. Our legislation currently does not reg-ulate ride-hail or dispatch services. In other jurisdictions,you may find that the dispatch companies actually need tohave a licence as well. We do not have that requirement. Inplaces like Toronto, you need to have a dispatch licence. Wedo not have that here.

That’s whether I phone in, whether I use an app. That partof it is not regulated by us. We often call the apps “trans-portation network companies,” just to throw another term inthere as well.

In terms of the use of apps, most taxi companies operatingin the province have apps and have had apps in variousforms for a number of years. The ride-hail part of it, theelectronic-hail part, isn’t new to the province. The key withapps and the regulated piece is that you have to follow yourlicence. If you use an app, if you use a phone service, if youuse direct contact with the driver — all of that just has tocomply with the licence. You have to charge the rates thatyour licence says you must charge. You must only pick up inthe places that your licence says that you can pick up.

[9:25 a.m.]That is the part that we regulate about apps. Vehicles and

drivers are what we regulate, not app developers, and it’s thevehicles and drivers that are subject to the enforcement ifthey’re operating without a licence.

Transportation network companies. These are some of theapp-based services that have been in the province.

Some of the history. In 2012, Uber came to town with ablack car service called UberBlack. It was a completely app-hailed luxury sedan service. The company used primarilylicensed vehicles and drivers for that service. Unfortunately,the rates charged did not comply with those licensed com-panies’ terms and conditions on their licence. The registrarat the time and the board met with those licensed companiesand advised them that they were at risk of sanctions becausethey were in non-compliance with their licence.

My understanding is that those companies chose to stepaway from their work or weren’t aware that their drivers wereworking with the company and chose to pull their vehiclesout of being dispatched through the company. Uber volun-tarily ceased operation in 2012, after that. Again, that wasnot an action taken against Uber. That was a voluntary ceas-ing of service.

In 2015, our first completely app-hailed service, passen-ger-directed vehicle service, started operation in BritishColumbia. They operated under the tradename Ripe Rides.Ripe Rides worked until 2016, and they were a black-car ser-vice operating 20 vehicles. So this company not only had anapp but also owned their own vehicles and hired drivers todrive their vehicles. They did suspend service in 2016 andthen voluntarily cancelled their licence in 2017. The publicnotice on the suspension of service was related to waiting tohear what happened with ride-hailing in the province.

Also in 2017, Ripe Rides did apply to the Passenger Trans-portation Board to operate an app-hailed taxi service. Theywanted to add 150 vehicles that were taxis, not luxury carsbut lower-cost taxis. That application was refused in 2017.

Also this year, as you know, a number of ride-hail apps areoperating in the province, connecting riders with unlicenseddrivers and vehicles. They are operating in the GVRD, MetroVancouver, and CRD.

To date, we’ve issued $12,650 in fines to the drivers. I’llreiterate that it is the drivers and the vehicles that are oper-ating illegally, it is not the app developers themselves. Sothere’s not an action we can take against the app developers,but we are trying to educate the public about the risks of rid-ing with a driver who may or may not have even a licence, inour research, and in vehicles that are not licenced or insuredfor commercial use. That is an ongoing investigation. So justin terms of questions, I’ll be careful on how I can respond tothose ones.

The question is: why isn’t commercial ride-share here?First and foremost, we haven’t had a commercial ride-shareoperator apply to operate in the province of B.C. We haven’tseen somebody who wants to have people in their personalvehicles that are used as commercial vehicles part-time.That’s commercial ride-share, to me. We haven’t seen some-body apply to the board to operate that kind of service.

We’ve seen luxury cars. We’ve seen the application for ataxi service. But again, those fleets would be owned by thecompanies. We haven’t seen this other model apply.


Certainly, there is an understanding that the regulatorycompliance and insurance costs are high to participate inthis industry, and that may impact the pool of availabledrivers and vehicles. That could be impacting why we haven’tseen an application in the province as well, but I’ll leave thatto others to comment on.

[9:30 a.m.]Some key policy considerations that have to be looked

at when looking at modernizing…. I mean, the PassengerTransportation Act dates back to 2004, and it doesn’t con-sider whether or not we had an app at all. These are the keypolicy considerations that I think are important for you toconsider.

I’ll hand it over to my partner.

B. Ma (Chair): You’ve got five minutes, by the way.

S. Haywood: Five minutes? All right. I’ll be fast.As Kristin is loading it up…. As my name tag says, I’m

Steve Haywood. I’m the director of commercial vehiclesafety enforcement with the Ministry of Transportation.Chair, I’d like to thank you for having us speak here today.

Commercial vehicle safety enforcement. Typically, we dealwith the trucking industry for the majority of our work, butpassenger transportation vehicles are a portion of the focusthat we have.

I’m going to go through some details quite quickly. There’sa lot in this package that you’ll be able to look at afterwardsor ask questions on, but I’m just going to skim over froma more higher level. As Kristin said, when we look at com-mercial passenger transportation vehicles, we’re talking tax-is, limos and buses in the current regime. That’s what I’mgoing to talk to you about today — how we monitor those.

There are three areas of obligation and enforcement thatI’m going to speak to. One is the national safety code, thenext is the vehicle inspection program, and then on-roadenforcement.

Each vehicle that operates in the commercial passengertransportation vehicle must have a national safety codenumber or certificate. That certificate is used to track, mon-itor and intervene. Really, what is that safety performance ofthat carrier? It tracks vehicles to the responsible carrier. Itdetermines the carrier’s safety rating. Then we intervene asrequired with the vehicle and carrier.

Vehicles are associated to a carrier when licensed byICBC. You can’t license a taxi without the national safetycode number. That number has to be displayed on thevehicle registration, so any time there’s some enforcementcompleted on that vehicle, the attending officer can makesure that that number is transferred onto the enforcementaction.

When determining a carrier safety rating, the profiletracks on-road performance in three key areas: at-faultcrashes, which are noted as a property damage, an injuryor a fatality; convicted violation tickets; and out-of-serviceroadside inspections completed by CVSE officers or other

trained officers. It could be police. An out-of-service…. Foran example, let’s say I have a vehicle with a flat tire. Thevehicle would be placed out of service until that tire is thenrepaired.

Points are assigned based on the severity and the link toroad safety. An at-fault crash that results in a fatality wouldgarner the most points against that profile, whereas a ticketfor parking in a disabled zone would have the least.

CVSE will then intervene with the national safety codecarrier dependent on the established thresholds within sevendifferent risk bands. Risk bands are set dependent on thefleet size. Then, when a threshold is reached in any of thoserisk bands, we’ll intervene first off, with a warning letter— it’s progressive; a compliance review, which is a way forour auditors to have a look at that carrier in an educationalexperience; as well as a quantifiable NSC audit. It would bethe last process in the progressive discipline. We’re able tosuspend or cancel a carrier’s NSC certificate dependent onthe progressive discipline model.

National safety code. We also monitor the hours of ser-vice. There are some details up there we’ll skip by, but hoursof service are based on the federal regulations, whichB.C. has adopted, for the most part, with just some subtledifferences. It’s based on the circadian rhythm, so it operatesso that the driver has sufficient rest and work combined in aconsistent pattern over a set period of time.

Pre-trip inspections are also an area that we look at withthe national safety code. For most commercial vehicles, awritten pre-trip is required. There is a modification in theregulations for taxis where they’re able to either do the writ-ten pre-trip or call in the trip inspection issues to the dis-patcher for monitoring at the carrier level.

I’m sorry if I’m going quickly. I know we’re down to a fewminutes.

Carrier safety plans are another area that are a require-ment under the national safety code. They ensure that thecarrier is tracking the individual driver records and mon-itoring the hours of service, the vehicle preventative main-tenance plan, any disciplinary policies and records retention.For records retention, there are a number of items that thecarrier is required to maintain at their place of business,including drivers’ abstracts, accident reports, vehiclesinspections, and so forth.

[9:35 a.m.]Kristin talked briefly about vehicle inspections. They’re

set up through our designated inspection facilities, or DIFs.These are private facilities that are licensed by CVSE. Theinspections are carried out by journeymen mechanics whohave completed a training requirement to do this, and thenit’s monitored by CVSE’s on-road enforcement. That’s justwhat you’ll see when you hop in a taxi right now. You’ll seethe inspection decal on the windshield. It looks over some ofthe major components of that vehicle for mechanical safety.

On-road enforcement. CVSE will look at the vehicleinspections, licensing verification for both the driver and thevehicle, and the adherence to the Motor Vehicle Act and Pas-


senger Transportation Act.I think I met it.

B. Ma (Chair): Well done. All right. Questions from thecommittee.

R. Kahlon: Thank you for that, and thank you for deliver-ing that so fast. I’ve got some questions on it. This will giveyou some time to fill in some of those blanks that you wer-en’t able to.

Some argue that we shouldn’t need a requirement to havesuch stringent safety on cars. They argue that because wehaven’t had many accidents because of faulty issues incars…. I guess you could do chicken and egg, right? Perhapswe’ve got the regulations in place, and that’s why we don’thave them. Has the ministry looked at those requirementsand the success of those or not success of those?

S. Haywood: Just to clarify, the vehicle inspection require-ments on the taxi industry?

R. Kahlon: Yeah.

S. Haywood: We have not done, to my knowledge, arecent review. But like you said, it’s hard to review somethingwhen it’s required right now, with comparing it to where it’snot required. We like to think that the vehicle inspectionprogram has created that safety net and stops those accidentsfrom happening.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): If I could, Kristin, could yougo back to your overall stats, when we talk about the numberof taxis and licensees and things around the province. Obvi-ously, from experience, I know that there are lots of access-ible transportation options in the Lower Mainland, a lot ofaccessible taxis. We’ve got a really good fleet. What’s that likearound the province and in other municipalities and so on?Is there a set percentage? Is it municipality by municipality?Are we severely lacking outside the GVRD? Can you provideany insights there?

K. Vanderkuip: It has been the board’s policy to ensurethat for any municipality or local area that has eight or moretaxis, there is a requirement to add accessible into that fleet.So in small centres, perhaps, where there’s a smaller fleet,there would be a challenge. We do have companies that aren’trequired to have any accessible that may choose, if the mar-ket needs it, to introduce their own.

Local governments do have the authority to requireaccessible transportation in their local area. I’m not aware ofany that do right now, but that is the set standard. There isn’ta specific percentage that the board has set as their require-ment, but they do have that eight or more.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): Okay. That eight or more,from a percentage perspective, makes sense if you add one

to eight. But I think, without a set percentage, it would prob-ably get out of whack pretty quick.

K. Vanderkuip: The board will ask if an application camein. In my experience, I’ve seen the board place a requirementfor accessible on them.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): My second question isrelated but on the public feedback piece and the complaintsreceived. Would trip refusals include trip refusals where pas-sengers with disabilities were passed over?

K. Vanderkuip: Yes.

J. Johal: The question I wanted to ask was in regards tothe overlapping jurisdictions. You touched on that a little bit.There might be some areas where we could improve. I’m justcurious what those would be, where you think that theremight be a greater conversation and discussion in regards tothat policy piece.

[9:40 a.m.]

K. Vanderkuip: Where you have two levels of governmenthaving concurrent jurisdiction, where one doesn’t supersedethe other…. I think that is an area you want to look at. If Iwere providing policy advice, I would be recommending thatthat be resolved.

J. Johal: You had also raised the issue, in your presenta-tion, in regards to fines and accountability from the industry.I’m just curious. Has a taxi licence been revoked or just takenoff the road because of not following some of these issuesthat you’ve brought up — the licence actually being revoked?

K. Vanderkuip: By the board, limousine companies butnot a taxi company to date, in my experience. In terms ofnational safety code?

S. Haywood: I can’t recall us suspending or cancelling onein the recent past. But there has been some voluntary sur-renders, to my knowledge.

J. Johal: I just have a couple very brief other questions.You talked about, and my colleague also touched on, com-plaints that you received from the public. I’m going toassume that didn’t include complaints that are sent to a com-pany or to a municipality as well. Those are just calls madespecifically to government or to your department.

K. Vanderkuip: Those are calls that are referred. So Con-sumer Protection B.C. may refer callers. Should they have anissue with general customer service or lost items, those maybe referred to the company. If it’s a municipal issue — soparking in an inappropriate area or noise complaints abouttaxis — those would be referred to the local government.


J. Johal: Final question. You obviously follow the industryvery closely here in North America, of course. Are there jur-isdictions that you see that do it well in regards to a tradi-tional taxi industry and a ride-hailing industry as well —that have worked well together? Are there particular juris-dictions that you think have been able to weave both thoseentities together, where the public are being served?

K. Vanderkuip: We have been following other jurisdic-tions. Certainly, of benefit for British Columbia is that wehave been able to see the challenge that it has created interms of finding that perfect match. Jurisdictions have beenchanging significantly.

One thing that I have seen is that where there have beenoverlapping jurisdictions…. Looking at the United Stateswhere there have been state and local jurisdictions that con-flict — those states where that’s been resolved — is one of thebest approaches that I’ve seen. And we are seeing that shiftin jurisdictions — where they take it to a higher level, ratherthan a local government by local government approach.

J. Johal: So municipal to provincial or state. In this case,the U.S.

K. Vanderkuip: The equivalent, yeah, where that wasresolved. It does create challenges when a service is lessrestricted to boundaries.

J. Johal: May I ask one more question, one final question,just in regards to the fines that you’ve already imposed onthese unregulated, I guess, leave apps that have been created.These companies that have come in…. They are illegal. Isthat a significant and growing issue in the Lower Mainlandhere? Also, just to follow up, how many companies do yousee doing that already?

K. Vanderkuip: Just to clarify, the companies are not illeg-al. It’s the vehicles and drivers that are illegal. We see sixcompanies. Some of them may be related in the background,but there are six trade names out there that we are aware ofin Metro Vancouver and the capital regional district.

Certainly, the popularity of the service has increased.There has been media coverage that I think has grown theinterest, and we are concerned about the growth of that. Ittakes a lot of enforcement resources to identify and ticketthose vehicles.

S. Chandra Herbert: I’ll throw two into one. One is aquestion around supply. The PTB has to show there’s a publicneed for the service. My constituents will tell me, well, on aFriday and Saturday night, that they often feel there is a needfor more taxis or more ride-hail or more something. They’reoften not specific on what that is.

Does the PTB, Passenger Transportation Board, do inde-pendent assessment to try and figure out what a public needreally is? How do they judge that? I know some will say:

“Well, X number of cabs per person. It solves the issue.” Oth-ers will say: “Give us some more here, or give a little less.” Sothat’s the one — how you figure out what is a public need andhow you show that.

The second is…. I understand there’s a certain require-ment for eco-friendly cars. I thought my colleague from theGreen Party might raise the question, but he’s not able to, Iguess. How does that get decided — what size and types ofvehicles? What are the regulations around that?

[9:45 a.m.]

K. Vanderkuip: Those items aren’t regulated under thePassenger Transportation Act. I would recommend, forthose issues, that — I don’t know if the board has beenrequested to attend — those questions be put to the board. Ithink they would be the best to answer on their policies.

P. Milobar: One assumption — I’ll hopefully get a quickanswer on it — is that for any new rules or any new servicescoming in, the hours somebody could drive would be com-bined. So you can’t drive 13 hours for one company andswitch around and drive another eight hours for the nextcompany. You’d be expected, as an individual….

S. Haywood: Correct. That’s under the current regula-tions, as of now. If you’re driving a truck during the day, youcan’t then go and drive a taxi at night.

P. Milobar: Just to follow up on the first set of questionsaround safety inspections. Most cab companies…. It’s likeany other industry. There are very good operators, and thereare some that sometimes, for whatever reason, don’t main-tain some of the fleet or a couple.

Could you give a sense for everybody…? I’m fairly famil-iar, coming from Kamloops, with what we would have forsome inspection problems with certain cabs. Could youmaybe give a sense of when…? I think sometimes the publicthinks it’s overkill for safety inspections. They think of itas their own personal car. Why would they let somethingsqueak? They wouldn’t still drive it without getting itchecked and fixed. Could you maybe give a sense of some ofwhat actually does get caught that would be true safety prob-lems on some of these vehicles, when they do get inspected,so people get the sense that it’s not an overkill reaction?

S. Haywood: Yeah, for sure. With the taxis, they operatea lot more than your regular passenger vehicle. My wife’svan…. It’s to school and back, to work and back, to thehockey rink. A taxi is going, in some cases, 18 to 24 hoursevery day. So there is a lot more wear and tear on thosevehicles, which requires a much higher level of preventativemaintenance. So yeah, the squeak here and there.

Tires, I think, are an issue that we come across. We havesome issues with rebuilt-from-salvage vehicles at times.That’s a process that’s allowed in British Columbia that wework through. We make sure that those vehicles that have


been written off by ICBC are repaired to the proper stand-ard, but those can…. Again, once those repairs are made….When they have a lot of kilometres on them, issues willdevelop faster than a regular vehicle.

I think lighting is something we come across quite a bit —again because it’s always in action. That vehicle is moving alot. So it just requires that higher level of attention to the pre-ventative maintenance.

B. Ma (Chair): I have some clarifying questions of myown, in terms of taxi licences. What I’m hearing is thattaxi licences are…. Actually, I’ll ask the questions. Are taxilicences attached to a specific vehicle?

K. Vanderkuip: A taxi licence is issued to a companyor individual. They may operate a large number or a smallnumber of vehicles underneath that licence. You would haveKristin’s Cab Company. I would apply, and I’d get fivevehicles. It’s one licence, technically, through us, but it’s tooperate five vehicles. We issue five plates for those vehicles.In terms of the differentiation, we say licences and plates todifferentiate that.

B. Ma (Chair): Okay. That helps.In your presentation, you spoke about how ride-hailing

and dispatch services are not regulated by B.C. but that it’sthe actual vehicles, and the plates and the licences, that aretransporting people around. Based on that, is it theoreticallypossible, then, for some of these app-based ride-hailingcompanies to legally operate if their drivers went andreceived licences? That’s what I’m hearing. Is that correct?

K. Vanderkuip: Yes. There are a number of services thatsolely are booking agents. For limousine companies, mostly,we see that. Or we see eCab, but eCab doesn’t have a licenceright now. They, or Zoro, are an app that works on behalfof taxi companies. They’re connecting riders with licensedvehicles.

B. Ma (Chair): Hypothetically, ride-hailing companiescan operate right now, under the current rules, if they wereto go through the process that you’ve described. There’snothing preventing them from applying and actually….

[9:50 a.m.]

K. Vanderkuip: There would be two ways to do that. One,the ride-hail company could get their own licence. RaccoonGo — one of the companies that’s connecting drivers withunlicensed vehicles and drivers right now — could applyfor their licence, or the individual drivers that want to workthrough Raccoon Go could be applying for their ownlicences to operate legally.

B. Ma (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much.

R. Kahlon: Two clarifying questions. I coach soccer. I’m

not allowed getting my own criminal record check to deliverit to the soccer federation. How does it work for a criminalrecord check? Do drivers who apply get their record checks?I think maybe you said it; maybe I missed it. If you can justclarify that.

I had one more after this.

K. Vanderkuip: That’s the jurisdiction of the local govern-ment and local police. They would set their own process forthat. In my experience looking at it, the driver would go in,fill out a form and submit that to the police. The police woulddo the record check and check it against their standard in thebackground.

R. Kahlon: Then the safety requirements of a car are dir-ectly linked to the licence. Is that correct? You said the carsget checked.

S. Haywood: Yeah.

R. Kahlon: If the car is not up to maintenance, it’s directlylinked to the licence — the licence is at risk of being lost?

S. Haywood: Correct.The national safety code looks at the vehicle inspections,

on-road enforcements — so tickets — and then also crashes.

R. Kahlon: Is there a way of…? I guess the challenge isthis. If there’s not a licensing system, have you guys had somethought about that to ensure the cars are…? Let’s say for aride-sharing company where a driver comes on and off. Hasthere been some thought or have you seen other jurisdic-tions that ensure maintenance of cars in that process? Howdo other jurisdictions look at it? Another complicated ques-tion.

S. Haywood: From the jurisdictions that I’ve seen, thereare some differences in how they’re doing it. Some are havinginspections at certain intervals, and some are not. From amonitoring perspective, I think something like the nationalsafety code around that carrier would be ideal, if ride-shar-ing was to be brought in.

R. Singh: Just a clarification on the licensing and plates. Iunderstand that the taxi company will have the licence, andthen they give out the plates. Is there a limit on how manythey can give out? Or it’s their choice, how many…?

K. Vanderkuip: A taxi company or a licence holder hasan obligation of care and control of the plates. So if theyare approved for 250, they can have 250 vehicles operatingunder their licences.

R. Singh: So they have to come to you for that approval?

K. Vanderkuip: To what we call activating a plate, getting


a plate. So you’re approved for 250, you’d come to the branch,you’d provide vehicle documents, insurance documents andinspection documents and any wheelchair modification doc-uments, if it’s an accessible taxi, you would provide that, andthe branch would then issue the plate for that vehicle. You’ddo that again annually for each of your vehicles to make surethat you still have that valid insurance and a valid inspectionon that. Does that answer your question?

R. Singh: Yes. I’m just going after the need, like if the taxicompany feels like there’s a need for more cars. Would theycome to you to apply for that?

K. Vanderkuip: They would go to the passenger trans-portation board. And apologies. I wasn’t here in 2004 whenthey named us almost the same thing. But we have a branchwithin the ministry, and we administer the applications andissue the licences, and the board actually approves. So theywould be ultimately asking the board for more vehicles.

It tends to be that that’s who gets more vehicles in theprovince. It tends to be established companies coming backto add vehicles to their fleet.

P. Milobar: I don’t know how best to phrase this. I’m nottrying to put you guys on the spot, but since we have youhere. Obviously, to try to implement something, there hasto be changes to current regulations, or we’d already have anapplication brought forward, as you mentioned.

What would be the top “don’t go near to change” regula-tions, where we should be making sure that we don’t recom-mend massive changes within, that you see would create bigpublic safety or transportation safety issues?

S. Haywood: Hmm. That’s an interesting question.From my perspective, I think there has to be some sort

of monitoring system just so the public knows that companyA, B or C is operating safely, and that’s who they’re going tochoose to ride with. Whether the national safety code sys-tem is the right one for ride-sharing, I’m not sure because wehaven’t actually fit them into that yet. But that would be one.

[9:55 a.m.]I think vehicle standards are something that I think the

public really wants to rely on. They know when they get ina taxi, that taxi has been inspected and that taxi is operat-ing as it should be. I can’t say the same for every passengervehicle that’s out there that doesn’t go through an inspection.It’s really up to each operator how much preventative main-tenance they do on that vehicle.

The last one, in my mind, is the hours of service. I thinkfatigue is a hard thing for the police to measure in crashes.But in a number of reports, one of the highest crash-causingfactors in North America is driver fatigue. I think the hoursof service are a very important process in ensuring that itdoesn’t become worse.

K. Vanderkuip: From my perspective, identification of

the vehicles is an issue as ride-share is introduced. These areunmarked vehicles for the most part. Certainly, limiting anunmarked vehicle from picking passengers up on the streetwould be…. Obviously, they have to pick them up. But notbeing hailed on the street, because that does create a chal-lenge of a completely unlicensed person just pretending tobe a ride-share vehicle and someone getting in real trouble.

I think identification of the vehicles is very important. Ireiterate that the safety of the vehicles…. I think the provincedoes a very good job of monitoring the safety of our com-mercial passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles in gen-eral.

B. Ma (Chair): Andrew, welcome.

A. Weaver: Sorry. Helijet lost a helicopter, so we’re late.Just a comment on that. You can’t hail in ride-sharing. You

can’t hail on the street, so that situation you described couldnot occur, because you could not hail to get in a cab. It mustbe app-based.

I want to get to what I see as one of the big historical prob-lems in British Columbia and elsewhere, some other juris-dictions. What is the history as to why the person who getsthe licence to have a cab…? In Victoria, it’s a plate. It’s amedallion here. I think you call it. Why is it suddenly…?They get it for $100. They walk out of the door. In Victoria,it’s worth $200,000 the second they walk out of the door. InVancouver, it’s probably closer to half a million. I don’t knowwhat it is now.

Why is it that we give licensee holders the licence asopposed to the province not holding onto the licence andleasing it out? Some of the resistance I’ve heard — I’vespoken with many, many taxi drivers and taxi associations— is the fact that the value is in the medallion or the plate,and that medallion and plate someone paid a lot of moneyfor, but it’s actually the province who gave it to them. And itcosts like 100 bucks.

It seems to me like a lottery of “You suddenly earn$500,000 because you win the lottery to get 100 bucks” is asystem that’s broken. What is the history in B.C. for the sys-tem we have? Do other jurisdictions have a different system?And why do we continue to issue licences in this way?

K. Vanderkuip: In the province of B.C., we don’t regulatethe secondary market for passenger transportation licences.So this is the shares that are sold in a company that equate tothe value of an individual vehicle operating on the road. Wedon’t regulate that market, but certainly, it has formed in theprovince for taxis and limousines, to a degree. I can’t speak tothe history of how that formed. But there hasn’t been a regu-lation that says….

What the regulations say is that you must have care andcontrol over any vehicle operating under your licence. So Ican’t take a licence and turn around and sell a share in it in orhand a plate over to another individual and then say: “Go dowhatever you like.” That must be operated, in the language of


the act, by the licence holder. That’s what we regulate in theprovince.

A. Weaver: Are there other jurisdictions that regulate thelicence after it’s been issued that we can look at or model?

K. Vanderkuip: We have seen other jurisdictions thathave done a number of things, like opening up the supply, toaddress the secondary market. Any industry where you reg-ulate or limit the supply of anything…. There becomes a sec-ondary value for it, so the changing of supply has impactedthat secondary market.

I know that Toronto did do some changes — and hasstepped back from that but has done changes — to theirambassador plates, and differences.

J. Sturdy: My question was about supply, as well, and thedefinition of “public need.” Are there circumstances or per-haps you could speak to situations where the province hasreceived applications for licences and then declined to issuethem as a result of a perception of public need or a lackthereof?

[10:00 a.m.]Also, are there circumstances where the province has

issued licences and then the local government or the localauthority has declined to issue their part of those licences?

K. Vanderkuip: As I said, there have been applicationsput before the board on a regular basis that when you readthe decisions, don’t contain enough information to supportthat there’s a public need. That tends to be when the boarddeclines an application.

The one that was in the presentation was Ripe Rides want-ing to operate Ripe TX, which was a taxi service. That onewas declined. It tends to be that the evidence put forward….It wasn’t because the company was deemed not fit and prop-er, but it was deemed on the economic regulation that therewasn’t enough evidence to support it.

Now, the second part of your question was: have localgovernments ever declined to issue their local licence afterthe province has approved? That did happen with what wascalled the omnibus decision. That was when the boardapproved taxi companies from outside the four companiesthat have licences in the city of Vancouver to pick up.

There were 38 vehicles approved to pick up from the sub-urban companies, were approved to pick up in Vancouver,and there were a number of court actions. During that courtaction, the city of Vancouver declined to issue licences tothose companies. To date, those 38 vehicles have never beenallowed to operate — to pick up in the city of Vancouver.

Other than that, most local governments tend to changetheir number if the board approves more vehicles in theirjurisdiction. Like, Prince Rupert has a number. PrinceRupert tends to increase their number if the board approvesmore.

J. Johal: Just to follow up on Jordan’s question there. Thereis this constant conversation about Friday and Saturdaynights, people waiting an hour for taxis.

I’m just curious in regards to when you approve theselicences. When is the last time we had a significant increasein the number? What is it, on average? Do you add everyyear, every two years, every three?

I’m just curious. If you’re approving them and the localgovernment says no, there’s a challenge there. And are wereally meeting those needs? I’m just curious as to how muchof this comes to fruition when you say you approve these.

K. Vanderkuip: It’s the Passenger Transportation Boardthat approves the licences. I’m the registrar, so I issue thoseand enforce those licences. The board, I know, last yearapproved 175 additional vehicles in the city of Vancouver.There are peak-period taxis in the city of Vancouver as wellas the capital regional district that operate on Friday and Sat-urday nights, big cruise ship days, Halloween, New Year’s,that sort of thing. So the board has implemented…. Theindustry has come forward with applications to try and meetsome of that increased demand.

Now to the second part of your question. The only timewhere a city has not issued licences to vehicles that areapproved by the board, that’s just the 38 that I’m aware of.That’s not an ongoing issue that we’ve seen on a regular basis.

J. Johal: So why do we still have these numbers? I knowthat peak-period Friday and Saturday nights gets very busyand other areas. But why do we still have this significantshortfall, it seems like, when people are waiting an hour fora cab?

K. Vanderkuip: The supply of vehicles…. Again, I thinkyou’d want to talk to the industry about that one becausethey can apply at any time for additional vehicles. You’d wantto talk to the board about whether or not they are approvingthose applications.

Certainly, I think that there is a challenge when the fleet isclose in size between a Monday midday and a Friday night.

B. Ma (Chair): We’ve got about 90 seconds left. Did youwant to…?

J. Johal: No.

B. Ma (Chair): You’re okay?

J. Johal: Yup. Thank you.

B. Ma (Chair): All right. That’s it for all our questions.Thank you so much for taking the time to present to thecommittee today.

Our next witness is Benn Proctor, who is joining us byteleconference. I believe he’s actually on the line right nowand ready to go.


Benn, speaking to you right now is Bowinn Ma. I’m theChair of the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corpor-ations. We are going to give you 15 minutes to present, andthen there will be 15 minutes for questions.

[10:05 a.m.]

BENN PROCTOR

B. Proctor: Thank you, Bowinn. Thank you for the oppor-tunity to appear before the committee of inquiry into ride-hailing.

My name is Benn Proctor. I’m a program associate at theWilson Center Canada Institute. It’s a think tank based inWashington, D.C. The reason I’m appearing today is becauseI’ve spent about a year between 2013 and 2014 intensivelyresearching Vancouver’s taxi regulation. The results of myresearch led to the publication of a master’s thesis in publicpolicy, creatively titled, I’ll say, “Assessing and ReformingVancouver’s Taxi Regulation.”

Since then, I’ve published numerous op-eds on the topicof taxi regulation and ride-hailing in Vancouver. My expert-ise is on the Metro Vancouver market, but I believe thatmy remarks coming forward can be considered sort of areasonable approximation for what would occur in otherB.C. municipalities.

When I assessed the performance of the Metro Vancouvertaxi market in 2014, it was among the worst-performingmarkets in North America. Service outcomes, such as pas-senger fares, taxi wait times and availability, and ride refusalswere considerably worse in Vancouver than in other juris-dictions. Since then, Vancouver’s relative performance hasdeteriorated, as other Canadian cities have developed frame-works to permit significant entry of ride-hailing services,and this has been to the benefit of the passenger.

I’m certain that permitting ride-hailing under an appro-priate regulatory framework is overwhelmingly in theB.C. public interest. If ride-hailing is allowed, I believe com-munities and stakeholders would experience the followingpositive benefits. Existing and, importantly, new taxi andride-hailing passengers are the primary beneficiaries. Theywill see service quality improve on a number of fronts.

I estimate that taxi fares could fall by 15 to 25 percent dueto the new competition from ride-hailing. So you’ll be ableto get a lower-cost taxi or ride-hailing ride. Wait times wouldalso improve significantly, with the biggest benefit coming attimes of peak demand — weekend nights, holidays — whencabs are hard to come by.

The better availability will also drastically reduce riderefusal — some of you probably saw the video of a passengerwho was refused a trip to New West — especially, too, ifthe introduction of ride-hailing also eliminates boundaryrestrictions, which are currently in place. These boundaryrestrictions forbid taxis from picking up riders outside oftheir home municipality. So if you’re a taxicab in Surrey andyou drop off in downtown Vancouver, you can’t take a returnfare home back to Surrey or anywhere else. It’s really ineffi-

cient, because you deadhead, you waste time, you waste fuel,and it’s bad for the environment.

Just on the topic of ride refusals, data from 2011 showedthat about 20 percent of riders were refused rides in down-town Vancouver. The most common reason given was thatthey were headed to a suburban destination, where thedriver would be unable to pick up a new fare.

Consumers will also benefit just from the presence ofchoice and competition afforded by ride-hailing, includingthe ability to access low-cost, shared or pooled trips, whichthese services offer, or, you know, ordering larger-capacityvehicles or even luxury-capacity vehicles on a night out.Choice is generally a good thing.

Importantly, since the quality of service is improving, thetotal pie of taxi and ride-hailing passengers will grow sig-nificantly. This phenomenon has occurred in virtually everymarket where ride-hailing has been permitted. This will havea number of additional benefits for B.C. communities, butthe important take-away is that as the total growth in pas-sengers grows, the new supply creates its own demand.

Some of the communities that will benefit, or stakeholdergroups…. One I’ll say is that the B.C. labour market willbenefit from the new employment and income opportunitiesin the ride-hailing sector. While these will never be high-paying jobs, a key tenet of economic analysis has revealedpreferences. So if drivers are opting for the ride-hailing sec-tor, it’s an indication that those jobs are better than thealternative available. It might be a chance to earn extraincome on the side or a type of employment available ifsomeone’s just recently lost their job. While it’s sometimeskind of in vogue to denigrate the gig economy, in reality, thebenefits of flexible work arrangements is why we see so manydrivers signing up for the sector.

Importantly, existing taxi drivers, those who drive rightnow for the Vancouver taxicabs, are unlikely to see anymaterial declines in their incomes. That’s because they’reright now charged prohibitive lease fees by the current tax-icab owners and shareholders. These lease fees, which canrange from $180 to $200 on a Friday or Saturday night ora monthly lease fee for $4,000, will fall if there is any lossin taxicab passengers. Drivers consider their take-home pay,and not the amount of…. So they’ll bid accordingly.

While it’s possible that some drivers might see slightincome declines overall, other drivers could benefit fromgreater choice and employers and utility gained from moreflexible working hours.

[10:10 a.m.]Other benefits from a growing passenger transportation

market are public safety and more options to get home afterpublic transit stops running. There have been safety dangersaround Granville Street, where you’ve got lots of peoplemilling around after the bars have closed, unable to gethome. You might also have instances of reduced drinkingand driving, although the data has yet to support that.

I’ll say that the availability of low cost and reliable ride-hailing will also benefit the environment, as it will reduce the


need for individuals to own private automobiles. This willencourage greener trips, such as walking one way or tak-ing public transit one way and requesting an affordable ridehome at the end of your trip. I also believe that B.C. resid-ents with disabilities, on the whole, will benefit both fromthe employment opportunities and greater access to rides,including the possible development of niche services undera regulatory framework that allows ride-hailing services inB.C.

I’ve listed a long list of beneficiaries from the introductionof ride-hailing. There will be one stakeholder group signific-antly harmed by the introduction of ride-hailing, and that isthe owners of B.C. taxicabs, who will see the value of theirlicences or shares decline precipitously. Shareholders whobought at peak prices, possibly with financing, stand to losea lot from the introduction of ride-hailing.

Often I’m asked by journalists to choose one statistic orindicator to sum up the deficient state of the passenger trans-portation market in Vancouver. Is it taxis per capita, passen-ger wait times or fare prices? The indicator I always pointto is taxi share values, which represent the value of owninga provincial permit that authorizes you to operate a taxivehicle. I’m certain that the topic of share values will comeup throughout the inquiry, but I think it’s worth dwelling onthis point for a bit.

Historically, taxi shares in Vancouver have been a greatinvestment to make. In the 1950s, permits sold in Vancouverfor, reportedly, $5,000. By 1980, we have evidence of taxipermits selling for $30,000 each. When the Motor CarrierCommission looked at this issue in 2001, they estimated thatLower Mainland taxicab company share values ranged from$120,000 to $420,000. The lower values were for regions likeNew West and Coquitlam, while the higher range was for thevaluable Vancouver permits.

Just to cite a few more data points. A Passenger Trans-portation Board decision in 2007 noted that a half-share ina Richmond cab company in the year 2000 sold for $84,000.Seven years later that same share had more than doubledand sold for nearly $200,000. In 2014, I estimated that a full-share in a Yellow Cab Vancouver company retailed for about$800,000.

The best comparison I can think of to explain taxi sharevalues is to compare it with an asset like a vacation rentalproperty. When you operate a taxi vehicle, you have a num-ber of costs that you need to cover: the driver’s time andwage and the costs of vehicle depreciation, maintenance,fuel, insurance, electronic dispatch. Likewise, if you own avacation rental, you need to cover the costs associated withrenting. It could be marketing the property, hiring cleaningservices, taxes and paying utilities.

You don’t charge a rental price for your vacation propertybased on the actual costs associated with operating. You setit based on demand for its use. That demand likely variesthroughout the year. Maybe it’ll be highest over the winterholiday break or in the summer, when kids are off school.You also rent it during shoulder season by dropping the

price. If you’re considering selling the vacation rental, youfactor in the anticipated future profits that you would earnfrom renting it against the price buyers are offering beforemaking your decision to sell.

Taxi permit pricing works in a similar fashion. Becauselicences are restricted, drivers offer to rent the use of vehiclesfrom licence owners — in this case, the shareholders of thetaxicab companies. The rental price is based on what driversexpect to earn over the term of the lease.

Again, looking at the Vancouver market, in 2013 aB.C. Supreme Court submission by the Vancouver taxicabcompanies noted that the median lease fee for a 12-hour Fri-day night shift was $180. For a Monday night shift, whichis the taxi version of shoulder season, it might only be $80.Under the daily leases, the driver is also responsible for fuelcosts, but the owners supply the vehicle and dispatch ser-vices. Other lease arrangements I mention include themonthly lease for $4,000 and an annual lease for $48,000. I’mspeaking about the Vancouver taxi market here.

Anyway, this high price that drivers pay for accessing thepermit, just like the high price that weekenders pay to rent avacation property, is what supports the taxi share valuation.But here it’s worth emphasizing that the vacation rental….The shortage is because we’re not making any new beach-front property. Conversely, Metro Vancouver’s taxi shortageis an artificial one. It has been created by a deficient regulat-ory system.

[10:15 a.m.]I think one of the questioners mentioned New York City,

where medallions are auctioned off to the highest bidder,and the financial value of the shortage is at least capturedby the public purse. In B.C., it only costs $200, plus $50per additional vehicle, to apply for a licence. But since newlicences, especially to new companies, are rarely issued, theexisting permits can be bought and sold for tremendousvalue. When I looked at the Vancouver market, share valueswere more that double that of the next closest Canadian city.

Now that I’ve just explained share values, I want to explainwhy I believe the introduction of ride-hailing or even newtaxi supply is unlikely to lower driver income. If the intro-duction of ride-hailing lowers the amount of revenue a taxican earn, drivers will reduce the price that they are willingto lease a taxi. This is based, again, on their take-home pay.Instead of paying $200 for a Saturday night shift, they willoffer to pay $40 for a Saturday night shift. But their take-home pay will be the same.

You don’t have to take it from me. As Dan Hara, who isthe taxi expert leading the provincial review, said in a 2013affidavit to the B.C. Supreme Court on the subject of the37 suburban taxis that would be granted access to the Van-couver market on Friday or Saturday night: “Any lost rev-enue per taxi will find itself expressed in a lower willing-ness by taxi drivers to pay for the premium Friday and Sat-urday night shift lease. Licence holders receive the excessvalue from licence rights and bear 100 percent of the lossfrom any decline in the value of that right.”


In Vancouver, we have a system that has enriched a fewtaxicab holders at the expense of the B.C. public interest.The only explanation I can provide for this grave publicpolicy failure is one of regulator and legislator capture bythe incumbent industry. Instead of regulation that is in thepublic interest, we’ve got regulations that are in the taxicabshareholder interest only. This is evidenced by the lack ofaccess to new taxi licences, fares that are set too high andoriginating area restrictions which disallow licences — youknow the Surrey example — from picking up in Vancouver,even if they just dropped off a passenger in Gastown, forcingthem to deadhead home empty, wasting fuel and time.

Please don’t take any criticism of the regulatory frame-work that was developed personally. I sincerely believe thatbeing an elected politician might be one of the most difficultjobs there is. Essentially, you have to know the ins and outs ofevery key public policy issue important to British Columbi-ans, be it whether or not to build Site C, how to develop solu-tions to the opioid addiction crisis, creating affordable childcare or responding effectively to softwood lumber tariffs.

These questions are extremely challenging, to say the least.You have to grasp the intricacies of complex policy issues, allwhile satisfying the preferences of the electorate, and yourjob is on the line every four years, possibly sooner in aminority government. It’s an impossible task, but to effect-ively legislate, the most important input that you can have isgood information — clear, honest, evidence-based inform-ation on what the likely impacts of a policy change are.Throughout the history of B.C. taxi regulation, the incum-bent industry has not provided you with that. Rather, theyhave provided public authorities with misleading and some-times outright false information to enrich their shareholders.

Currently they are playing a game of “heads, I win; tails,the taxpayer or the public loses.” For the last 70 years in Van-couver, the coin has been coming up heads. New compet-ition has been restricted, and taxicab owners have profitedenormously. Now, as ride-hailing threatens the profitabilityof their protected monopoly and the coin might possiblycome up tails, they are actively obstructing the entry of thesebeneficial services to B.C. residents by calling for a levelplaying field which would make ride-hailing more expensiveand remove many of the benefits I articulated earlier.

I believe reasonable disagreements regarding a prosperousBritish Columbia exist. Some might believe that B.C. needsa little more health care or protection of environmental ser-vices, while others might stress the benefit of lower taxesand employment opportunities in the natural resources sec-tor. But I think everyone can agree that a prosperous BritishColumbia is one where citizens have access to many goodsand services at a low cost. Attempts by vested interests tomake taxi and ride-hailing services expensive and scarceshould be rejected by politicians, as it is against the publicinterest.

Instead, new regulations on ride-hailing should focus onissues that the passenger can’t observe — promoting vehiclesafety and driver background checks. Attempts to cap the

number of vehicles or institute a minimum fare should berejected, full stop. Importantly, as the cautionary tale of reg-ulatory capture in B.C.’s taxi industry demonstrates, theprovince needs to build good, healthy institutions that willregulate ride-hailing and the taxi industry with good stew-ardship going forward. Right now it appears that technologyinnovations merit a lighter-touch regulation for both sectors,but performance outcomes should be monitored going for-ward.

[10:20 a.m.]

B. Ma (Chair): Perfect.

B. Proctor: That’s it for me. I want to thank you guys forthe opportunity.

B. Ma (Chair): Perfect. Very well timed. I’ve already got abit of a speakers list going.

R. Kahlon: Thank you, Mr. Proctor. I guess what I gotfrom your presentation was that we should just flip theswitch and all the problems will be solved — if it was thateasy.

You mentioned Dr. Hara, who is doing the provincialreview. Dr. Hara wrote a report for the city of Vancouver —I think it was a few years ago — where he said that every jur-isdiction that completely deregulates has started to re-regu-late. So obviously, it’s a challenge for all governments, thisissue. It’s not as easy as perhaps it sounded like, the way youproposed it.

I guess what I would ask you is the reverse of what yousaid. What do you see as the challenges with it? I heard allthe positive things that you think would come from it. Whatdo you see as challenges, whether it’s the amount of cars onthe road…? Do you see any challenges, or do you think that’sthe perfect solution?

B. Proctor: I think you should focus new regulations onthings that a passenger can observe before they get into avehicle. I don’t know if a vehicle’s brakes have been checkedregularly or if it’s being maintained. I also don’t know ifa driver has potentially a criminal record or a backgroundcheck. So these are two items that I would focus regulationon.

I’m just promoting that information for passengers — sonot allowing drivers who’ve had a criminal record or notallowing vehicles that can’t pass the safety inspection on theroad. That’s where I would focus the regulation.

Going back historically, there has been some mixed resultsaround taxi deregulation. But recently, with the technologic-al innovations in GPS and cell phone technology, it’s basic-ally solved a lot of the trust problems and the pricing prob-lems that existed in those instances.

Vancouver, as many folks cite, is one of the largest NorthAmerican jurisdictions without ride-hailing. Areas like Cali-fornia have had ride-hailing regulations since 2012. That’s


now six years ago. It really does seem like the proof is in thequality of the service and the fact that passengers and driversare flocking to this service.

It doesn’t seem like the claims…. I know Hara’s report wasfrom two or three years ago, but I just don’t believe thoseclaims are valid — that we’ll need to re-regulate the ride-hailing industry. But I think it’s important to have a goodframework in place, in case, ten or 12 years down the road,we notice that Uber and Lyft might be a duopoly. They mightbe charging customers a little more.

It’s important that you have really good staff who are inplace who can say: “Hey, look. We’re noticing some problemsin this market. Let’s amend and adjust.” It’s sort of perform-ance-based regulation.

R. Kahlon: Just a follow-up question to that. I got that youdisagree with Dr. Hara on that portion, which is okay. Peopledisagree on things.

I guess my other question would be…. Obviously, you’velooked at all that other jurisdictions — say, London or SanFrancisco. All the government agencies that oversee it, all theregulations are always moving, it feels like. I feel like everytime I go on I hear about a jurisdiction now making anoth-er change, another jurisdiction making another change. SanFrancisco, I think, was the earliest adopter, and they’ve madetons of changes.

Do you see, now, that there’s a consistency in jurisdictions,or do you still see that jurisdictions are struggling with thechallenge and adapting and moving overall?

B. Proctor: I think it’s a new issue, and I agree that theyare adapting and moving. I think that’s what you should….We should view regulation as a living document with thegoal of promoting the B.C. public interest. But I think, gen-erally, it’s accepted now in the community that these ride-hailing services are delivering significant benefits for urbanmunicipalities around the world, and we need to think abouthow best to continue to integrate them.

R. Singh: Thank you, Mr. Proctor. My question is aboutwages. For a long time, the taxi industry has been known fordecent wages and what the taxi drivers have been making.

What I get from your presentation, with the ride-sharingcoming in…. Do you think it would bring in more precari-ous work and a loss in a decent wage or minimum wage forthe workers?

[10:25 a.m.]

B. Proctor: No. I would quibble with the fact that the Van-couver taxi industry pays a decent wage. When I looked atit, historically, wages in B.C. for drivers are much lower thanthe general economy.

To use the example of a Friday and Saturday night shift,when I looked at 2014, drivers had to bid anywhere from$180 to $200 to get access to a vehicle for that Friday night.In addition, they had to bring the taxi vehicle back full of

gas. So you could say maybe $50 for a gas tank. That meant,really, they needed to earn in excess of $400 in fares just toaccumulate minimum wage over a 12-hour shift.

I’ll also add that those working conditions are highlystressful for drivers, because if you don’t get a trip some-where or, in fact, you get a bad trip out to an area where youcan’t pick up, you might not make enough to cover the leasefor that night. So I would say the existing work environmentfor a taxi driver is unenviable to begin with. The introduc-tion of ride-hailing will create some new opportunities forthese drivers.

I don’t think taxi driving will ever be a really high-paying-wage job, unless you actually own the permit that allowsyou to enter the market. That’s because, basically, the poolof people who can drive a taxi, especially with GPS phonesnowadays, is essentially quite large. It’s anyone with a driver’slicence and a vehicle on hand with these ride-hailing ser-vices. So if the wage of a taxi driver ever got up to, say, $25an hour, a lot of people would volunteer and say: “Okay,I’ll drive that.” This big supply of potential drivers creates adownward pressure on wages. Unfortunately, it’s kind of amarket where it’s tough to really earn significant incomes.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you, Mr. Proctor. You men-tioned questions around boundaries — of eliminating allboundaries so that you could stop what you called dead-heading. It’s certainly been an issue that I’ve noticed.

My question is related more to…. On the boundary issue,it certainly could help my constituents. I live in downtownVancouver. There’s a lot of business downtown, and I under-stood boundaries were created to ensure that suburban com-munities also were well served on, say, a Friday or a Saturdaynight.

If you eliminated boundaries, do you have any concernthat communities which may not be as dense, which may nothave as much business, would see a reduction in service asbusiness flocked to the area where I live, where there is a lotof business, with the clubs, the downtown scene? You mightsee a reduction in service in some communities. Is that anissue?

B. Proctor: Yeah.

S. Chandra Herbert: Sorry. I’ll just give you one morequestion, if that’s okay. It’s just the question of pricing. Yousuggested that pricing for customers would be reduced. Oneof the things you see in the news around ride-hailing is thaton certain evenings and for certain events, pricing, of course,goes through the roof. I think one of the stories I read wasabout New Year’s Eve, a night when we often hear con-cerns about lack of taxis. They had enough ride-hailing ser-vices, but one gentleman ended up paying $1,000 that nightbecause of surge pricing. So you might have the service. Itjust costs a lot more. Is that an issue as well?

B. Proctor: Sure. Let me start with the first question. I


think that’s a great question, the issue of: will certain areas beunderserved?

I would say that if we kept the really lousy regulations inplace, which have sort of capped the number of taxis in thearea, yes, there is a risk that taxis in Coquitlam would leavethat area and spend most of their time picking up passen-gers in Vancouver. But it’s sort of a catch-22. Are they pickingup…? If they’re operating in the area with the most demand,they’re certainly providing a service to passengers.

The idea that certain jurisdictions won’t be served in thefuture could be resolved completely by loosening and open-ing up the sector to more taxi vehicles and ride-hailing.As we’ve looked at the introduction of ride-hailing, we see,especially in New York City, that the outlying areas in NewYork got much better service in the boroughs because therewere more vehicles available.

The problem is with the cap on licences. You should notrestrict the total number of vehicles. Unfortunately, that’swhat they do in B.C. So I would say that is kind of the issue.

[10:30 a.m.]On the issue of surge pricing, first I’ll say this. There’s a

benchmarking report that looked at the cost of Uber andLyft in 20 U.S. cities. It found that in 39 out of 40 instances,ride-hailing was the cheaper option for passengers. I think,overwhelmingly…. Because there’s now no shortage of taxilicences and drivers don’t have to pay that high overhead interms of a lease to the shareholder or owner, you see faresdrop. There’s now no longer this pointless sort of artificialshortage of licences.

I will say that in some instances, I think it might be appro-priate to put a maximum cap on the charge and includeregulations for really good transparency so that passengersknow what they’re paying the ride-hailing companies. You’reright. You hear these media stories where someone has paid$10,000 for a ride home on New Year’s Eve or something.I think they’re eventually refunded, and stuff like that. Thatmight be a question for regulators going forward: should weset a very high cap to prevent any price-gouging?

Tentatively right now, I don’t think you should. I thinkthese problems will work themselves out in the market. Ithink having the ability to increase your prices by 25 percentor something can get a lot of drivers on the road and canbenefit drivers’ pocketbooks. Additionally, it can ensure thatpassengers are being served. If someone is willing to pay a bitof a surge price to get home, that’s a good service to have.

B. Ma (Chair): Mr. Proctor, we’ve got two more questionshere, and about four minutes. I’m going to go to Stephanie,and I’ll ask you to keep your answers a little bit shorter sothat we can make sure Andrew gets his question in as well.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): Hi, Benn. A question for you.You made a statement about believing that there is oppor-tunity to increase service for people with disabilities throughthe introduction of ride-hailing. Can you explain where thathas happened, and how?

Certainly, from my perspective — and I use a wheelchair,Benn — while service has not always met a terrific standardhere with the taxis, we do have a good fleet and a lot of very,very good drivers and operators. I personally can’t see howany expansion of ride-hailing would improve that. I can’tsee that there’ll be drivers with accessible vehicles, given thecost, and I see the increase in competition actually encour-aging the drivers of accessible cabs to pass on the moreexpensive, more difficult, accessible fares.

B. Proctor: Sure. That’s a good question. I know I’ve beentold to keep my answers short.

B. Ma (Chair): Mr. Proctor, I’m going to interrupt you fora second. Sorry, just one second. We’re going to switch it upa bit. We’re going to hear Andrew’s question and Jas’s ques-tion, and I’m going to ask you to answer all three at once.

A. Weaver: First off, I wanted to thank you, Mr. Proctor,for your exceptional presentation, where you dealt withmany of the misconceptions that are out there — the issue ofa decent wage, the issue of the effect of ride-hailing on thetaxi industry globally and, in particular, taking head-on theclaim that somehow we have to create a level playing field.

Why that’s a critical point that you raised is because we’renot playing the same game. You create a level playing field ifboth teams are playing baseball together, but if one team isplaying football and the other is playing baseball, it doesn’tmake sense to talk about creating a level playing field. So Ido very much appreciate that.

My question is very simple and very straightforward. Itfollows up on what my colleague from Vancouver–West Endhere is…. Do you know a jurisdiction out there, anywherein the world, that has put in place a surge pricing max-capregulation? In particular, are you able to tell what that surgemax-cap regulation looks like and what it does in terms ofhow to determine what the max is?

J. Johal: Mine is also a very simple question. Andrewbrought up the issue of surge pricing. We’ve talked aboutsome of the challenges that jurisdictions like Austin or Lon-don have had. Could you, Mr. Proctor, tell us of a jurisdic-tion or jurisdictions that have done this well, where they’vemerged the traditional taxi industry with ride-hailing aswell, on the public policy side. It’s so that we can take a lookat — whether it’s maybe in this country, in the U.S. or inEurope — where they have done it well.

[10:35 a.m.]

B. Proctor: Okay, great. Thanks a lot. I’ll tackle the ques-tion on disabilities first. I appreciate, and the questioner isright, that operating a taxi vehicle with a lift to allow wheel-chair access is more expensive.

When I said that allowing ride-hailing will benefit personswith disabilities, I’m taking a broader view of disabilities.Right now lots of people might not be able to drive — could


be due to an eyesight condition, due to a heart condition ormight just need to take taxis or ride-hailing vehicles morefrequently because they walk with a cane. In these instances,the greater supply of ride-hailing vehicles is a very goodbenefit to them.

In other jurisdictions, you’ve seen Lyft, I think it is, thatoperates a service where you get a text in advance. Theseare employment opportunities. We have drivers who mightbe deaf or unable to communicate verbally, and they haveemployment opportunities to drive the vehicle. So there arethose benefits there.

I think the thing I would say to regulators is to monitorthe issue of service for persons with wheelchairs closely. Ifyou see it falling, institute some requirements to resolve theproblem and to actually make the service better. You mightsay that for every 65 ride-hailing vehicles on the road, theyhave to have one car with a wheelchair accessible thing. Idon’t know what the exact number is. But there’d be ways toresolve it. The key is to have good regulation and close mon-itoring to make sure that service outcomes for persons withdisability are continuously improving.

To Andrew’s question, I apologize. I actually don’t know ifI could name a regulation that’s successfully instituted a capon surge pricing. I know you’ve got three days of hearings,so I hope that someone else will be able to address that ques-tion.

Then I think it was Jas’s question on what jurisdictionsthat I point to. California was an early adopter, in 2012. Ithink they’ve developed a really good regulatory framework.

Just recently, Calgary. One thing that I commend them fordoing — and it might be my bias as a researcher — is they’vechecked the data quite closely and monitored the number ofrides. One of the things you see in the Calgary area is whiletaxi rides slightly decreased under the first year of ride-hail-ing, there were 1.4 million trips generated through ride-hail-ing and only a very small decrease in taxi trips. So you reallysee the market growing.

I think it makes sense to have good indicators and to fol-low them closely. That way, B.C. can continuously track theperformance of the market and ensure that ride-hailing is inthe public interest in B.C., which I think it is.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): Thank you, Benn. I just wantto say thank you for your expansion on your comment there.That was appreciated.

I don’t disagree with your commentary about the addedbenefits for a large portion of people with a variety of disab-ilities. I just wanted to highlight the issue related to wheel-chair accessibility and the additional costs that are incurredby companies that are required to maintain those vehicles.So thank you very much.

B. Proctor: No, thank you. It was a great question.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): I think Bowinn is going toend our session.

B. Ma (Chair): That’s right. Thank you so much, Mr. Proc-tor. We are going to let you off the line now. I do appreciateyou taking the time to speak with the committee. Have awonderful day.

B. Proctor: Hey, I really appreciate it. I’ll be watching andlistening to the hearing on line. Have a nice day.

B. Ma (Chair): Wonderful.Our next witnesses are from the Vancouver Taxi Associ-

ation. Please come up to the table. We’ll ive you a minute toget settled in.

[10:40 a.m.]Thank you so much for being here today. For your

presentation, I’m going to give you 15 minutes and turn myiPad around so you have a sense of where you are. Then we’llhave 15 minutes for questions. We will do one question, oneanswer. We’re going to try it out and see how that goes. Wemight switch it up for future witnesses. But for now, we’regoing to do one question, one answer. Provided the answersare short enough, then we can get a lot of questions in.

I’m going to start the button, and then you may proceed.Go ahead.

VANCOUVER TAXI ASSOCIATION

C. Bauer: Thank you very much for providing the Van-couver Taxi Association the opportunity to discuss its pro-posed solution for the lack of timely and convenient taxi ser-vice in Vancouver and elsewhere in the province. Our pro-posed solution also has the support of the B.C. Taxi Associ-ation, who you’ll be hearing from later this afternoon.

I want to start by saying we’re not here to defend the cur-rent situation. We know that the needs of the public are notbeing met and that frequently people are waiting far too longfor taxi service. We need improved access and a paymentsystem based on the latest and best technologies to providethe public with the taxi service it rightfully is demanding anddeserves. But the solution here is not to allow anyone witha car or an app to enter the taxi market. That will destroythe existing taxi industry and, as a result, have other harmfulconsequences contrary to the public interest.

I have provided you with a recent New York Times articlenoting that the entry of Uber, Lyft and others into the marketin New York has actually resulted in much greater trafficcongestion. A study found that, at any given time, more thana third of the taxi providers are riding empty on New Yorkstreets, causing traffic to crawl at an average of 4.7 miles perhour, down from 6.5 miles per hour five years ago. That’s,obviously, not in the public interest.

There is no public interest in having an oversupply of tax-is, which will occur in an unregulated market. Not only willthat cause traffic congestion, but it will also lead to destruct-ive competition between taxi providers, where it is difficult,if not impossible, for anyone in the industry to make a reas-onable living. That is not a problem for taxi providers; it’s a


problem for the public as well and as a whole.In a regime that promotes destructive competition, there

is no economic incentive for any taxi provider to incur theadditional costs of providing taxis for disabled customers orto spend the time and money to work with industry groupsand government to achieve broader public goals in terms ofthe efficient and environmentally conscious transportationof passengers. In our view, this can’t be addressed throughpublic subsidies, which would be very costly and extremelydifficult to administer.

We’re not saying that the existing regulatory systemshould be maintained. It has proven to be unable to providesufficient supply to meet demand. But we believe there is away to implement a performance-based regulation ensuringthat there will be a sufficient supply of taxi providers at anygiven time to provide timely service while, at the same time,meeting other important public policy objectives such asthe prevention of destructive competition. That is by grant-ing the authority for a single B.C.-based umbrella entity toprovide an integrated taxi service and combining an app-based service with existing taxi dispatch and hailing serviceswithin each existing municipal boundary.

[10:45 a.m.]The interests of the public as well as the existing industry

can both fully be met in this integrated system using a com-mon app shared by all taxi providers as a complement tothe existing taxi dispatch and ride-hailing model. There willbe a mixture, in our proposal, of the existing taxi licenceholders operating under both the common app and throughthe existing taxi dispatch and street-hailing model, supple-mented by people providing taxi service through the use oftheir own vehicles and operating exclusively under the com-mon app. The operation of the common app, which will bejointly owned by all participants on a voluntary basis, willbe charged with recruiting, training and generally oversee-ing app-based taxi providers.

There will also be a splitting of taxi licences, which willdouble the number of taxis so that vehicle shift changes willnot be necessary. Through sophisticated algorithms and con-stant monitoring of demand and performance, the coordin-ating entity will be able to ensure that there is a sufficientsupply of taxi providers at any given time to provide taxi ser-vice within five minutes to all taxi users. At the same time,there would be no surplus supply clogging up streets, leadingto a situation where taxi providers aren’t busy and, therefore,not able to make an income.

In this way, the investments and livelihoods of the existingtaxi industry are preserved while, at the same time, allowingfor newcomers with their own vehicles to participate in anindustry in a way that is economically viable for them aswell. This homegrown, made-in-B.C. solution will also facil-itate common regulatory standards, including insurance, tobe applied to all taxi providers.

After consulting many technology companies — includ-ing Uber, Lyft, Piccolo and Ripe — we decided that a localcompany by the name of Kater would be best able and suited

to provide the common app to be used by all taxi providersin the province and to engage and manage the new entrantsinto the industry in a manner that ensures a sufficient supplyof taxi providers to meet demand in a timely manner at alltimes.

This made-in-B.C. solution avoids all the problems thathave accompanied a deregulated industry, where differentapp-based taxi services have been allowed to participatefreely, regardless of the consequences. We understand thatthere may be questions on whether this one-app solutionwill work. We welcome the opportunity to prove that it willwork.

The app will be made available in a convenient manner toeveryone, including all visitors to the province. We will workcollaboratively with all parties to ensure that public policygoals are being met, and it will be a system where taxi pro-viders can make a reasonable living and not be exploited.

In summary, the problem is not that there is no longera need to control the number of taxi providers. Rather, itis that the existing regulatory system has not been flexibleenough to ensure that supply will always be able to meetdemand. Our new made-in-B.C. one-app system will be ableto do that while, at the same time, fully protecting the publicinterest in all respects: timely service; fair prices; publicsafety; full and equitable service to all persons with disability,who we have worked very closely with for the last five orsix years; and the achievement of overall transportation andenvironmental goals by providing timely and efficient ser-vices that meet the needs of all segments of the public.

Finally, to summarize the response to the two questionsthat we were posed, for the committee:

(1) Our integrated model would apply to the entireprovince. No communities would be left out. That will notbe the case in a deregulated system which allows the Ubersand the Lyfts to enter and exit at will. They will only chooseto service highly populated areas, leaving a number of com-munities without an app-based taxi service.

[10:50 a.m.](2) There would still be a role for the Passenger Transport-

ation Board in ensuring that safety and other requirements,such as fair pricing of taxi services and performance stand-ards, are being met. However, the board would no longerhave the authority to control supply. That would be handledentirely by the local umbrella entity given the authority tocoordinate taxi service throughout the province.

Thank you very much.

B. Ma (Chair): Fantastic.

A. Weaver: Thank you for your presentation. While it wasinnovative, I will say I do not think government should bein the business of picking individual companies as winnersor losers. I think it would be inappropriate for governmentto pick a particular company like Kater to put a one-size-fit-all model. Fundamentally, it goes against everything I believein, which is the need for competition in the marketplace.


This would actually take competition out of the marketplace.While I think it’s innovative, I’ll tell you up front I can’t

support this one-size-fit-all solution because it strikes meas…. You know, if I want to take Black Top or Yellow Cab, I’dchoose that. If there’s a one-size app, it knocks the competi-tion out.

I want to come to something that you said and ask a spe-cific question. You said here: “But the solution here is notto allow anyone with a car or an app to enter the taxi mar-ket. That will destroy the existing taxi industry and, as a res-ult, have other harmful consequences contrary to the publicinterest.”

Now, I would argue that’s an assertion without evidence tosupport it. Can you provide an example or examples of juris-dictions around the world where the taxi industry “has beendestroyed” through the introduction of ride-hailing. That’sinflammatory rhetoric that I think needs to be justified.

C. Bauer: I can answer to our friends back in Calgary, twocompanies in particular: Checker Cabs and Associated Cabs.Uber was allowed to operate in Calgary. They started with afew hundred cars and have now gone up to between 3,500 to5,000 Uber vehicles operating there.

The cost to operate a taxi in Calgary is $600 per week.That’s insurance and maintenance and fuel. The driversnow…. Because of the likes of Uber, many have parked theirvehicles. Most of them are making just what it takes to makethat living — $120 a day. That’s the experience I have. I havespoken with several cities across Canada, several cities acrossNorth America, on the destruction of their industries andpeople having the opportunity to earn a fair wage.

A. Weaver: A follow-up question is: why have I not read asingle story in any newspaper anywhere in the world on anytaxi company being destroyed by the introduction of ride-hailing?

C. Bauer: Maybe “destroyed” was not the right word touse, but it has definitely caused a destruction to theirindustry, absolutely, and the right for them to earn the prop-er living and take money home to their families.

R. Kahlon: I guess the part I’ll agree with my colleaguehere on is that this is innovative. I’m glad to hear from youthat you acknowledge some of the challenges that the pub-lic is facing at this time. I have a couple of questions, but I’mgoing to let everybody ask a question. I’ll come back for therest later.

Earlier we had the public transportation ministry staffhere. There were some questions posed around…. We knowthat there’s more demand than supply on the road. So myquestion is, and it was posed by…. I can’t remember who,but someone posed the question. Have you applied for morelicences in the past to meet that demand?

C. Bauer: For the last five years, we’ve been applying for

licences with the Passenger Transportation Board. We havenot been successful. The application that we receivedapproval on earlier this year was sitting with the PassengerTransportation Board for, I believe, 18 months. We couldn’tget a decision out of that.

We had an application before the Passenger Transporta-tion Board for 85 accessible vehicles, of which we were onlygranted 20 of those vehicles. And those vehicles, or 20 per-cent of our fleet, had to come off of the road during peaktimes. Again, it goes back to the omnibus decision, where the38 was held in abeyance by the City of Vancouver.

[10:55 a.m.]

R. Singh: My question is about the innovation that you aretalking about, like a central system. Have they already donetheir work? Do we have it; how it will operate? Secondly, dowe have any examples of any other municipalities where thishas worked — the taxi industry working with the ride-hail-ing?

C. Bauer: I can’t speak for Kater. I will let Kater speak forthem. But I have seen their platform. As I said, we’ve metwith several — Uber, Lyft — and asked if we could comewith them and participate in this. We were declined on that.Kater’s platform and what they have is fantastic. When theydo their presentation, you will be very impressed with it. I’msure you will. So we feel comfortable enough to go with that.

I’m sorry. What was your second question?

R. Singh: Do you know of any other where this hasworked, as a central…? Where the taxi industry and the ride-hailing have worked together.

C. Bauer: I do know, in some cities around the world,Uber has chosen…. I’m not sure what those cities are, andI’m sure Uber will speak to that this afternoon. I do know,in some cities around the world, where Uber has chosen onetaxi company to work with.

No. This is the first of its kind, which is why it makes ita made-in-B.C., homegrown solution. It would set a preced-ent, and it would set an example for the rest of the worldto say that B.C. has come up with a platform that works foreveryone.

J. Johal: Thank you, Carolyn, for your presentation today.It’s important. I’m glad that you acknowledged that there isa problem and that the public’s needs are not being met withthe present system.

Andrew raised the issue in regards to government pickingwinners. In this case, it would be Kater. Let’s just say we wentdown that road. Are you saying that they should be given amonopoly? If so, how long would that monopoly last? Areyou saying that this is a system that would be baked in andstays for a year, two years, and that other ride-hailing ser-vices would not be allowed to operate in the Lower Main-land?


C. Bauer: Well, I have to ask you, first of all: what is amonopoly? I have to question that. What is a monopoly? Thetaxi industry is a no-profit-on-every-ride cooperative, yet weget categorized as a monopoly. In some respects, it’s the elim-ination of the supply that has created the word “monopoly.”But if we use the word “monopoly,” then we should be usingthe word “monopoly” also for Uber because that is a mono-poly. That is one that is coming in. It’s taking over. It’s con-trolling all cities, controlling all….

I do not believe that the Kater app, with the connection toeach dispatch company to allow us to know where our fleetis, where our passengers are, using this app, is a monopoly atall. I believe, given the opportunity to put this platform for-ward, this homegrown solution for B.C., and giving us thetime to show you that it can work, you will be pleasantly sur-prised, and you will be the first province in Canada to dothis.

J. Johal: I understand what you’re saying. I understandthat they’re local, and you’ve created this app. It’s all easy tosay: “Well, Uber, Lyft, some of these larger companies fromoutside of Canada coming in…. They’re the big bad bullies.”But at the same time, you’re also saying that local apps thatcould be created within this market if we kept it open….We’re also saying to them: “You’re not going to get access tothis market. Only one company is.”

C. Bauer: Well, that’s not true. I’m sure that if the com-mittee voted or decided that our solution was the best, whatwould stop Uber or Lyft from going under the umbrella ofthe Kater app?

J. Johal: In regards to choosing supply, you’re saying thatthis entity, which you supply…. That’s a big leap for a govern-ment to take. Could you elaborate on that — why you thinkwe should be doing that and handing over that responsibil-ity?

C. Bauer: The Passenger Transportation Board itself, andthe Motor Carrier Commission prior to, has regulated thisindustry long enough. It’s easy to talk and look at numbersand say, “There’s not enough supply,” or “You haven’t givenenough information to show that there is public need for thissupply, and therefore you’re declined.” It’s time that we ownit. We’re the ones that are receiving the complaints. We’re theones that are being screamed at. We’re the ones where thedrivers aren’t arriving, and people can’t get that timely ser-vice.

We need to take control of our industry. We need to beresponsible for our own industry. It’s not up to governmentto be responsible for our own industry. This is why we’vecome with this one homegrown solution that will allow theone-app solution for the taxis as well as anybody that wantsto bring their own vehicle on.

[11:00 a.m.]

P. Milobar: Just so I understand this completely, you’resaying the Vancouver Taxi Association, with this proposal,is fine with boundaries being wiped out and Burnaby taxispicking up fares in Vancouver and people not having todeadhead back and forth. Boundaries are no longer an issue?

C. Bauer: No, I’m not saying that, sir. I said existing muni-cipal boundaries should be kept in place — but using the oneapp and using the new technology that is available to us. If ataxi in the Vancouver area is not available, that app can dir-ect it to the closest vehicle, whether it’s Richmond, Whistler,Surrey, if they’re travelling through that jurisdiction. That’swhat I’m saying.

Opening municipal boundaries…. The word “deadhead-ing” that I’ve heard, to me, is an irresponsible word to say.The vehicle that is picking up that passenger from downtownVancouver, a Surrey vehicle…. They have no way of knowingthat that vehicle is actually going to go back to Surrey. Withthis one-based app, they will know that.

P. Milobar: Just so I’m clear. The app’s intention wouldbe…. A Surrey taxi drives someone into Vancouver. It wouldbe able to pick up someone in Vancouver if they were seek-ing out another ride back out to Surrey.

C. Bauer: Absolutely. If there were no Vancouver taxicompanies available, none available for the app, within a splitsecond, it goes to the closest vehicle, whether it’s Surrey,North Shore, Burnaby, Richmond. It goes to the closestvehicle.

E. Bari: If I could add a little bit on that. It’s not onlythe passengers who are going back to Surrey. It could beanybody who’s waiting for a vehicle longer than our waitingtime, which is five to ten minutes. So, basically, if someone islooking for a vehicle and all the Vancouver-based or the loc-al companies are busy, whichever vehicle is available in thatarea will be able to pick up that fare. It means it could go any-where.

Again, deadheading, in a taxi…. There’s no way we canfind out where that passenger is going unless the driver turnsaround his meter and talks to the passenger: “Okay. Whichway should I go?” That means it will resolve the issue ofpeople waiting for a longer time, especially on weekendnights, especially on special event days. So that’s what itmeans.

P. Milobar: Can I just clarify? I could have sworn in here— I’m trying to find it — it said a guaranteed five minutes,and you said five to ten minutes. So which is it?

C. Bauer: It’s five minutes, sir. It’s five minutes what we’veset up with the Kater company — five minutes with the Katerplatform.

A. Weaver: I have a follow-up again. With Kater, right


now — as a Vancouver-based, I believe, app-based solution— what’s stopping you from working with them today?What’s stopping other taxi associations from working withthem today? Are you expecting government to pay for thedevelopment of some kind of big, monster, provincewidething?

I’m trying to get some more info. I just don’t see whywe would need…. We are talking about enabling ride-hail-ing. I’d be excited if Kater were to come in, because there’sa B.C. solution that I would use. Actually, I would stay withtaxis, but people would use it. I’m a taxi guy. I don’t get inride-hail, right? My generation is not going to fuss aroundwith apps. I just want to get in a cab.

What’s stopping Kater from just working now with you,and are you expecting the province to fund this massive kindof one solution?

C. Bauer: Let me answer that question. Absolutely, noway. There is no money expected from government whatso-ever to set this up.

The Monark Group, Kater, has been working diligently toput this app in place. It is in place. We just need the approvalto see if we can run with our homegrown solution. Once wehave that…. I mean, there’s nothing stopping us from integ-rating in this system at this point — with the exception of ifother ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Lyft, are able tooperate here. Then we will be overwhelmed with too manycompanies out there operating. It will just turn into, I think,a free-for-all, at that point, for taxis.

And no, it’s not going to cost the government a dime.[11:05 a.m.]

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for the presentation. Ithink there are two ideas in here, which I’m trying to sep-arate, but maybe they can’t be separated. I’m not sure. Oneis the Kater app for all taxis in B.C. — and, potentially,ride-hailing companies, if they wanted to be part of it. Thesecond solution, or proposed, is to take the decision aroundhow many licences come from the Passenger TransportationBoard and give it to some other umbrella association tomake that decision.

I’m trying to understand that part of it. Who’s on thatumbrella body? How is it different from the Passenger Trans-portation Board? And what would stop…?

My understanding is that the taxi and ride-hail companiesrun that other body now, instead of the Passenger Transport-ation Board. If so, where would the public interest, versus theprivate interest, be represented in such a body? Obviously,there are commercial interests for the taxi industry that theywould want to have represented at such a body. Our job is toensure not just that private interests are successful but thatthe public interest is too. So how would that work?

C. Bauer: It wouldn’t be to take away from the PassengerTransportation Board. The Passenger Transportation Boardstill needs to remain in effect for policy, procedures, certain

regulations, criminal background checks. To actually takethe Kater app itself and to develop it, using the technologythat they know how to use….

Believe me, when Dr. Weaver speaks of…. He’s not an appperson; neither am I. So I really can’t speak to algorithmsand how they work. But technology is out there now to beable to predetermine where your trips are, how they’re goingto wait, how long they’re waiting for, and hot spot so manyareas.

With this predetermination and these algorithms thatKater’s young team have been able to put together and willbe able to present to you, I believe, tomorrow, they’ll be ableto determine how many vehicles are needed, subsequentlybeing able to provide the Passenger Transportation Boardwith enough data and information so that they will be ableto see. And the data will be open for viewing by any govern-ment official.

S. Chandra Herbert: The Passenger TransportationBoard would still be responsible for the decisions aroundhow many licences, or is that left up to…?

C. Bauer: No, that would be left up to the algorithms, andthat would be left up to the control of the entity that has theapp. We would know…. As an example, if we have a footballgame that’s breaking and a concert breaking, the app couldbe opened up immediately to say: “Okay. Right now we need5,000 drivers on the road.” That’s what we need, and that appwould open up and allow the drivers to get on the road.

P. Milobar: Along those lines, then, just so I get a betterunderstanding. I’m sure we’ll hear from Kater as well.

It opens up for 5,000 drivers, we’ll say. Does it give prefer-ence? Let’s say Uber and Lyft decide to join in to be a part ofthis app. Does it take the first 5,000 drivers that come along,or does it prioritize for the remaining 1,000 taxi licences thathaven’t been put on the road yet that day and then start to fillwith Uber and Lyft and other companies?

C. Bauer: It’s my understanding, in meetings with theKater group, that once the app is open, it’s whoever actuallysigns on to the app. In a lot of cases in the ride-hailingindustry, they log on or log off when they choose to come inand drive. So most of them…. I can’t quote myself on that,but I’ve heard that a lot will just sign on when it is peak timeto come in, because they know there’s business out there.

B. Ma (Chair): That concludes my speakers list. Werethere any other last-minute items? No.

Thank you so much for your presentation. We reallyappreciate you coming out here today.

Our schedule is getting a little bit mixed up. We’re very,very grateful to have the B.C. Taxi Association willing to helpaccommodate the mixup in our schedule.

I am going to be recessing the committee for, let’s say,six or seven minutes. Let’s reconvene at 11:15 to give the


B.C. Taxi Association a little bit of time to get set up. Theyare doing us a favour in jumping up ahead of schedule.

The committee recessed from 11:09 a.m. to 11:17 a.m.


B. Ma (Chair): Our next witness is the B.C. Taxi Associ-ation. Thank you again for accommodating this short noticechange and coming up an hour ahead of schedule. Thankyou so much for being accommodating.

Like the previous presenters, I will put 15 minutes on myiPad. When it is finished, we will have 15 minutes for ques-tions. Please go ahead and proceed.

B.C. TAXI ASSOCIATION

M. Kang: Hon. Chair, Deputy Chair and Members, myname is Manmohan. I am commonly known as MohanKang. I am appearing before this committee in my capacityas the president of the B.C. Taxi Association, which is a non-profit organization currently representing approximately 80percent of the taxi licensees in the province with the author-ity to operate 1,871 taxis.

Our membership is from one end of the province to theother end, from Fort Nelson to Prince Rupert, Penticton,Whistler, Tofino, Port Hardy and in between. There are 13duly elected directors who represent all the regions of theprovince, and I have had the honour and privilege to be elec-ted president, unanimously, for the last 19 terms. I have beeninvolved with the taxi industry for four decades or so.

What is the impact the ride-hailing would have on dif-ferent communities across the province? The association hasbrought the concerns and issues of all the small and largetaxi companies to the table, as all of you are well aware thatthese mom-and-pop operations and small taxi companieshave limited time, money and professional help.

In a civilized society, their rights and well-being are veryimportant, and to be taken care of, the association has filledthat gap for the last 19 years. They deserve the fairness andequality before justice — which, in the current scenario, isyour committee.

The impact of TNCs would be different in different loc-alities. It is our understanding from statements made by theUber management that they are financially and practicallyviable in bigger cities which have highly dense population.

Recently I attended the new mobility workshop conduc-ted by TransLink on December 4, 2017, in Vancouver. I metwith Mr. Michael van Hemmen, manager of Uber, to clarify,asking: “What is the population base where it is financiallyviable for Uber to operate?” Mr. van Hemmen stated threeplaces: Metro Vancouver, Victoria region and Kelowna. Healso stated that they work better in a dense population. Notethat I did not ask that question to quote in this public hear-ing, as at that time nobody knew if we would be permitted toappear before this committee.

[11:20 a.m.]It is a fact that in a number of small places in the province,

the mom-and-pop taxi operations and small taxi companieshave become the de facto essential service to their localitiesupon which residents depend on a 24-7 basis. They operateand survive on very thin margins of financial viability. Thegeneral notion that allowing ride-sharing in those places willenhance the available transportation services for the resid-ents is a far-fetched and short-term impractical idea, as, atthe end of the day, the residents of those places will ulti-mately suffer from such decisions.

Many of the taxi companies in the smaller populationcentres will not survive and will essentially be replaced byride-sharing companies with lower overhead costs but withno reliability. The ride-sharing concept is mainly based onpart-time drivers. Who is going to hold them responsiblewhen, in the middle of the night, at 2 or 3 a.m., somebodywants to go to the hospital or some other emergency and noride-sharing driver is available to take that call? The maxim-um penalty to the driver is that he may get deactivated, butthat is after the fact.

If there was a taxi company available, then, on a 24-7basis, the customer would have proper treatment from thehospital in a timely fashion, and the taxi company wouldhave taken care of their emergency calls too. Furthermore,there are taxi companies in Fort St. John and Williams Lakeproviding heavily subsidized, accessible service to their com-munities, despite only having, on average, eight to tenaccessible cabs in a week.

The association very strongly opposes implementing ride-sharing with a blanket rule all over the province. It sincerelybelieves that it will destroy the essential type taxi operationswho were providing a safe, professional and courteous taxiservice to customers in a responsible manner. By replacingthose taxi operators with the TNC, the real loser will bethe general public and the taxi drivers whose livelihood andfamilies depend on their job.

What regulatory regime should be established to allowride-hailing to operate in B.C.? TNCs are taxi companies.The association has previously stated that Uber is nothingbut a taxi company in disguise. Accordingly, TNCs shouldbe regulated the same way as taxi companies. Very recentlythe European Court of Justice ruled that Uber is a transportservice company, requiring it to accept the strict regulationsand licensing within the EU as a taxi operator. The link isbelow there.

Safety standards. Any entrant should be at the level thatthe taxi industry already has — full police criminal back-ground checks, including biometric fingerprinting, andproper training to ensure public safety. The taxi industryis highly regulated in B.C., and for good reason: to protectdrivers and, most importantly, to protect the general public.

Currently taxi drivers in B.C. require a class 4 licence; achauffeur permit issued from law enforcement in the citythey operate in, which includes a thorough police back-ground check; commercial insurance; a licence approved by


B.C.’s transportation board; and a national safety code safetycertificate.

The B.C. Taxi Association believes that any process toeliminate any of these basic requirements will result inlowering the safety standards currently in place. Any back-ground check requirement should require full biometric fin-gerprint and police background checks. Many TNCs’ back-ground checks, such as Uber’s, are also sent to third partiesand are not full police background checks. This has left gapsin the background check process which we had and has ledto some drivers with serious criminal backgrounds beingallowed to drive.

Taxi drivers also currently require training such as thatconducted by the Justice Institute of B.C. We believe thatsafety could be compromised if training requirements areeliminated by the government.

While the B.C. government has proposed that the taxiand ride-sharing providers require the same safety stand-ards, TNCs should be required to meet the current stand-ards. The B.C. Taxi Association does not support loweringthose standards. A few months back Uber was stripped oftheir licence in London due to lack of corporate respons-ibility. We would not want the same behaviour to occur inB.C. The link is there.

[11:25 a.m.]The national safety code. In respect to regular inspections,

they are currently conducted under the national safety code.TNCs should be required to have the same mechanicalinspection as taxis, conducted by the national safety codeevery six months. The national safety code prohibits taxidrivers from working more than 70 hours per week. Thesame rule should apply to both the taxis and the TNCs. Welook forward to learning how the government will monitorthe number of hours the TNCs operate to prevent a safetyhazard to the general public.

The insurance coverage for the TNCs should be the sameas the top taxis; that is, they should be charged commercialrates. A level playing field would obviously adhere to thesame rules. Taxis and TNCs should be charged the same rate,and any extra liability insurance required by taxis shouldlikewise be required by the TNCs. It would be unfair for thegeneral public to subsidize auto insurance for the TNCs.

Accessible vehicles. Currently B.C. has one of the largestaccessible taxi fleets. Unfortunately, operating accessiblevehicles is far more expensive than regular taxis, and currentoperations have been subsidizing the accessible fleet opera-tions. If TNCs are allowed access to the market, taxi com-panies are simply not going to be able to afford puttingthe far more expensive accessible vehicles on the road. TheB.C. Taxi Association suggests that the government shouldrequire a certain percentage of TNC vehicles on the road atany time be accessible to ensure service to the communitythat requires it.

Fair pricing. We propose that consumers are protectedfrom unreasonable surge pricing as well as protection for thetaxi industry against predatory pricing. The B.C. Taxi Asso-

ciation strongly believes that there should be the same baserate for both TNCs and taxis — an even playing field.

The association strongly believes that all the commercialcarriers, like taxis and TNCs, must have an even playingfield. As much for that reason, we also would implore thatred tape in Metro Vancouver be reduced or eliminated toaddress the conflicting regulations and to ensure that thecurrent taxi fleet in the Metro Vancouver region is better andfully utilized to improve the customer service.

The geographical boundaries system needs to be over-hauled to meet the current need of the general public, whichwould at the same time, also address the public safety issue.It would create a compatible ground to compete with theTNCs, and it would also help our equipment to reduce thegreenhouse gas emissions.

Taxis. The TNCs must collect, submit and pay appropriatetaxes — local, provincial and federal — the same way thetaxis do.

Safeguarding employees. The taxi drivers’ rights are fullysafeguarded in B.C. — minimum wages. No driver can belet go without due process. The TNC drivers should have thesame type of protection.

Single app. We support the development of a single taxiand ride-sharing app. Kater has proposed an app to achievethis concept.

Safety. The B.C. Taxi Association supports measuresaimed at improving safety. It has already installed other tech-nologies to help improve public safety, like safety cameras.Recently the association was instrumental in getting safetycameras installed in the Fraser Valley for seven companies,in June 2017, when there was so much uncertainty.

Passenger Transportation Board. The B.C. Taxi Associ-ation is fully supportive of the Passenger TransportationBoard. We believe there needs to be some government reg-ulatory body to ensure that the taxis and any new entrantssuch as TNCs adhere to rules and regulations. There needs tobe proper enforcement for both the taxis and the TNCs. ThePassenger Transportation Act needs tweaking to moderate itto meet the needs of the passenger-directed vehicle compan-ies in a more streamlined manner, as they have done in thecase of faster temporary operating permits.

[11:30 a.m.]Giving the authority to the municipal governments to

issue taxi licences has been counterproductive. That was thereason the exemption was taken away in 2000 by the rulingparty at that time, for justifiable reasons. The B.C. Taxi Asso-ciation also believes that there should be control of the num-ber of taxis and TNCs. Currently two transit agencies in SanFrancisco are asking for data from TNCs. They’re looking athow to control taxi issues.

The San Francisco Municipal Transit authority was quotedin a letter as saying: “Much of the increase San Francisco hasexperienced in vehicular traffic can be attributed to the hugeincrease in the number of ride-hail vehicles operating oncity streets. The commission’s prior and current rule-makingprocess clearly has a significant environmental impact.”


The link is there. Not having a cap on the number ofvehicles does not help drivers or consumers. The B.C. gov-ernment should look at the experience of other jurisdictions,such as San Francisco and Ireland, and consider a control onthe number of taxis and TNCs. Through the central trans-portation board there should be assurances and/or regula-tions that smaller companies will not lose their service to thelarger communities and the smaller communities do not losetaxi service due to unfair competition from the TNCs.

B.C. Taxi is working to ensure the economic viability ofthe taxi industry and its investors, while continuouslyimproving on its customer service and public safety. This isrespectfully submitted by the association.

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you so much. Questions?

R. Kahlon: I’ll summarize a little bit of both, and you cantell me if this captures some of it. You’ve mentioned hav-ing some sort of cap on how many TNCs. The terminologiesare all different from everyone, so let’s just say TNCs. Yourecommended in your submission that there should be somesort of cap on that, and then you mentioned some sort ofcommon pricing. Is that correct?

M. Kang: Yes. The reason why we said about the cap isthat if there’s an unlimited number of TNC vehicles or taxis,it is counterproductive in the sense that nobody is going tomake a living. Secondly, we are defeating the purpose whenwe talk about the Paris Agreement, which Canada signed.We said that we would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.Here what we are doing is putting more vehicles on the roadand doing vice versa.

R. Kahlon: Sorry, just to clarify the question. You’ve gotmembers in Victoria, in the suburbs and then in the Interioras well.

M. Kang: Right from top to bottom. If I start counting, mytime will be up.

R. Kahlon: No, that’s okay.

M. Kang: Right from Fort Nelson…

R. Kahlon: Small towns.

M. Kang: …you can count down anywhere — Kelowna,Penticton, Princeton.

R. Kahlon: That’s okay. I don’t need you to go through allof them. I’ll let everyone ask a question. I’ll ask my follow-upone after.

A. Weaver: I detect resistance, obviously, from yourorganization to the introduction of ride-hailing. You’redoing your service to your members. My question to you is:

why do you think that this is not actually good for the taxiindustry?

Let me give you an example. To me, the most innovativetaxi organization or taxi company in British Columbia is inKelowna. They have Current Taxi. It’s a fleet of Teslas. Now,I can tell you that Tesla is a go-to car. They’re going greatguns, because they recognize that they need to be innovativeto compete in the modern economy, and they were innov-ative. That’s the cab I take every time I get there, because oftheir innovation. They realized a niche in the market. Theyresponded. The market has responded to support them.

My concern with your resistance to ride-hailing is that itactually clamps down on innovation in British Columbia.I’ve seen some really interesting developments in theB.C. taxi sector as a direct consequence of fear that some ofthese ride-hailings will come. Apps are beginning to emerge,whether it be in Burnaby or Vancouver and elsewhere, andthat is really healthy.

I’m wondering: what is the fear? I’m trying to get a senseof what the fear is, because I see innovation. I look at juris-dictions around the world where they work side to side, andI see a lot of…. I’ve spoken to taxi…. There are people inthe Kootenays. There are people elsewhere that actually wantthis in, because they’re losing money. They have to rent thecar from somebody who owns the licence or the medallionor the plate, whatever you call it, and there are days they losemoney.

This is about pushing our society to be more innovative,and I don’t understand the fear. Maybe you can clarify that.

[11:35 a.m.]

D. Guilbault: I’m not sure if it’s a fear, Mr. Weaver. Backwhen the B.C. government dismantled the Motor CarrierCommission, as taxi people, we lobbied very hard to keep usregulated. We know our industry better than anybody, andwe knew if we were in a deregulated environment, the loserswould be the public. There would be no need to check yourcars. There would be no need to upgrade your cars. Therewould be no need to have your drivers go to any kind of edu-cation facilities. All that would be out the window. Just jumpin the car and do what you want to do.

We saw the same thing at the airport, where the airportsaid: “Your cars can only be this old. Your drivers have to dothis.” The airport was the first one to say: “Level 2, or you’renot driving here.” The Vancouver Airport is the proudest air-port in the world, by saying: “We have world-class taxi ser-vice. Nobody can compare.” They went around the world,taking a look at other taxi programs, and said, coming back:“Hey, we’re the best.”

It’s not the fear as much as there’s a front door and there’sa back door. What I would concede is you can’t mix oil andwater. Our cargo isn’t packages and parcels; it’s flesh andblood. If there is a disparity in safety standards…. Don’t needa national safety code. It is a federal law that a backgroundcheck be done for the vulnerable persons part of the law. Ihaven’t heard that said yet. That’s a requirement. It’s not a


suggestion.I embrace the new technology. We’ve heard our friend

from Vancouver here talk about the new technology. Weembrace it. I know that when the Vancouver company puttheir application in, which they said took 18 months, theyhad approached Tesla. Their application said they were put-ting Teslas on the road. But it was a two-year delivery untilthey could get them. The need is now; the need isn’t twoyears from now.

A. Weaver: Just a quick follow-up. I do appreciate that. Iforgot what I was going to…. I was listening. Can I comeback?

B. Ma (Chair): We can come back.

S. Chandra Herbert: To go back to the boundary issue,I just wondered. You suggested boundaries needed an over-haul in order to make it competitive with transportation net-work companies. You’re not against transportation networkcompanies being in B.C.; it’s just trying to make sure thatthere are adequate ways to work together. What would anoverhaul of that kind look like? I know it is frustrating forpeople to see a Burnaby cab and not be able to get one ifthey’re in downtown Vancouver, for example.

M. Kang: Well, the boundaries were put in there for goodreasons for a long, long time. Since then I have grown old,not wiser but old. I have seen the difference. When we arein the present situation, we need to serve the general public,the customers. That’s the cardinal rule. If we are going tobreak that cardinal rule and just think about ourselves, weare doing something which we call sacrilege. So why, whenthey say the overhaul of the boundaries…. When we’ve gotso many cars in Metro Vancouver, why can we not make thebest use of them, because it is going to be a win-win situationfor everybody?

I hear the question asked: “All the other suburban placeswill lose the service.” The thing which we don’t discuss or wedon’t bring it up…. Since 2007, it started, since the Olympics.The downtown has become a hub for entertainment. Every-body rushes. That’s where the action is. I’ll give you a figure.From October 2014 till September 2015 — at that time, wehad 426 companies working there. We had the majority. Outof 525, 426 were our members. We drove over 421,000 trips,keeping the figure at 52 percent. Normally, they call it upto 50 or 60 percent. The suburban taxi companies drove460,000 trips into downtown in that one year. Those were thestats given to me, which can be verified.

[11:40 a.m.]When you’re taking all the people there, then we all know

for a fact that there’s a problem for the people who usethose. Why not use something which you have in hand andsimply…? We don’t want to take the first step, a baby step.That’s the reason why I said the boundaries need to be over-hauled.

The government has to do something. The red tape mustgo. Since 2012, only bad decisions. Thirty-eight cabs, sub-urban taxi companies, are unable, first due to legal, thendue to city hall…. Moratorium, moratorium, moratorium —then the bylaw change on April 12, 2017.

If they were going to pick up only 20 trips within that sev-en hours, they would have served more than probably closeto 200,000 people within that period when…. When youneed something, why pretend? When you’ve got something,use it. Where is the public safety?

B. Ma (Chair): We’ve got Mr. Milobar, followed by Mr.Weaver.

P. Milobar: It got covered off. Thanks.

A. Weaver: I just wanted to follow up…. I knew what Iwas going to say. Everything you said I think we’re hearingtoday not only from you but from others, with respect to theimportance of safety — safety of vehicles, safety for passen-gers. Talking about this regulatory regime is precisely whywe’re here: to understand what the regulatory regime is thatneeds to be introduced.

I think you’re getting a broad consensus. I would expectthat people recognize that you can’t just have anybody on thestreet driving anyone any time they want. That, I think, is offthe table.

Again, I think it’s important that we…. We had a present-ation from Vancouver Taxi Association. They talked aboutKater. That’s really exciting. Why would we want to try tostop Kater working with Burnaby cabs and Vancouver cabsand North Shore cabs and Delta so that they have an appwhere it allows the person to drop down in Burnaby, to actu-ally pick someone to go back to Burnaby but not to picksomeone to go around downtown. There’s a really excitingoption there. I suspect that this is where the innovation is,but if we proscribe everything and say, “No, we’ve got to domore of the same, and no one else can play this game,” itstrikes me that it’s holding back. I say that with respect.

I know that many people come to British Columbia. Thefirst thing they do when they get out of the airport is theypull out their app. They come here from Silicon Valley andfrom elsewhere because they’re inspired by the innovationthat we offer. Then they wonder why we’re not doing it. Whyare we the one jurisdiction in North America that does nothave ride-hailing? We’re the only one of any size. We’re oneof the only ones in the world — major capitals.

The purpose of this committee is to ensure that we hearthe issues that need to be incorporated. But I think the boathas passed, in my view. We need to embrace this here, butwe need to do so in a manner that protects people — the taxiindustry and the passengers — at all times.

I just wanted to say that with respect to your regulations, Icompletely agree.

D. Guilbault: I think, as well, we should have no embar-


rassment that we don’t have ride-sourcing available yet. Ithink there should be some pride that our government herehas taken a long hard look. They’ve watched the failuresof ride-sourcing throughout the world, and hopefully, we’velearned from that.

My fears are subtle, and they’re blatant. One of the subtlefears I have is terminology. If you look at the news and yousee the pictures of people waving their hands for taxis, that isride-hailing. Nobody else can hail a ride except a taxi. If youopen Craigslist and you take a look, there are people in thereoffering ride services: “I’m going this route. Pay me money,and I’ll take you.” That is ride-sharing. Illegal as it is, that’swhat’s happening.

Last week, a four-day week, I had nine applicants comelooking to change taxi companies, to come and drive withour company out in Surrey-Delta. Four of them were fromRichmond. Five were from Vancouver. I’ve been doing thisfor 22 years, and I always want to know why. “Why are youhere? There are six companies in Surrey. Why do you want tocome and drive with me?” The four boys from Richmond allhad the same answer. What they told me was: “We now havefive illegal operators in Richmond. We have families to feed.All we know is taxi. Our business has been killed.”

[11:45 a.m.]From that perspective of being in a regulatory environ-

ment, it appears that we can’t stop them. So what’s going tohappen when we allow somebody to come?

S. Chandra Herbert: A question I asked earlier — I thinkyou were here — was around eco-friendly. Priuses, I think,are common in the taxi world right now, and maybe it’sTesla next. Is that required through the Passenger Transport-ation Board, or does that increase your opportunity to get alicence, if you show that you’re going greener? How does thatwork?

M. Kang: Well, since 2007, it has sort of become the Pas-senger Transportation Board policy that any new vehicleor any additional vehicle should be eco-friendly. That’s whymost of the cabs that you see in B.C. — especially in MetroVancouver, CRD and, quite a bit, most of them in Kelownaand maybe not all in Kamloops — are eco-friendly.

D. Guilbault: There is economics involved in that as well.There’s nowhere else in the world right now where you’repaying $1.40 for a litre of gas. It’s very expensive to fuel yourvehicles. To the side of it being expensive here for taxis, wehave been under the taxi cost index in the PTB’s regulationsand their formulas as to how and when we can raise…. Oncea year it’s reviewed. Last year the industry took a look atthe increase. They said: “You know what? We’re not going topush it. We’ll leave it status quo.” The prices have remainedthe same for two years.

B. Ma (Chair): I’m going to allow two more questions,just questions. Mr. Johal and then Mr. Weaver, you’re going

to ask them one after the other.

J. Johal: I just was reading your presentation here. Thankyou so much for coming in today. You’re talking about howthere needs to be a control on the number of taxis andTNCs, as you call them. You refer to two transit agenciesin San Francisco asking for data regarding TNCs. The basicassessment here is that it’s leading to extra congestion on thestreets of San Francisco. I think one of our previous folksthat spoke said there are about 3,200 taxis in B.C., roughly.If ride-sharing were to move forward, what kind of num-ber do you think would be appropriate? Do you think theindustry…? If we agree on rules and regulations, what wouldbe appropriate in regards to allowing ride-hailing?

B. Ma (Chair): Before you begin, we’ll ask Mr. Weaver’squestion.

A. Weaver: My question with Richmond…. I wanted tofollow up on that because that’s really important. There arefour companies; I know of two of them. The question isenforcement. What lack do you see in the area of enforce-ment? Frankly, somebody regulating should be orderingthese cabs and fining them $1,000 each time somebody picksup. The app producer is not the person who gets fined; it’sthe driver. Are you seeing a lack of enforcement there?

D. Guilbault: I think the passenger transportation branchis doing what they can. They have been issuing a number of,I think, $1,150 tickets. But these ride-share companies havesaid, straight up and blatantly: “We’re not going to stop. We’llgladly pay those tickets. We’re not stopping.”

B. Ma (Chair): Would you be able to answer Mr. Johal’squestion as well?

M. Kang: Mr. Johal, at this stage, I can’t give you thefigure of what number would be the proper number. Whatwe said in the submission was that also tweaking the Passen-ger Transportation Act would make it much easier for thetaxi company to get it faster to meet the need. Their biggestcomplaint has been, so far: “Oh, the PTB is not giving usthe…. It takes a long time.” Their hands are tied, with theregulations.

You’ve got the authority to untie those things, especiallyconcerning section 28(1)(a), the public need. If you tweak it,if you can make it much faster, then there won’t be any com-plaints, and probably we’ll find something else to complainabout.

B. Ma (Chair): All right. That concludes our time for this.Thank you so much, again, for coming up an hour early. Weappreciate your time here.

M. Kang: We are grateful we were given the opportunityto appear and, especially, to talk face to face with Dr. Weaver.


[11:50 a.m.]

B. Ma (Chair): Our next witness is Sumeet Gulati.Mr. Gulati, you had sent something in to us as well, right?

I think that it might be in our package. Like previouspresenters, I’m going to put a 15-minute clock on my iPad,and then you’ll have 15 minutes for questions as well.

SUMEET GULATI

S. Gulati: Firstly, thank you for inviting me here. I thinkit’s an honour for me to be an expert witness to your com-mittee. I am an economics professor at UBC. I specialize inenvironmental economics. Over the last ten years I’ve beenstudying urban transportation and its impact on our envir-onment, so some of the comments here would be related towhat I have experienced in the way our transportation sys-tems affect our environment.

You asked me about the impact of ride-hailing on differentcommunities and about the regulatory systems that weshould probably think about. When it comes to impacts, Iwant to start with an assumption which I think is….

You will see a slide there that says it lowers the priceper chauffeured trip. That’s the primary assumption which Ithink has been borne out by data for ride-hailing across dif-ferent jurisdictions. What it does is it lowers the price pertrip that someone drives you, from point A to point B. Ithink that’s well accepted. What that also does is it reducesnot just the monetary price but the ability for you to find aride quickly and get somewhere quickly. So it’s also the ques-tion of reducing the time that’s available, and that’s needed.In the literature, in transportation, especially in developedcountries, your real value is not the $20 or the $30 you pay,but the cost of time, and that’s very crucial.

That’s, I think, a big deal which has resulted, then, infairly large impacts across different jurisdictions. Here is anexample. And thank you for introducing the concept ofTNCs, with TNCs being transportation network corpora-tions. It seems, in San Francisco, that the data says that 20percent of all local vehicle miles travelled within a week arefrom transportation network corporations. So I think theimpact is huge.

What that does is that once you’ve lowered the cost oftransportation services, especially when someone’s drivingyou, which lowers the cost of taking a trip somewhere quitesignificantly, you will expect a significant uptick in economicactivity. That’s indisputable. You’ll see people having greateraccess to work, to recreation, to retail, etc.

What you also need to recognize is if you are going to havean uptick in economic activity from transportation services,from vehicle miles travelled, you will see, obviously, morevehicle miles travelled. In fact, that San Francisco study andsome other studies have found that at least up to 50 percentof those extra trips are new trips. They’re not trips that wouldhave happened if these transportation network corporationsweren’t around, if the prices weren’t lowered.

[11:55 a.m.]I think the impact would be significant economically, but

what that means is that if we have more vehicle miles, we’llalso have more congestion. We’ll also have more accidents.We’ll also have more pollution. Because I care about thosethings, I’m going to try and talk about how we can help makethese things more amenable to the environment as we lowerthe costs of transportation.

Now, the other thing is that some of these studies havelooked at how this interacts with public transit. It is clear thatin the short run there is some substitution away from pub-lic transit. Now, it’s not always that, right? If you get the con-ditions right…. I think it’s really important to get the con-ditions right, especially as we look into the future, where it’snot just Uber and Lyft and other corporations that offer youriding through someone driving you.

Way out in the future, when we have self-driving cars, thecost per trip is going to fall even more. As those fall, weneed to recognize that we need to make the conditions tomake people not want to own vehicles in the long run. That’llreduce the number of overall trips, and people will still get toplaces they want to as they like.

What it does, the big value from introducing somethinglike ride-hailing, is it reduces our underused capital. Thereare a whole lot of cars that sit around in parking lots everyday and on weekends which aren’t doing a lot. Once you lookway out into the future, if you get the conditions right, youget more of this underused capital into our economy, work-ing as it can. So what it also does is it can, if you get the con-ditions right, reduce the need for parking in dense neigh-bourhoods.

You can increase ride-sharing. It’s a lot harder for me tofind a person who’s going to UBC every day and get themto drive with me. But if there’s a high density of ride-hailing,the apps can connect these people really efficiently and do awhole lot more ride-sharing.

In terms of regulation, before I get to how to make thesethings more complementary, I’ll just pay a little bit of, Iguess, attention to why we have traditional taxi regulation.I think some of this was brought up just recently. We havetraditional taxi regulation because the regulators were con-cerned about ride quality.

Ride quality is not just about how the car is and how thedriver drives, but it’s also about safety. That was an issue tra-ditionally, because there’s a locational monopoly. Once younegotiate with someone, you’re really at their mercy. Thereare not a whole lot of cars with which you can start negoti-ating. Once you’re in a car, you’re in that car. That locationalmonopoly required a government oversight, which needed,then, a regulation of quality.

The other thing that you needed regulation for was it’shard to match riders and drivers because there were few carsin a large, sometimes not very dense neighbourhood. It washard to find people to get on, so you needed some sort ofcentral agency which cleared riders and drivers and got themto connect in a thin market. And then, regulators are con-


cerned about there being meaningful employment. You wantto keep a taxi service going, and you want to make sure thatthe drivers want to stay as drivers, so you want make surethey have meaningful employment.

Now, as technology changes, all this changes quite signi-ficantly. I think technology allows, as long as you have fullinformation…. If you have full information about the kindof driver who’s coming and the kind of car that you’re get-ting, you can easily regulate quality through people addingtheir own, in a way, ratings to what their ride quality was.Again, the important thing here is full information.

The other one is that apps are very efficient, much moreefficient than traditional clearing houses where you call upsomeone and try and connect riders and drivers. App tech-nology is much more efficient at connecting drivers in a thinmarket with their passengers.

Finally, once — as the New Yorker calls it — the gig eco-nomy is taking off, the flexible working atmosphere that isbeing created is reducing the need for us to focus on onetype of employment as being your primary gainful means ofemployment. So flexibility might change the need for us toregulate whether this is meaningful or not.

Before I stress too much on that, I think it’s important tofocus on labour conditions, not just on the environmentalconditions.

[12:00 p.m.]This is not my area of expertise, but I did a survey of juris-

dictions across North America. I think it’s fairly common tohave background regulation checks. In my mind, as an eco-nomist, it’s not about reducing the number of drivers that areon the road, but it’s about making sure the passenger whogets offered a ride by a certain driver knows whether thisdriver has any background that is a problem, and then letthe market deal with that. Clearly, there’ll be some criminalthings that should be regulated, but otherwise , you want tomake sure everyone has access to that information.

I think we need to be worried about labour issues likeworkers compensation. Like I said, you need to have fullinformation. So you want full disclosure on the driver andthe vehicle information that shows up on the app, and thishas been regulated in certain places. You want to make surethat if there are any traffic violations by the driver, that showsup on the information of the driver that is coming to pickyou up. And you need some sort of minimum mandatedinsurance coverage.

Now, related to this, is that it’s not just about ride-hailing.The gig economy is TaskRabbit. It’s Airbnb. A lot of this gigeconomy is sort of, in a way that I think is not appropriate,going underground. I’m not one to recommend that we startimposing regulations left, right and centre, but I think what’sreally crucial is that we need to somehow be able to evaluatewhether this gig economy is working for the kind of ethicsthat we care about for our labour market.

How you do that is not by the government going out andmeasuring it or, I think, putting in a lot of regulations butactually making sure that there is data for us to evaluate this.

Data disclosure by all of these network kinds of corpora-tions that are coming into B.C. should be mandatory — notjust mandatory to the people who are responsible to regulatethis but also force them to make anonymized data publiclyavailable so that someone like me and my students can godownload the data. Or someone sitting out in India or Chinacan go out and download the data and see what the impactof these new corporations is for our economy and for ourlabour standards.

Now going back to the complementarities. I have aboutfive minutes. The complementarities of making sure ride-sharing and the future transportation network of ourprovince is good for the environment. I think, from myexperience, the cost per trip that we spend already is too low.There’s a whole bunch of externalities — pollution, noise,open access to roads — that have not been priced.

It’s not just about ride-hailing. I think it’ll help make ride-hailing more environmentally friendly, but I think, generally,you want to think hard about congestion pricing when youstart thinking about the future of low-priced transportationtrips. That’ll reduce congestion. That’ll also make people domore ride-sharing within ride-hailing, which is somethingthat we can’t do personally through the ownership of cars.

I think parking fees are too low. I don’t see any reason whyI should have access to a free parking spot outside my house.It’s a costly thing, in terms of…. I’m taking away good, clean,possible green space from the society. It’s also another open-access problem which makes people…. Especially in high-density areas, it makes the whole idea of looking for park-ing spots another reason to impose externalities on others. Ithink we should raise parking fees.

We should be concerned about our fleet being too big,and we should be concerned about ride-hailing and thenfuture self-driving cars being too big. We should target largevehicles, which cause bigger damage when they have acci-dents, which use too much greenhouse gas. We should targetthem further with things like weight-based road access orgasoline taxes. This will also encourage ride-hailing to pur-chase more fuel-efficient light vehicles.

As we want to make this more complementary with ourtransit infrastructure, we need to think about making surethere’s infrastructure so that there is a pickup or a waitinginfrastructure around transit. So people can use transit fortheir predictable trips and, for the last mile of connectivity,use something like a ride-hailing app.

Lastly, I think one of the things that Uber has been inthe news for is the fact that there was a data breach whichwas not revealed for a while. This is going to be true forall our gig economy operators. There is a federal law which,from what I’ve understood, does not have a time limit onbreach disclosures. If we have the ability in British Columbiato tighten that law and go beyond the federal law, I don’t seewhy….

[12:05 p.m.]

B. Ma (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much. We have


a speakers list, beginning with Mr. Chandra Herbert.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for the presentation.You’ve helped draw attention to some areas that I think wemay not have considered.

Downtown Vancouver is getting more and more conges-ted. It seems there are more vehicles all the time. I’ve beenreading that transportation network companies have led towhat they argue is a 3 to 4 percent jump in traffic in down-town New York, so congestion has gone up, as opposed togoing down. They thought they were going to pull cars offthe road, but in fact, they have put a whole lot of cars on theroad, with subway ridership declining rather than growing.

What should we do to deal with that issue? Obviously, ifwe were to add more supply, as people seem to be arguing weshould, through ride-hailing, more taxis, etc…. Is it simplycongestion pricing that would reduce that? I don’t want to gobackwards when we’ve been making forward movement toreduce the amount of single-car usership in downtown Van-couver.

S. Gulati: That’s exactly right. I don’t think we should befocusing on a ride-hailing company, in particular, or justride-hailing trips, in particular. I think lowering the cost pertrip is a good thing for the economy, if you want economicgrowth. But the fact is that there are externalities associatedwith every trip, and we should just target those. If it’s pollu-tion, we need to target it. If it’s congestion….

Congestion is a huge externality, what we call open accessin economics, because everyone will drive till their averagebenefit of being on the road is equal to their average cost. I’lldrive, and I’m putting an externality on all of you who arealso on the road. But I don’t care about it, because I’m notcharged it. So I think we need to do that, and that’ll also helpmake ride-hailing more efficient. It will also make our gen-eral transportation system more efficient.

I think congestion pricing, parking fees…. We need toaddress the externalities that are associated with transporta-tion.

R. Singh: My question is about…. You talked about theflexible working conditions. I had asked this question beforetoo. Does your research show that where Uber has come,where ride-hailing has come, it has created more precariouswork conditions?

S. Gulati: I don’t know if I can target Uber or ride-hailingalone. It’s a whole new way of working now, which is likeTaskRabbit, Airbnb…. Everything is being done throughthese apps. I mean, not everything, but a whole lot of things.I’m not sure the data is being made available for people toactually answer your question adequately.

I think there’s suspicion. When I went to Atlanta, when Igo to the U.S., I like to talk to the Uber drivers. I recognizethat a lot of them don’t make a lot of money. I lot of themdon’t even understand that they’re not making a lot of

money. Sometimes I worry if they’re making…. If they werein B.C., I’d worry if they were making their minimum wagefor those trips. But I think the data is not available for us toanswer that adequately.

R. Kahlon: Sorry. The leader of the Green Party is throw-ing me off here.

Actually, I was really intrigued by your comments aroundthe pricing. I’m hoping you can elaborate a little bit more,because I kind of heard two things. I heard you saying thatthere’s value in lowering the price, but I also heard you say-ing that we need to increase the price, that the values are nothigh enough. Can you clarify that?

There’s been an interesting suggestion on common pricingfor industry now — the current taxi industry and ride-shar-ing. Whatever thoughts you have on that would be great.

S. Gulati: I think the two reasons why prices are whatthey are when it comes to chauffeured trips in B.C…. Oneis that there’s a monopoly. We have a restricted supply, andthat’s raised the price. But then, pricing is the way it is, espe-cially when I drive, because I don’t pay for the externalitiesI generate. I mean, that’s true for the taxis as well. I gener-ate externalities, like, I generate pollution. When I’m on thestreet, which is publicly funded, I’m not paying for access,so get into those streets not caring how someone else will beaffected by my being on that street.

I think those two reasons generate the prices the way theyare. I’m suggesting that it’s true we should allow the mono-polies to go away, so pricing can be the way it can be througha perfectly competitive market — not necessarily perfectlycompetitive but as competitive as we can make it. I thinkwe should also recognize that every transportation trip gen-erates externalities like pollution, congestion and accidents,and we should price that appropriately. So it can lower andraise.

[12:10 p.m.]What I was trying to say was that lowering increases eco-

nomic activity, but as we increase the economic activity, weneed to be cognizant of the fact that, if it’s coming fromvehicle miles travelled, those have costs associated.

B. Ma (Chair): All right. I have myself, Dr. Weaver andthen Mr. Johal.

My question is…. I’ve read some of your…. You’ve beenoutspoken in the past about labour rights and labour protec-tions for drivers of these ride-hailing apps. Do you believethat drivers for ride-hailing apps should be protected underthe Employment Standards Act?

S. Gulati: I’m not a legal expert. I think it’s a little bit com-plicated because these drivers are not qualified to be partof the labour force. They are contractors. They are makingmoney as a business, in a way. So the regular labour regula-tions don’t apply to them, as far as I understand. But I’m notexactly sure.


I don’t know how to get around that. That’s why I thinkwe need to also do a good evaluation to see if that’s an issue.With the way apps are changing our labour force, we mightneed to think about how to come up with new labour lawsthat allow someone who is not truly a businessman to be reg-ulated in that.

B. Ma (Chair): Yeah. I’m thinking of…. For instance, overin the U.K., they recently ruled that Uber drivers are employ-ees, as opposed to independent contractors. I believe thatthere’s actually an appeal going on, on that. So those sorts ofquestions have come up elsewhere. But it sounds like yourresponse is that we simply don’t have enough data to showwhether or not it is necessary to intervene on that.

S. Gulati: It’s confusing to me when I look at the literaturewhether…. I cannot give you a clear answer.

A. Weaver: Thanks for your presentation. I thought it waswonderful.

I just had a question to you. Have you presented to theMobility Pricing Independent Commission? Joy MacPhailis heading up a study right now about mobility pricing inthe Metro Vancouver region. I think it’s very timely. I agreewith everything you say, particularly about internalizing theexternalities associated with using the single passengervehicle. So I’d just encourage you to get in touch with JoyMacPhail about this because you have a lot to offer.

J. Johal: I have a very simple question. This is in regardsto data. Has there been any other jurisdiction that has hadaccess to any of this data from these ride-sharing companies?I’m thinking of the EU, specifically. But is there any jurisdic-tion that has been able to get any sort of information, with asense of labour standards, in regards to what they’re gettingpaid but also surge pricing and just movement around cities— any of that?

S. Gulati: As far as I know, the only jurisdiction that hasstrict data disclosure laws is New York. I haven’t seen thoseexactly, what they are, but other researchers who study thisarea say New York is the place where everyone is studyingUber and ride-hailing because that’s the jurisdiction requir-ing data to be disclosed. I think if we have a model to follow,it might be them.

S. Chandra Herbert: If you can’t answer the question, noproblem. I’ll keep asking it until I find someone who can.

One of the concerns that constituents have raised withme is the question of taxation of ride-hail companies, par-ticularly if they’re not British Columbia–based, making theclaim that…. The drivers get taxed on their incomes here,but the company may be based elsewhere and not get anytaxation on its operations, on its commissions, on its profit.Have you looked at that issue?

S. Gulati: No, I have not. But I can say what I wouldinstinctively say as an economist. I think if we allow morecompetition in the ride-hailing app or the network corpora-tion, that’s better. I think if we have rules around foreign cor-porations operating in British Columbia, those should applyto ride-hailing as they apply to other corporations. I don’t seewhy we should do anything separate for ride-hailing.

B. Ma (Chair): Any other questions for Mr. Gulati? Lookslike not.

All right. Thank you so much for being here.Our next expert witness is the city of Enderby.

CITY OF ENDERBY

B. Schreiner: My name is Brian Schreiner. I’m a council-lor for the city of Enderby. I also have with me our CAO, TateBengtson. Unfortunately, our mayor is ill today. He can’t joinus, so it’s just the two of us.

[12:15 p.m.]

B. Ma (Chair): All right. I am going to set the timer on 15minutes. You’ll have 15 minutes to speak, and then we willhave 15 minutes for questions. Did you send any materialsin, or are we…?

T. Bengtson: We advanced some materials, but it was onlyearlier this morning.

B. Ma (Chair): I’m being told that it has been pushedto our iPads. So those members with iPads…. Oh, there’sno Wi-Fi. Okay. We will listen to your presentation veryintently, and then we’ll take a look at the materials when theybecome available afterwards.

B. Schreiner: First of all, we’d like to thank the committeefor the privilege of speaking with you today about this veryimportant topic. We know that you recognize that ride-shar-ing is a unique and even disruptive entry on the transit mar-ket. We also know that you recognize that disruption canspawn innovation and competitiveness. This is why we’re allhere today. We all want to answer the question of how thistechnology fits into our transportation system in a way thatis safe, reliable and fair. That is the big question and one thatwe cannot answer in full.

What we want to do today is inject what Enderby citycouncil feels is a vital consideration, and that would be therole and viability of free ride-sharing in small, rural, remoteand First Nations communities. The city of Enderby sup-ports regulations that will foster new solutions to old prob-lems in small, rural, remote and First Nations communities.

We have a concern that a one-size-fits-all approach toregulations prevents small markets from using ride-sharingtechnology to help solve these old problems. A small marketpresents unique challenges in terms of supply and demand.The regulations must take this into account if ride-sharing


is going to be viable outside of the major urban centres. Westrongly feel that flexibility must be built into these regula-tions.

We’ll explain shortly what these old problems are and howride-sharing will help us to respond with the solutions. Wewill then explain our vision for how the province’s regulatoryregime can help small communities like Enderby turn its oldchallenges into new opportunities.

First, we just want to tell you a little bit more about ourcommunity, Enderby. The city of Enderby is a small, tight-knit community. We’re in the Okanagan, where theOkanagan meets the Shuswap. We have a population ofabout 3,000 people. It’s surrounded by a large unincorpor-ated area and a reserve, which adds another 4,000 people tothe tourist population.

Now, 20 percent of our population in the city of Enderbyis over the age of 65. That’s about 10 percent higher than theprovincial average. We don’t have a taxi service. We haven’thad one since 2015. By all accounts, our small market is justnot viable for a taxi service.

Enderby does participate in a public transit service. Wehave a bus that leaves for Vernon. It’s a large urban centre, 25minutes south of us. It goes four times per day on weekdays.There’s no Saturday service. A bus leaves for Salmon Arm,which is another larger urban community about 20 minutesnorth of us, and that goes two times per day but only onWednesdays. So if an Enderby resident needs to access ser-vices to Salmon Arm at any other time than that, they mustrely upon friends, family, churches, service clubs or the goodgraces of strangers who might pick up a hitchhiker.

Our age demographics show that the demand for medicalservices is only going to increase. However, with the excep-tion of general health services and limited access to medicalpractitioners, all specialized services occur in other largercommunities. These communities have more robust trans-portation options than are available in Enderby. Due to oursmall size and proximity to other urban centres, we have fewsocial services and specialized medical services right herein our own community. We are within the catchment areaof other larger communities, so our citizens must travel toaccess services that are otherwise commonly available.

[12:20 p.m.]That is a fact of rural living, and Enderby is not alone. Our

citizens generally own their own vehicles unless or until theycan’t. At that point, we have a problem that rips up the fab-ric of our small community. Our citizens can no longer agein place. They must either relocate or go unsupported. Manychoose to forgo support in favour of the quality of life thatcomes with living in their home community. This has realconsequences for people and for our community.

When our citizens do choose to relocate, they must moveto unfamiliar settings, leaving their familiar social circlesand small-town lifestyle behind. For many, this starts a spiralof mental and physical health ailments that stop our healthcare system. In fact, the provincial government has investedconsiderable funds in making small communities more age-

friendly for precisely this reason. Ride-sharing needs to belooked at in this context. They are profound human valueswhich are at stake.

I just want to emphasize our point. In small communitieswhere there is less access to services, there is the greatestneed for transportation options. However, these small mar-kets are less likely to attract alternative transportationoptions under an erroneous regulatory regime.

We know that ride-sharing is entirely a new form of trans-portation. It evolved by mixing crowdsourcing technology,which has been a long-standing part of the informal eco-nomy, which is colloquially known as borrowing a ride. Bor-rowing a ride is not new. One of the first recorded instancesof ride-sharing in popular culture occurred in the 1934 filmBright Eyes, where five-year-old Shirley Temple hitchhiked aride to the airport.

Obviously, times have changed, but the point remains thesame. The disruptive part of ride-sharing is the technology,an app, and not the method of transportation itself — amethod that has been occurring since the Model-T Ford,if not when the horse first met the buggy. The reality isthat ride-sharing exists in Enderby right now. It just doesn’thave an app. It’s under-regulated. Individuals volunteer, andservice groups offer service informally because the need isthere. This springs from necessity. There are no otheroptions.

Would it not be better if this fact of rural living was reg-ulated to ensure safety and reliability, as well as improvingaccessibility? The reality is that erroneous regulations willonly see these informal services continue in an under-regu-lated and unpredictable manner.

We would strongly encourage the committee to look atprovincial regulations as a way to add legitimacy, safety andreliability to something that is already occurring in small-town B.C. It will continue to occur. It is to our collectivebenefit to make it better.

We know that demand borne of necessity cannot be elim-inated, but it can be managed. We also know that supplysolutions are limited, but they can be nurtured. We, as asmall city of limited means, lack the tax base to provide apublic sector cure. We ask you not to regulate regulationsthat are tantamount to a ride-sharing prohibition in smallcommunities.

So the question begs: how can a community ensure thatthe ride-sharing has the best shot at small-town viabilities?Here are some of our recommendations. One, provide regu-lations that are flexible — perhaps a two-tiered system or analternate opt-in system — to reflect the uniqueness of smallrural and remote communities where taxi services may notexist. The demand may be lower and drivers more likely toparticipate on a casual basis, meaning that barriers to entrymust be lower.

The second recommendation. These small communityregulations should consider the following:

(a) On the assumption that service is provided more cas-ually, require insurance similar to personal insurance, rather


than commercial, or otherwise create a second threshold ofinsurance that increases based on anticipated hours of ser-vice per year so that casual drivers are not faced with a costlybarrier to entry.

(b) As the vehicle type and average vehicle age in smallcommunities are often different than in more urban centres,provide flexibility in the regulations or otherwise allow ride-sharing services to determine an appropriate vehicle stand-ard.

[12:25 p.m.](c) Ensure that the required level of vehicle inspection is

reasonably available at garages in small and remote com-munities and that the inspections are not cost-prohibitive tocasual drivers.

(d) Ensure that background checks can be attained fromeither local RCMP detachments or directly through ride-sharing service providers.

(e) This is a case with public transit. Support programsto provide ride credit to residents who are most in needof access to services in communities underserved by otherforms of transportation, as this has proven to be more cost-effective and offers an improved service level versus small-town public transit.

Now, as we have mentioned at the start of our present-ation, ride-sharing is disruptive technology that can be thecatalyst for new solutions to old problems. The old problemis that of transportation in rural and remote communitieswhere transit service is limited. We think that all of us inor near to government would agree that new solutions is anexciting, market-driven, private sector solution to a publicsector challenge. Now, how rare is that?

We conclude our presentation with the following. If thereis a private sector initiative that improves social levels to ourmost vulnerable citizens living in small, remote and FirstNations communities and if this same private sector cancrowdsource a solution that is more efficient and effectivethan the public sector and if we accept these conditions astrue, it only makes sense that we, as government, shouldfocus on creating a flexible regulatory environment thatenables all communities in B.C., regardless of size or loca-tion, to benefit from ride-sharing in a way that is equitable.

I would just like to thank the committee for your timetoday and the opportunity, I guess, to answer any questions.

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you so much for that. That gives usthe remaining time, plus 15 minutes for questions. First up isMr. Kahlon.

R. Kahlon: I think your perspective, especially from asmaller town, is important for this committee to hear, andI want to thank you for finding the time to come and sharethat with us.

Most ride-sharing companies usually go into areas wherethere are higher populations — it’s easier to make money,and so on — and smaller communities usually get a littlebit left behind. With your proposal, are you aware of any

ride-hailing or ride-sharing service that is available in smalltowns in other jurisdictions?

T. Bengtson: We are aware that Lyft, for instance, hasrecently gone out into a number of rural states, includingall the rural areas in those states, and seems to be making alot of progress in that respect. We’re optimistic we might dosomething similar from either Lyft or a made-in-B.C. solu-tion.

B. Ma (Chair): Are there any other questions?

S. Chandra Herbert: I just wanted to ask: are there anyholdups on the question of car-pooling or the other side,maybe not financial but other means that your communitywould see useful as well — not just a private sector companybut more cooperative solutions that the provincial govern-ment could help support to create as well?

B. Schreiner: That’s a great point and, certainly, anothercomponent to it that is worth exploring. We do have a varietyof [audio interrupted].

S. Chandra Herbert: We’ll come back to that one.

B. Ma (Chair): I just have myself on the speakers list.Are there any other committee members with any other…?I believe this might be our only presentation from a smallcommunity.

S. Chandra Herbert: They’re coming back.

B. Ma (Chair): Hello, are you there?

B. Schreiner: Yes, we’re here.

B. Ma (Chair): Oh, excellent. Let’s try that again, becausewe lost you. You were just about to answer Mr. Chandra Her-bert’s question.

[12:30 p.m.]

B. Schreiner: Yes, thank you. That was a great questionthat spoke, I think, to a lot of the other ways people are get-ting around in town. Ways like car pooling are very useful,particularly for people if they have fixed times and placesthat they need to be. But we do feel that ride-sharing wouldrespond to another set where there needs to be more flexib-ility in terms of people being able to provide such a service.

B. Ma (Chair): I have a question for….Did you have a follow-up?

S. Chandra Herbert: It was just another question to that.Are you hearing similar concerns from other small municip-alities across B.C.? Are there other communities that havecome to you and seen Enderby as a bit of a leader on this file


that they’re hoping to…?

B. Schreiner: Yes. We actually did a presentation of ourresolutions at UBCM this past fall.

S. Chandra Herbert: Right. Okay. I thought it soundedfamiliar. Thank you.

B. Ma (Chair): Wonderful. My question is about regula-tion and which jurisdiction should be responsible for what,given your perspective as a small community.

For instance, what we heard earlier today was that inmunicipalities like Vancouver, the municipality will actuallybe responsible for dictating whether or not taxi drivers, as anexample of a ride-hailing type of service, go through certaintypes of training, for instance. I heard that licences are alsomunicipally driven, if I have that correct. So there are, in theMetro Vancouver region, in the capital region district…. DidI say that backwards?

The municipalities do play a substantial regulatory role.What sort of role do you think is appropriate for a town likeEnderby to take on?

T. Bengtson: That’s a great question. Within smaller com-munities like Enderby, we tend to be less involved in termsof regulating other forms of transit, including taxis, simplybecause we’re in a case, often, of “beggars can’t be choosers,”and we need to take almost anything. So in terms of the roleof many of these small communities, often it will be determ-ined more by the need of our constituents. That will oftendetermine what kind of regulatory expectations we have atthe local government level.

If you look at it more broadly, I view it almost, with smallcommunities, as an opportunity for a partnership betweenthe province and local government, in terms of if weapproach a two-tier regulation that could be opted into. Onegood example out there would be the bylaw notice ofenforcement regulation, which is an alternative to municipaltickets. Under that one, how it works is that you need to beadded in by regulation, subject to adopting a model bylaw.That would be maybe the balance we could look for here toensure that we’re balancing fairness in larger urban centresover and against the need to attract in smaller communitieslike Enderby.

B. Ma (Chair): Are there certain regulatory requirementsthat you would insist that the province take on, as opposedto allowing the municipalities to…?

T. Bengtson: That’s probably a little bit beyond the scopeof what we’re capable of answering right now, except that wewelcome the opportunity to have that conversation further.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): One of the challenges I’mwondering about with the size of the opportunity or thelikely uptake of the opportunity of an app-based ride-hail,

ride-share — whatever we ultimately land on in terms of theterminology — in smaller communities outside of the majorurban centres is the reliability of cellular and Internet ser-vice.

How realistic is it to expect that outside of the LowerMainland or outside of the larger urban centres around Brit-ish Columbia, or that folks who go one way to a location thatmay be further out from town…? How likely is it that servicelevels are adequate to support a service that is based solely byhailing via an app?

T. Bengtson: That’s a great question. Certainly, much ofthe province now does have that connectivity, although thereare still a lot of areas that don’t. Within Enderby, for cell, forinstance, we have excellent cell phone and Internet availabil-ity, and many areas of the province, including the rural areas,are now seeing fibre extended as well.

[12:35 p.m.]We see these as things that are really helping to level the

playing field on that front, although we recognize that it’s awork in progress. And we think that even though there maynot be 100 percent availability, it can still help with manysmall communities and more as connectivity is extended.

A. Weaver: I just wanted to thank you for bringing this.It’s a really important addition to our people presenting tothe committee. I think you’ve nailed an exciting opportunityfor innovation in B.C. You’ve identified a market. You’re notalone. We have rural communities across British Columbia,and I’m convinced that a B.C.-based company would rise tothe challenge.

Let me see if I’ve got this. If I take a take-home messagefrom your presentation, you’re looking marginally for…. Imean, you have an aging demographic, and that agingdemographic is looking, perhaps, for some ability to access,not exclusively, rides to, say, Vernon or some nearby townwhere they can get medical service or whatever, and you’relooking for a regulatory regime to exist that’s not as onerousas perhaps a regulatory regime might be in Metro Vancouveror Victoria region. Is that sort of summarizing it?

B. Schreiner: Exactly, Dr. Weaver. That’s exactly whatwe’re trying to emphasize today.

B. Ma (Chair): Would the gentlemen on the phone pleaseremind us of which voice is whose, just for our Hansard?

B. Schreiner: The gentleman that has been answeringmost of the questions is our CAO, Tate Bengtson.

B. Ma (Chair): And you’re Mr. Schreiner. All right. Fant-astic.

P. Milobar: As the only member on this committee that’snot from the CRD or Metro, I’m going to pick your brainhere for what you’re talking about when it comes to…. Just


so we get it on the record.

A. Weaver: You have thrown, under the bus there, Pem-berton.

P. Milobar: Well, in the Interior, we still consider youMetro. You’re only 45 minutes away. So I forgot. Yeah, that’sright. Mr. Sturdy is Pemberton. I keep thinking you’re moreWhistler.

Just on behalf of Mr. Sturdy and myself, then, just to get abetter sense on the record of what you’re talking about…. Ofa potential two-tier system, as it relates to size of community,do you have any thoughts?

I’m willing to bet that most people in Enderby would con-sider myself, from Kamloops, from a big centre, and peoplein Metro think I’m from a small city. Everyone has a differ-ent view of what they consider to be a large urban centre.What are you talking about, if we were to try to come upwith some sort of two-tier? Is it the number of cabs within acommunity that would be the trigger? Is it the size of com-munity, based on population? Have you given any thought tohow we would define what large or small community wherethese tiers would potentially come into effect?

T. Bengtson: Thank you for your question. Just for therecord here, I work in Enderby, which is a community of3,000, but I grew up in Lumby, which is a village of 1,800. Sothis is a metropolis for me.

Kidding aside, I guess how we’d look at it is that we recog-nize there’s more to do to figure out what the right level orthreshold is to trigger eligibility to a two-tiered system. Thatwould be somewhere we’d want to see some conversationwith other established firms, such as taxicabs, happening.

Obviously, a key trigger here would be if there was anabsence of cab service in the community. That would be anobvious point where it would make a lot of sense to starthaving a conversation about ensuring, for ride-hails that areoriginating from within the community, that another systemmight be appropriate in order to help facilitate that — mean-ing that there’s obviously not sufficient demand to generatethat kind of supply, within the market itself, for a taxicab.

J. Johal: I just have a quick question in regards to what’shappening in Ontario. I think, earlier this year, there wasa community there that dealt directly with Uber. Theycouldn’t, or didn’t want, to pay, I think, $250,000 a year fora transit bus, because it wouldn’t be used that much. Butthey’re setting aside $100,000 towards Uber, I think it was, inthat particular case.

Have you had any conversations with Lyft, Uber or anyother ride-hailing company in regard to perhaps subsidizingsome of those rides for your residents so that you could have,perhaps, a flexible transportation system? I’m just curious ifyou’ve had any sort of conversation with them.

[12:40 p.m.]

T. Bengtson: That’s a great question. We have had a pre-liminary discussion with Lyft around what level they’ve seenwork in some their other small communities they’re servi-cing in the United States right now. They have reported thatthere are a lot of cases down there where ride credits areessentially provided by local governments. Those credits areused in lieu of these other forms of public transportationthat could be quite expensive and often not provide a morecustomized service level. That is something, I think, that weare certainly looking at.

Prior to exploring this model, we’ve been exploring veryconsistently how we can improve our public transit systemsor buses. There simply is no feasible way, given our tax base,to make that occur in a way that’s meaningful for our popu-lation.

J. Johal: Thank you.

B. Ma (Chair): Any other questions for the gentlemenfrom Enderby? Looks like our list is exhausted.

Thank you so much for taking the time to call in today.

B. Schreiner: Thank you so much for inviting us. It’s reallyawesome. We look forward to the progress on this importanttopic.

B. Ma (Chair): Have a wonderful day.We’re running a few minutes behind, so we’re going to try

to catch up this afternoon. The committee will be taking arecess now, and we will reconvene at 1:30 this afternoon.

The committee recessed from 12:41 p.m. to 1:34 p.m.


B. Ma (Chair): The committee is reconvened for the after-noon session.

[1:35 p.m.]Our next presentation is from Mr. Val Litwin from the

B.C. Chamber of Commerce. Like previous presentations,I’m going to set up a 15-minute timer for you, and then after-wards, whatever time is left over plus 15 minutes for Q andA.

V. Litwin: Is it accompanied with a buzzer as well, for dra-matic effect?

B. Ma (Chair): Well, you know what? It might have a littletune. I’m not sure which one I set it up to, but there’s a little,gentle tune to lull you to sleep. Go ahead.

B.C. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

V. Litwin: Well, the clock is ticking, so thank you to theStanding Committee on Crown Corporations for allowingthe B.C. Chamber of Commerce to offer a presentation


today. I am Val Litwin, the president and CEO of the B.C.chamber. I imagine you’ve had a lot of testimonies already. Iwill be reading my testimony. I’ll do my best to inflect andbring my best dramatic stage voice to make it interesting, butI will be reading from my testimony today.

The B.C. chamber is B.C.’s biggest and broadest businessnetwork, with 120 chambers and boards of trade at theregional level representing over 36,000 businesses of everysize from every sector of the B.C. economy.

British Columbians are looking for more transportationoptions and ways to increase the affordability of livingthroughout the province. What our members are telling usis that B.C. needs to introduce a provincewide ride-sharinglegislative and regulatory framework and remove red tape onour taxi industry to improve transportation affordability andflexibility.

What the B.C. chamber refers to as ride-sharing — theability of an average driver like any member of the com-mittee or myself who has been through appropriate safetyscreening to use their personal vehicle to connect with arider via a smartphone application — is a key part of theemerging sharing economy.

Ride-sharing is currently available, as I’m sure you know,in hundreds of jurisdictions around the world, includingEdmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Calgary and theprovince of Quebec, right here in Canada. This is providingnew transportation options and flexible income opportunit-ies for those wanting to drive.

The sharing economy is providing new economic andbusiness opportunities for individuals to increase the utiliz-ation of their assets by connecting with new, potential cus-tomers via technology, whether it’s supporting a thrivingtourism economy in Vancouver or Victoria or providingadditional transportation service in rural communities thatsee declining Greyhound options. Ride-sharing is needed inthis 21st-century economy.

Ride-sharing has shown tremendous opportunity to growthe number of rides in a city, decrease impaired driving,complement existing public transit, reduce car ownershipand encourage passengers to share rides and reduce conges-tion. It’s important to note that ride-sharing and tradition-al transportation models can complement each other to bet-ter serve British Columbians, just as they do in communitiesacross Canada and around the world.

Rather than competing with taxi companies, ride-sharingservices like Uber and Lyft can grow the overall transporta-tion industry. As just a quick side example, according to thePortland regulator, the total number of taxi and ride-shar-ing trips in the city grew by more than 40 percent in the firstthree months after Uber and Lyft’s arrival.

Now, let me just walk you through a few key elements wefeel are what are needed to make ride-sharing a reality herein B.C. Ride-sharing regulations should be distinct fromexisting transportation modes — such as limousines, taxisand car-pooling — because, while it has similarities witheach mode, ride-sharing is fundamentally different.

Some key components of an appropriate regulatoryregime should include: ride-sharing companies must obtaina provincial licence and pay all necessary fees; ride-sharingdrivers must have a valid class 5 driver’s licence issued by theprovince; to be allowed on the platform, ride-sharing driversmust pass a criminal background check for relevant convic-tions, pass a vehicle inspection by a certified mechanic, havevalid insurance that meets the requirements established bythe province and have a safe driving record.

Ride-sharing drivers can only provide service through theuse of an app, and the app must provide the customer withthe name and photo of the driver, make and model of thevehicle and licence plate number prior to the trip commen-cing. This means that no ride is anonymous and providesassurance to the passenger that the driver has been author-ized to be on the digital platform.

The app must provide GPS tracking. Passengers must beprovided the fare rate in the app and have the ability toestimate the cost of their fare. The passenger must have theability to provide feedback for each ride to help ensure highquality and safe service. Ride-sharing drivers would not bepermitted to accept street hails, leaving this market to theexclusive domain of taxi companies. Finally, cities should berestricted from applying business licences or other require-ments that would create additional barriers beyond the pro-vincial requirements.

You all have the presentation in front of you, so I’ll just gothrough some of our key points here. Regarding the licenceclass, any driver with a safe driving record should be able toutilize a class 5 licence to drive a taxi or a ride-share vehicle.

[1:40 p.m.]Currently taxi drivers are required to hold a special class 4

driver’s licence, even though they are driving standard pas-senger vehicles like Toyota Priuses or Dodge Grand Cara-vans. A class 4 licence requires a one-time written test anddriver’s test and an occasional medical check. It represents anunnecessary additional cost in red tape for drivers withouta material increase in safety. Safety is often used as a reasonwhy a class 4 licence is required. However, a one-time writ-ten test and driver’s test only captures a snapshot in time.It doesn’t provide materially different knowledge for drivingthe same vehicle she is already permitted to drive.

With regards to medical checks, B.C. has a mandatoryreporting framework whereby doctors are compelled toinform RoadSafetyBC when a driver has a medical conditionthat could impact his or her driving. Appropriate require-ments or restrictions are then placed on the physical licence.Mississauga was the only major Ontario city that requiredmandatory medical checks for drivers. However, after asafety review, the city decided to remove that requirementfor taxi drivers as there was no safety benefit to be found.

The solution. To maintain the high levels of safety, theprovince should require drivers to have a full class 5 licenceand a safe-driving record check. A driver’s safety record isa much stronger determinant of future driving behaviour.Medical restrictions on the class 5 driver’s licence must be


adhered to for ride-sharing or taxi.As a side note, there will be more opportunities for rural

British Columbians, as I noted in the beginning, who haveless access to government services and other mobilityoptions, such as we discussed, like Greyhound in some ofthe rural communities around B.C. So it does open up moreoptions there.

Regarding taxi zones of operation, taxis are and should bethe only personal transportation mode permitted to acceptstreet hails. As such, there is a public good to establishingset zones of operation to ensure access throughout populatedregions. Ride-sharing does not operate in the same mannerand should not have set zones of operation.

Currently the Passenger Transportation Board authorizesthe area of operation for a taxi. In addition, municipalitieshave separate and concurrent authority over the number oftaxi licences issued in their jurisdictions. This has led to asystem where a taxi from Surrey dropping off a passengerin Vancouver must return to Surrey empty, increasing con-gestion, pollution and customer and driver frustration. Thissituation can be avoided through technology.

The solution. In the future, only one order of governmentshould have the authority to determine the supply of taxispermitted to operate. The responsibility should default to theprovince, but if a city has the capacity and chooses to takethat overall responsibility, it could be permitted.

Taxis should be required to operate in their home area toservice local demand. However, if a taxi drops off a fare out-side of its home area, it should be permitted to pick up afare if the destination is its home area and it starts within 30minutes — or a predetermined appropriate time — after theoriginal drop-off.

Only taxi companies who have invested in GPS techno-logy that tracks origin, destination, fares and time would beauthorized to engage in this activity. Moreover, there wouldbe severe penalties for drivers who disregard the rules. Peri-odic audits of travel logs would also provide accountability.The province would have the authority to authorize orrestrict this activity, and cities would be unable to block it.

Regarding insurance, British Columbia has high insur-ance rates, and it is a significant business cost for transport-ation. Oddly, there is no difference in the insurance rate fortemporary operating permits — taxis that are only permit-ted to operate on weekends — compared to those which arepermitted to operate all week long.

New technology, namely telematics, is enabling insurancecompanies to lower rates for safe drivers. New South Wales,as an example, has implemented a swath of reforms, includ-ing a reduction in annual premiums for taxi owners by upto 40 percent and allowing taxis to use telematics to moreaccurately price insurance premiums.

In other Canadian and international jurisdictions, regula-tions have been updated to allow ride-sharing companies topurchase blanket coverage while ride-share drivers who usetheir personal vehicles are connected to its digital network.Pricing is determined on a per-trip or per-kilometre basis

commensurate with the determined price of the ride-sharingrisk of a ride-sharing company’s associated driver partners.

The solution. Empower ICBC to reduce rates for safe taxidrivers by using telematics to help price the insurance, allowtaxi owners to only pay pro-rated insurance coverage forvehicles that are only permitted by the Passenger Transport-ation Board to be operated during select times during theweek and allow ride-sharing companies to purchase or top-up a driver’s basic Autoplan coverage based on per-kilometreor per-trip usage, while ride-share drivers are connected toits digital network.

Regarding vehicle inspections, a vehicle inspection regimeshould be in place, but it’s important to utilize commonsense. The vast majority of vehicle accidents are not dueto mechanical defects. Comprehensive data for the cause oflight-vehicle accidents is not available in Canada, unfortu-nately. However, the United States National Highway TrafficSafety Administration did an analysis that found only 6.9percent of light-vehicle accidents were due to “adversevehicle conditions”. Of those incidents, 72 percent wererelated to tire condition.

[1:45 p.m.]The current vehicle inspection regime in B.C. requires taxi

owners to comply with the national safety code. This nation-al code is only legally enforced in B.C. and should be recon-sidered. It requires all commercial light vehicles, taxis, toundergo the same stringent inspection regime every sixmonths. This does not make sense as the risk across theprovince in my industry varies greatly. For example, a taxi inVancouver that drives 100,000 kilometres a year is given thesame scrutiny as a taxi in a smaller community that drivesless than 30,000 kilometres a year.

Moreover, these inspections can only be performed byprovincially certified garages. Rural communities may nothave a registered facility, forcing transportation providersto travel to other communities to complete the inspection,which leads to more congestion and pollution.

The solution. The province should institute a standardinspection regime for taxis and ride-sharing based uponusage. Drivers would not be required to get an inspectionfor vehicles that travel less than 30,000 kilometres. This issimilar to how personal cars are currently on the road butdoes not require an inspection. Vehicles that travel between30,000 and 60,000 a year would be required to undergo astreamlined inspection that focused only on the most likelyproblem areas, such as tires, brakes and lighting. Vehiclesthat travel over 60,000 a year would be required to undergothe current taxi inspection every six months, and all inspec-tions could be performed by any certified auto mechanic ser-vice technician.

Regarding driver quality…. I’m almost at the finish linehere. Driver safety is important, of course. The provinceshould establish a provincial safety framework for driver his-tory and criminal conviction background checks, which cit-ies cannot amend, to hamper barriers to cross-municipaltravel.


Ride-sharing vehicles should be banned from acceptingstreet hails. Companies should be forced to have GPS track-ing and transmit the driver and vehicle information to thepassenger in advance of the trip occurring.

The government should be cautious about mandating cus-tomer service, however, and quality provisions for ride-shar-ing companies. In an open system where companies are ableto enter and exit competition and choice, this will lead toa better consumer outcome than restrictive governmentrequirements.

Customer service and the ability to attract business is theresponsibility of the driver and the ride-sharing company.Ride-sharing companies can keep a focus on customer ser-vice through their rating systems and a 24-7 customer ser-vice approach. Independent studies by the city of Ottawa andcity of Calgary have found consumers prefer ride-sharing forhigher levels of safety and customer service, despite a lack ofregulatory requirements prescribing training.

The insurance consultancy Aite Group found that ride-sharing drivers were safer than average American drivers.Moreover, Chicago has released data that introduction ofride-sharing companies also encouraged traditional trans-portation providers to improve customer service, as reflectedin a decrease in rider-taxi complaints to the regulator. Whenconsumers have more choice, they are typically served better.

In conclusion, our members are excited about the oppor-tunity for British Columbia to institute smart regulation forprivate transportation, and these regulations should respectdifferent business models and work well across all areas ofthe province. Our recommendations, we think, do just that.

B. Ma (Chair): All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much.Our first question comes from Dr. Weaver.

A. Weaver: Thanks. That was very comprehensive and,I must say, compelling. Much of what you said…. As youknow, I’ve put in a private member’s bill three times before.Much of that was embodied in exactly what you were sayingabout the importance of a regulatory regime.

One of the things that you didn’t mention. I’m wonderingif you gave some thought to this. In speaking with local taxidrivers in Victoria, one of the things that concerns them isthat there has been a requirement — it’s probably the samehere — for rather expensive cameras to be installed in theircars for security reasons. That came at the request of policeand their city there.

Have you considered that as also being a requirement? Itis something that is required, at least in Victoria. I believe inVancouver…. Do you require it here in Vancouver as well?But you don’t in other places — the safety security cameras.

V. Litwin: While our presentation was comprehensive, itobviously doesn’t envision the full extent and the detail that afull regulatory regime might encompass. We actually haven’tdiscussed that. I think we’d be open to it, but right now, ourposition…. Because we are a grassroots organization, we sort

of lever from the policy that comes up from the grass roots.We haven’t considered that, but we’d be open to it.

R. Kahlon: Thank you for that. A couple of things, I guess,jumped out at me.

One was the idea of reducing rates. Everybody wants theirrates reduced. I don’t know if you read the headlines, butwe’re $1 billion in the hole. I appreciate that would be a nicesolution — to just start reducing rates. I just know there aresome challenges there.

Two main things I have questions on. One is that I knowthe chamber is quite active on what happens with congestionand economic activity due to congestion and the challengesthat many businesses face because of that.

[1:50 p.m.]Have you thought about, with the increased amount of

cars on the roads, especially in the downtown core, what thatmight mean for many of the members that you represent?Have you thought about how you think that might be able tobe managed? That’s my first question.

The second is that you are the first person to say that weshouldn’t follow the national code as far as safety goes forcars — car inspections, and so on. I read in your summaryhere…. You talk about how well we do in B.C. in not havingaccidents. Well, we do have strict rules around protecting thepublic with cars and safety and so on. Perhaps there’s a cor-relation between the two. I was hoping that you could maybeexplain a little bit more on that, since I think it’s fair to saythat most members of this group want to ensure that safetyis at the forefront. So those two questions.

V. Litwin: Absolutely. Maybe I’ll start with the second onefirst.

Regarding safety, nothing could be more important. Ithink the distinction we’re trying to make here is that it’smore about the safe driving record of the individual behindthe wheel as it is the mechanical defects or the opportunityfor the car to have an accident due to a mechanical defect.The emphasis we’re putting on here, in terms of streamlininglegislation, is: let’s make sure we’ve got a really tight regimeand a robust process around ensuring that we’ve got greatdrivers with great driving records. Let’s turn to the scienceand see what that says about defects in cars.

Like I said, I think about 6.2 percent of accidents happendue to a material defect in the car, which speaks to safety.And 72 percent — again, it’s in the report — are due to issuesjust with the tire. So let’s let data drive the way to approachthe safety regime.

Regarding congestion, your first question I think is a veryfair comment. If we thought we were up here today advocat-ing for ride-sharing and that it would lead to more conges-tion, I would retract my submission immediately. What wesee from some of the data in jurisdictions like Portland, Ore-gon, is that riders and drivers are making the choice to gointo more ride-sharing options or use more taxis. They sawthat 40 percent lift.


It’s not like the population of Portland changed orincreased by 40 percent overnight, and therefore the marketincreased by 40 percent. There was a migration from peopleusing their own cars to ride-sharing options and taxis.

R. Kahlon: Just a follow-up. We’ve heard from experts thismorning — various professors, and so on — who say, actu-ally, at least for the early days, that they’ve seen the result thatthere actually isn’t a decrease in the amount of cars on theroad. In fact, they’ve seen people moving away from publictransit, as well, and moving towards this. I appreciate thatevery jurisdiction will have different data, but I just want tomake sure you were aware that we have heard from expertsthat say that as well.

V. Litwin: Am I allowed just one follow-up comment? Ithink when you’re talking about a new industry, a new sec-tor that hasn’t existed before, and all of a sudden it appears,and now it’s an option for consumers, we would find correl-ations between people moving to that new sector to experi-ment and try it for the first time. So it wouldn’t surprise methat, in the introduction of a new industry, in the beginning,you would have a rush of cars and users initially. What I sus-pect will be interesting is to see now what the long-term datasays for those communities over the medium and long term.

S. Chandra Herbert: Just to follow up on that question,on congestion in particular. Sorry to get focused on it, but Ilive in a neighbourhood which is very congested.

I think New York and San Francisco, which was an earlyadopter, both have said that they’re actually increasing con-gestion. So it’s not, in San Francisco, the case of it beinga new community but actually people changing their ridehabits — instead of taking the subway, shifting to ride-shar-ing with a friend. It’s slightly more expensive, but they likeit. It’s a bit more convenient, they think, until it becomes socongested that it’s not convenient anymore.

If you could share the information you have from Port-land, I’d love to see it. I’d just be interested, because I think ifwe’re moving in this direction, we have be aware of conges-tion and not make it worse, because it’s already really chok-ing the economy and making people’s lives not so pleasant.

The question I had was…. In your submission, you talkabout driver quality, suggesting by mandating customer ser-vice and quality provisions for ride-sharing companies —that we should be cautious about doing that. When I talk tofolks in the tourism industry, many of them will say they’requite happy that we have a TaxiHost program. Taxi drivershave to get trained up on local geography, working withpeople from different cultures, working with people with dif-ferent disabilities — how to do that effectively and respect-fully. People are actually quite proud of the taxi system interms of how it relates to tourism.

[1:55 p.m.]I’m just curious why the chamber would be advocating,

if I understand this correctly, that ride-hailing companies

should not require their drivers to have training to deal inthe same way with disability, local tourism issues or otherthings. It would seem to me to be a step backwards.

V. Litwin: That’s a fair question. I don’t think we’re advoc-ating that they shouldn’t take training. We’re suggesting thatgovernment shouldn’t mandate that they do.

Before I was working with B.C. Chamber of Commerce, Iwas the CEO of the Whistler Chamber of Commerce, a townthat lives and breathes by the quality of its customer service.As the chamber up there, we invested hundreds of thousandsof dollars into community-wide training. We trained about6,000 people a year. I can absolutely appreciate the compet-itive edge and the opportunity to create an amazing exper-ience when our tourists come here, whether it’s to hop in aride-sharing vehicle or visit a community like Whistler.

What we would suggest, though, as a business organiz-ation, is the free market should determine who survivesbecause they’ve actually made a discipline out of under-standing the positive ramifications of investing in customerservice. So instead of mandating it, I would suggest one ofthe ways the market will ensure that the best people stay onthe road is they’re out there delivering the best service pos-sible.

It’s a bit of a free market approach, and it’s also not to sug-gest that we shouldn’t always pursue to deliver great custom-er service.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you for that. If I can just fol-low up. The question of, say, somebody with a disability….It has come up, the question of accessible taxis, accessibleride-share. Does the chamber have any position around —should we allow ride-sharing into B.C., ride-hailing into B.C.— requiring a set number of accessible vehicles?

Letting the free market decide, if you’re somebody stran-ded on the side of the road, is not exactly a good solution. Ithink we actually do need to be involved as a government toensure that folks that are often marginalized by society havetheir interests represented as well.

V. Litwin: Actually, that’s a terrific distinction. So I thinkmaybe I can nuance my response that I just gave you. Iwould also look at that as actually good operational training,not necessarily customer service training. I think there’s abaseline understanding that people should have whenthey’re in that industry. So I probably conflated the two. Imight actually make a distinction.

I think it’s a conversation we should have, around how toserve folks with disabilities. It’s just one example of a sectorthat might have a different sort of need with that service.

B. Ma (Chair): I do want to echo, again, the concerns Ihave around increased congestion. We do have a number oftransportation engineering experts who will be presenting tothe committee over the next couple of days, and this topicwill likely come up again.


I, of course, represent a riding on the North Shore, andwe’re already being suffocated by congestion, and it’s havingan extremely negative impact on our local businesses, ourservices and quality of life for residents. So, absolutely, that’ssomething that I’m also concerned about.

My question for you, however, is…. You had mentionedearlier that you believe that ride-hailing services are funda-mentally different from other…. So ride-hailing right now….We have ride-hailing services that are called taxis. Throughthis new app technology, we also have what we are referringto as ride-hailing services. You’ve mentioned that you believethat they are fundamentally different and require differentregulatory regimes.

I’m wondering whether you can elaborate on why youbelieve that those services are so different. In particular, youhad also mentioned that the free market will basically decidewhat companies succeed and which companies fail, but I’mnot sure how the free market comes into play when we’reactually applying two different regulatory regimes to thosecompanies. Can you elaborate on that, please?

V. Litwin: In a way, your question gets to the core of thewhole presentation I just gave, which I won’t repeat, even insummary.

What might be helpful…. On page 3 of the submission,you’ll see that brief matrix we built to categorize and definethe different modes — from ride-sharing, car-pooling, taxiand limos. So I might refer to that for how we define thatthey’re different models.

I think, given the time that we have here, that would bethe best sort of response I could give you, because when I getinto how I think they’re fundamentally different, we get backinto every aspect of the presentation again. So enumeratedhere, we have: from payment to supply, personal vehicles, theordering of the trip, frequency of driving. Those are sort ofthe parameters we see that are vastly different.

[2:00 p.m.]

B. Ma (Chair): I understand that some companies areoffering different, I guess, options in terms of being able toestimate the amount of fare for your trip, and so forth. Butthe actual fundamental service is driving somebody frompoint A to point B, and that’s the service that, I think, we’retalking about right now.

The remainder of these distinctions that you’re providinghere seem more to be a function of what technology and theapp provides but the app itself isn’t actually what’s being reg-ulated. It’s the delivery of the service. That’s, I guess, wheremy question came from. If you wanted to leave it at that, I’lljust go to Mr. Johal’s question.

J. Johal: I just have one question, really, in regards to com-plaints that you’ve heard in the past about surge pricing.New Year’s Eve, Christmas party season, rush hour — therehave been complaints about ride-sharing companies char-ging more in those hours.

Do you think we should be regulating those rates, if theywere to come in?

V. Litwin: I mean, that’s not within the scope of our sub-mission. Having said that, I think we would certainly beadvocates for a system and a regulatory framework that pro-tects consumers from being, for lack of a better phrase,scalped in those situations where they’re being exploitedduring peak hours.

I’m not a technology expert. I’m not an expert on the appitself. But we’ve heard complaints. We’ve heard stories, and Idon’t think that’s the right way to go.

S. Chandra Herbert: One of the solutions proposed is bychanging the licensing requirements to a class 5 from a class4. The argument for it was that it would allow taxi companiesin rural B.C. greater access to inspection facilities.

Is that an issue that members have raised? I just did aquick look on what number of inspection facilities we havein B.C., and there’s about 187 pages of them. Now, they maynot all meet all the needs. I’m just curious where that sugges-tion came from.

V. Litwin: I couldn’t tell you of a specific communitywhere that came up as a concern. What we do hear in ruralBritish Columbia is there are services, government and oth-erwise, that are often inaccessible in particular regions. I wasjust up in Fort Nelson. They don’t actually have 911 serviceon the road between Fort Nelson and other communities.This is more just a heads-up consideration as we roll out thelegislation.

A. Weaver: I wanted to follow up on that because it’ssomething that I had heard repeatedly too. My understand-ing — correct me if I’m wrong — is that class 4 is basicallyclass 5 with a written test and a little bit of a medical. It seemslike a hurdle that the taxi drivers are being put through thatis not really making a difference in terms of safety.

Would that be a correct interpretation, do you think?

V. Litwin: Indeed. That’s what we’re saying in the submis-sion here. Ride-sharing drivers and taxi drivers should alljust have a class 5 licence.

B. Ma (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much for com-ing out — really appreciate you taking the time to present tothe committee.

Our next presenter is Uber Canada. We will start thatpresentation at 2:05. It’s currently 2:03. You’ve got a couple ofminutes to set up.

[2:05 p.m.]We’re going to move forward with our next and final

presentation for today — Uber Canada. Mr. van Hemmen, Iam setting you on a 15-minute timer. Of course, afterwardsthere’s another 15 minutes for Q and A. I’m sure you’refamiliar with the process by now.


UBER

M. van Hemmen: Just so I can help stick to time, I’ll bereading most of my presentation. Then I’ll be a bit moreengaging and dynamic, hopefully, as we get to Q and A.

Yes, my name is Michael van Hemmen, and I am Uber’slocal public policy manager, based here in Vancouver. It’s apleasure to be with you. I plan to quickly take you throughthe transportation opportunity, the benefits of ride-sharingand ride-sharing regulation best practices.

To start, it’s easy to demonize the car. There are over 1.3billion in the world today, but the problem is not so muchcars in themselves; it’s how we use them individually. InMetro Vancouver, 93 percent of commuters who drive, drivealone. Of course, all this individual car use comes at con-siderable public cost. In Los Angeles and Vancouver, peoplelose two whole working weeks each year stuck in traffic.It’s even worse in Mexico City, at five weeks per commuter.That’s a whole lot of stress that no one needs.

What’s more, congestion increases pollution, and today22 percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally comes fromtransportation. Sadly, that’s just 5 percent of the problem,because cars sit idle 95 percent of the time. As a result, upto a fifth of the land in some cities is used to store cars.There’s a tremendous opportunity cost to parking, though it’ssomething we often don’t count. It’s space that could other-wise be used for bike lanes, parks and more affordable hous-ing. This is the challenge of the way we design cities today.

Too many people have no choice but to go with the carownership route. Even in a city with great public transit, likeNew York, the subway doesn’t get to everyone’s front door. Infact, 2.7 million cars drive into Manhattan every day, becauseas great as the public transit is, it doesn’t work for every trip.And once families have bought a car or bought cars, they’remore likely to use them.

What is ride-sharing, and how can it help address conges-tion, pollution and the need for parking? First, ride-sharingis the ability of a driver to use a personal vehicle to providerides for a profit, matched through a smartphone app. Thereare no limits on the number of people who can earn moneydriving, and prices are low and flexible.

Recent Uber drivers of mine include Bethia, a danceteacher; Allan, a logging truck driver; and Navdip, a con-struction worker. Drivers have the ability to drive when,where and for how long they want, with the majority drivingless than ten hours a week, in a week that they choose todrive.

The use of mobile technology allows the driver to accepta trip request from the rider, encouraging efficiency. Ridersget many benefits, including seeing the price of the trip inadvance so that there are no surprises.

Through new technology, we’ve also been able to expandthe safety systems in place. From solely relying upon his-torical background checks and one-time or infrequent tests,it’s now utilizing technology to enhance rider and driversafety through new features, including real-time GPS track-

ing, upfront disclosure of who your driver is and what carshe is driving, the ability to contact that driver via ascrambled phone number, the ability to share your estimatedtime of arrival and real-time location with a friend or familymember and real-time customer feedback with 24-7 custom-er support systems.

We’ve also been able to take the technology a step furtherby utilizing the telematics data available from a smartphoneto enhance safety feedback loops. The end result is that reg-ulators across Canada and North America have confirmedthat relying on Uber’s safety systems has provided enhancedsafety and service outcomes for the general public.

Due to these innovations, for riders and drivers, ride-sharing and Uber have become a part of everyday life aroundthe globe and across Canada. Here in Canada, more than2.3 million people have taken an Uber trip in the past threemonths, and since 2015, over half a million residents andtourists have downloaded or opened the app here in BritishColumbia.

Why are we seeing people adopt ride-sharing as a trans-portation mode instead of driving their own car? It’s becauseit’s reliable and affordable. Let’s start with reliability. Thistime-lapse map of trip request growth in Toronto highlightshow Uber is able to reliably provide service from downtownto agrarian hamlets further away from downtown Torontothan Abbotsford is to downtown Vancouver. Push a buttonand a ride is likely no more than five minutes away, becausethere are no limits on the number of people that can earnmoney from driving, and price can incentivize drivers toserve peak periods of demand at any time of day.

This flexible supply and price enables Uber to reliablyserve its busiest hours. Our rush hour, as shown on thechart on the right, is typically later at night when bars close.That’s when public transit is limited and alternatives are hardto find. It’s definitely when a lot of people should not bebehind the wheel, and it’s why Mothers Against Drunk Driv-ing Canada has partnered with Uber to help fight impaireddriving.

[2:10 p.m.]Ride-sharing is not going to be a pure substitute for per-

sonal automobiles on its own. Rather, it will only be one ofseveral transportation options, including public transit, thatpeople can readily use to help reduce their reliance on single-occupancy vehicles.

The American Public Transportation Association did astudy and found that ride-sharing through Uber is comple-mentary to transit, due to our ability to serve these off-peaktransit times, first- and last-mile solutions to transit hubs,our ability to better serve less dense areas in a cost-effectivemanner and also to assist with paratransit. That’s why Uberhas been able to form transit partnerships around the world.These partnerships have enabled municipalities as diverse asthe Tampa Bay region and the city of Boston to improveaccess to their transportation systems and find significantsavings.

Partnerships are even working in smaller rural com-


munities. Last year Innisville, Ontario, approached Uberabout a transportation partnership. The town is relativelysmall and spread out, and it had no business case for a bussystem to get to the regional train station. A pilot projectwas launched with Uber connecting their community to theregional rail and offering affordable service throughout thecommunity. To date, the pilot has been a great success,providing more rides at a lower cost than the town’s forecast.

Beyond extending the reach of transit, people will onlygive up their personal vehicle if they have an affordablealternative to individual ownership for point-to-point tripswhere transit may not make sense. Ride-sharing is alreadygenerally an affordable means of transportation, but we hadanother breakthrough a few years ago when our engineersobserved that Uber had a lot of duplicate rides — peopletravelling along a similar route at the same time.

We asked the question: could we use mobile technologyto match these people up in real time? If we could do this,it would be good for passengers because a shared ride is acheaper ride, good for drivers because they would have moretime with a paying passenger in the back seat and good forcities because we would be getting more people in fewercars. The question was: would people choose to carpool withstrangers for a discount? Well, the answer was a resoundingyes, because sharing isn’t the issue. It’s price and conveniencethat matter most to people.

This is San Francisco, or two images of downtown SanFrancisco, where people are choosing to pool up to 50 per-cent of the time. On the left is what traffic volume wouldhave looked like if people were riding solo in their individualUbers rather than sharing a ride, which is displayed on theright. The actual data is on the right.

In cities like Toronto that have UberPool today, over 20percent of passengers are choosing to pool — that is, to sharetheir ride with another rider. In the first seven months of2016, UberPool removed 500 million kilometres from theroad.

Independent research is also beginning to see a shift intraveller behaviour, with ride-sharing users being much lesslikely to own or drive a car and much more likely to use pub-lic transit or active transportation. When people are given anaffordable, reliable alternative, they’re happy to take it. Thefact that ride-sharing is an alternative to owning your car isborne out in cities across North America, where data showsthat taxis and ride-sharing coexist, even though they haveunique rules for their different business models. In some cit-ies, Uber even has partnerships with taxis to increase theirutilization.

To wrap up this section. Uber has only been around forseven years, and more benefits are being found every day.At the American Economic Association this week, there’s apaper being presented on less crime against persons duringweekend and late night hours, when rides used to be lessavailable. The other week there was a paper on less misuse ofambulance requests because now you have a reliable altern-ative, in addition to the labour and economic opportunities

that ride-sharing creates.That’s just a glimpse of the potential. An OECD study

found that with autonomous vehicles and shared rides, up tonine in ten vehicles could be removed from a city’s streets.By updating regulations, these benefits can be experiencedhere in British Columbia as well. It’s important to rememberthat carpooling, ride-sharing, taxi and limo all involve a car,a driver and a paying passenger, yet there are many differ-ences. That’s why for each load, there generally are some dis-tinct rules.

For example, taxis are the only ones allowed to do streethails, and they often rely upon commercial vehicles that arerented out to drivers in 12-hour shifts, 24-7. As we discussed,50 percent of ride-sharing drivers in Canada operate lessthan ten hours a week in a week that they choose to drive.The primary use of the vehicle is personal, so regulatoryrules have to allow for that accommodation where a vehicleis being used for both purposes.

Moreover, ride-sharing is regional in nature. You aren’trestricted to a city or a county, because that’s not how welive our lives. Drive ride-share on your way home from work,while your spouse is doing errands or if you just need to getout of the house. It’s a great way to make some income. Inshort, rules can be fair while, at the same time, being differ-ent to enable all modes.

[2:15 p.m.]What about B.C.? We’re asking all B.C. political parties

to work together to bring ride-sharing to our province in2018 under a provincial framework similar to legislationproposed by MLA Weaver. A provincial framework is key.There is no reason there should be different safety rulesor restrictions in each of the 20-plus municipalities acrossMetro Vancouver, the dozen municipalities in the capitalregion or the half-dozen municipalities in the Okanagan.

On this slide, these are the key components of ride-shar-ing regulations that focus on safety and consumer rights andthat are adhered to by companies like Uber and its compet-itors across North America.

License the ride-sharing company. Require it to only allowdrivers who meet safe driving and criminal record criteriato access the app. Allow standard drivers’ licences, similarto other provinces and states which have found no safetyreason for requiring a special licence for ride-sharing ortaxi, which are effectively driving the same vehicles that theydo to drive their families. Provide consumer protection byensuring pricing transparency, preventing municipal bar-riers that create deadheading and other inefficiencies, andallowing anyone who is qualified to participate.

In addition, ride-sharing won’t happen unless there’s aworkable insurance product. Effective ride-sharing insur-ance ensures that there are no gaps between personal insur-ance for the vehicle and commercial insurance for the ride-sharing time period. Blanket coverage, purchased by theride-sharing company for all trips taken through the app,facilitates compliance and consistency by ensuring that everytrip is covered by appropriate insurance.


In B.C., vehicle owners are able to switch insurance daily.If ride-sharing insurance is just left to the individual driver,there is no streamlined way to ensure compliance. This iswhy there are challenges with Manitoba’s recent proposal,while Ontario, Quebec and Alberta — which all haveenacted blanket policies — have found a solution. Blanketcoverage recognizes that most of the time, drivers will con-tinue to use their vehicle for personal uses and keeps thatcoverage in place for that time period.

Blanket coverage also minimizes the friction for driversand the workload for the insurer. Since many drivers are try-ing out ride-sharing for the first time, it avoids them havingto make changes to their insurance, back and forth, and itdoesn’t mean that the insurer has to deal with 10,000 poten-tial policies for individuals, as opposed to one policy percompany with which the drivers are affiliated. Allowing theride-sharing company to buy insurance for the commercialactivity also provides certainty to all parties in a potentialaccident.

This diagram shows how standard blanket coverage worksacross North America. During phases zero and 1, a driveris driving but has not accepted a trip. The personal coveragethen applies. Once a drive has accepted a trip request in theapp, that’s the start of phase 2. The blanket coverage pur-chased by the ride-sharing company becomes the primarycoverage until the last passenger associated with that trip isdropped off at their destination, which is the end of phase3. This model would guarantee that all standard ICBC Auto-plan coverages would apply at all times, when driving forpersonal use and when driving for ride-sharing. It’s easy todistinguish between the phases of operations, and seamlessfor all parties.

Finally, ride-sharing companies would purchase thisinsurance, and it would be based upon how much it is used;i.e., the distance driven by the drivers on their way to pickup a rider and when the rider is in the car. This way it doesnot impact the driver’s personal insurance policy, and ICBCis able to collect the correct amount of premiums for the risk.The rate for the premiums would be actuarially determinedby ICBC actuaries to ensure that they will cover the risk,and companies would pay based upon their claim history.ICBC would apply to the BCUC for the per-kilometre rate tobe determined, and the ride-sharing company would makethose appropriate payments.

A couple of tweaks are needed to legislation to allow ICBCto sell insurance to a third party in this manner, but similarchanges were made in other jurisdictions. It can easily beaccomplished in B.C., as well, protecting the taxpayers andriders.

In conclusion, if there are two recommendations that wehope will come out of your report, it’s to (1) have the Legis-lature pass legislation to enable ride-sharing and (2) createan insurance product to allow that to happen in 2018.

I’d be happy to take your questions. Thank you for listen-ing.

B. Ma (Chair): All right. Thank you so much. Our firstquestion is from Ms. Singh.

R. Singh: Thank you so much for the presentation. Myquestion is…. The way you were explaining it, anybody whoowns a car, if they have an app, can use it. How is theirrelationship with the company? Do they have to pay Ubersomething for this thing? My second question is also relatedto the wages. Do the drivers make minimum wage whenthey are driving?

[2:20 p.m.]

M. van Hemmen: The way that the payment processworks is a little bit different than a taxi company, if that’s kindof where your frame of mind is at. In the ride-sharing busi-ness model, we’re a service provider to the driver. The driveris operating their own business, and we’re helping to con-nect them to people who want to access their service. There’sa service fee that’s generally around 25 percent of the rate,which is charged to the driver.

R. Singh: Is it per trip?

M. van Hemmen: A percentage of the fare is the way tothink of it. What would happen, in that instance, would bethat if you’re going to drive, and you get a $10 fare, we wouldcharge you $2.50 of that. From that, we’re paying for theinsurance, the payment processing, the background check,that’s going on, and then marketing and people like myself,as well.

R. Singh: Do they make minimum wage? The researchthat you have. You have a lot of people….

M. van Hemmen: They’re operating their own business,so it’s slightly different than looking at it as just straightminimum wage. But there’s been research done by ProfessorKrueger, which is from Princeton, which looked at the wagethat Uber drivers earn versus what taxi drivers earn in sim-ilar jurisdictions, because labour market dynamics matter alot. He found that, across the board, Uber drivers were mak-ing as much or more than the alternative. I’d be happy to for-ward that paper on to the committee.

R. Singh: That would be great. Thank you.

J. Johal: Thank you for your presentation, Michael. It wasvery good.

Have you had any preliminary discussions or just broadconversations with ICBC in regards to setting up this frame-work?

M. van Hemmen: Yeah. Like probably every MLA on thecommittee, I’ve shared a lot of information with ICBC, aswell, so that they have the information that we believe thatthey would need in order to make the determination on the


products that would be needed to make.

J. Johal: What kind of liability are we talking about whenwe talk about insurance? What kind of coverage do youthink, generally, you see in North America?

M. van Hemmen: Looking at the U.S. on coverageamounts really isn’t the best case, because they’re often quitea bit lower than what we are used to here in Canada. Herein British Columbia, a taxi is required to have a minimum of$1 million. I know MLA Weaver’s bill, I think, said $2 mil-lion was the coverage minimum. That type of ballpark iswhat we see across the rest of Canada.

J. Johal: We had this question earlier, already. Just inregards to wages, is there a broad number you can give us, anhourly wage — what that would be for an Uber driver, whatthey would make?

M. van Hemmen: It really depends upon the city, the jur-isdiction and the labour dynamics of each market where ithappens. There are a bunch of different examples, which Ican’t remember off the top of my head, that are in ProfessorKrueger’s paper. I’m happy to forward that, because that doesinclude some numbers for cities in the United States on that.

J. Johal: A couple more questions. I brought this up earli-er: surge pricing. It’s not specific to this, but I was just curi-ous. Is it company policy? If so, why do you do it?

M. van Hemmen: Surge pricing is very important for reli-ability. Different business models look at business differentways. Some say: “We’re going to charge you just one price. Ifyou can find us, great. You’ll get that price. If you can’t findus, sorry, you didn’t get service at this time.” What surge pri-cing or variable pricing allows is that it incentivizes driversto come on and serve those peak periods of time.

When you’re an Uber driver, and there’s a price going upin one part of the city, you actually are notified which specificpart of the city that is in, so you can go there. As more driversgo to that location, the price actually decreases, because theratio of people looking at the app to drivers in their regionable to serve demand goes down, so it’s able to balance itselfout.

In addition, it’s important to point out that now — it was alittle different a few years ago — every rider sees the price upfront. You know exactly what you’re paying and exactly whatyou’re going to be getting for the service, so there are no sur-prises.

J. Johal: Final question here. Are we looking at an unlim-ited amount of drivers, of what you’d like to see, in regardsto people being able to drive and be available, with the taxiindustry as well? Number one.

Just to follow up on that, would you have a local office?The other complaint you hear is: “These are foreign compan-

ies — the bigger ones. Part of the fee goes to San Franciscoor wherever it may be.” Will you have a local office, beyondjust yourself at a local office?

M. van Hemmen: To answer the first question, we have alocal office already. We actually have UberEats live here inthe city. So we have an office already in the city of Vancouver.And yeah, I’m based here as well. I wasn’t going to move.This is the best city to be in.

J. Johal: But there will be a complaint. If someone’s goingto complain…. I can call up these taxi companies. Can I callsomebody at Uber if I’ve got complaint, beyond what I cando on the app?

M. van Hemmen: Yes, absolutely. The best way for cus-tomer service is still to go through the app, but for regulatorsand things like that, definitely, contact us. We’re here. We’rein the flesh. We’re going to help you get what you need.

R. Kahlon: Thank you, Mr. van Hemmen. I’ve got a coupleof questions. I’ll just go one by one on them. The first oneis more about your company, because you’re presenting as acompany. The next few questions are more about what youthink about the regulations here that we have, and so on.

[2:25 p.m.]My first question is…. There have been some questions

around wages that have come up. Uber has had strikes hap-pening in Seattle, New York, France — I can go on; the list ishuge — workers not feeling they’re getting treated well andnot being paid enough to provide a living for their families.I guess my question to you would be how do you see that?Why would it be different here? What are you thinking thatyou can do here for labour rights and workers’ rights thatperhaps is not happening in other jurisdictions?

That’s my first one. I’ll give the first one. I’ll give the restafter.

M. van Hemmen: What I’d say to that is I think it’s veryimportant for all companies to treat both drivers and ridersequally and with respect. I think as a company sometimes asa company we too often erred on the side of the rider andnot as much on the side of the driver.

I think one of the important points about competition isthat what competition does is it puts in the incentive for you,if you’ve got an imbalance, to correct it because our busi-ness doesn’t operate unless there are drivers willing to drive,right?

We’re providing a service to drivers, primarily, that theyare the ones who the money flows through. So if we’re nottreating them with respect and working hard to ensure thatwe are the best option for them, then they won’t drive for us.They’ll drive for our competitors. So we need to act appro-priately, and we need to keep taking corrective actions wherewe’ve got deficiencies in order to make that a reality.


R. Kahlon: In all fairness, often the most vulnerable work-ers are the ones who search for that work, right? Sometimesthey feel like they’re stuck and there’s no hope. But I assumesome of those regulations will have to come through fromthe province.

I guess my second question is around wheelchair access-ibility and wheelchair-access cars. Does Uber provide thatservice? I think that we heard from an earlier testimony ifa company gets issued a certain amount of licences, one ineight have to be wheelchair-accessible. Is that something thatUber could live with in Canada?

M. van Hemmen: To answer the question in two ways.One, where possible, we actually like to provide service toeveryone we can. That includes providing wheelchair-access-ible service.

As an example, in Toronto, we actually do have wheel-chair-accessible service, and our hope and aspiration wouldbe that we’d be able to find a solution for that as well here inBritish Columbia. To that end, we obviously don’t own per-sonal vehicles, right? So the base ride-sharing model doesn’tactually factor that in. So what we do, as I mentioned withdoing different partnerships with taxi and with other organ-izations that have those wheelchair-accessible vehicles, ishow can we increase the utilization of those vehicles so thatthey’re doing more wheelchair-accessible trips and fewertrips taking bags to and from….

You know, cruise ship passengers with lots of bags to andfrom the airport. There are ways that we can actually worktogether to incentivize that to happen. We’ve been reallyexcited to hold a number of workshops here in Vancouverwith Spinal Cord Injury B.C. and a number of other stake-holders to get a good sense of what the groundwork is herein the province so that once we’re up and running, we canstart making steps on that as well.

R. Kahlon: I guess, perhaps, one of the challenges wasraised earlier by one of the members here — which is, essen-tially, you leave the trips that become a little bit more chal-lenging to the taxi industry while you don’t provide the ser-vice.

I guess my question, back to the point, is: if the transportcompany has eight, ten, 20 licences, would you be willing tohave some sort of ratio where you have a certain amount ofcars on the road within that ratio that provides wheelchair-accessible services? That’s what I’m getting at.

M. van Hemmen: Nowhere in North America is ride-sharing regulated based upon like a ratio formula. There area variety of different ways that have been put in place byregulators to incentivize both finances and better service forwheelchair-accessible vehicles. But nowhere for ride-sharingis off of a ratio.

R. Kahlon: As far as criminal checks go, if we in B.C. hada system where criminal checks were done independently —

so every driver has to get a criminal check done independ-ently, not through me taking it in — that would be not aproblem for your company as well.

M. van Hemmen: The system that we generally like….Again, people seem used to the United States, so they com-pare us to the ones like that. The situation in Canada is actu-ally quite different.

The RCMP has frameworks in place. You mentionedB.C. Soccer, right? Organizations like that are actually able toprovide a portal that goes through to RCMP or other policeforces that do the check based upon RCMP standards andguidelines. It’s like the B.C. Soccer example that you gave.One of our background check providers is the same one thatdoes B.C. Soccer.

R. Kahlon: So no issue.

M. van Hemmen: The process by which it’s done, in bulkand electronically, is the process that we prefer.

[2:30 p.m.]

R. Kahlon: I apologize to my colleagues. I’ve got onemore. Looking through your report that you just handed into us, it says provincial ride-sharing framework. You recom-mend or you ask that we have a single safety standard acrossthe entire province. Well, we have one. We have one acrossthe country, right?

M. van Hemmen: No, we actually don’t. In B.C., theytalk about the national safety code. B.C. is the only provincein the country that actually has the national safety code asdescribed here in the province. We’re the only ones that wentthrough to that implementation. And on driver backgroundchecks, there actually are no provincial standards. So somemunicipalities have no requirement for taxi drivers to actu-ally have a background check. In other jurisdictions, likeCity of Vancouver, Victoria, they obviously do have that.

There actually isn’t consistency across the province at all.Again, with the national safety code standard for vehicleinspections…. One of the things that we’ve been looking atis to say it doesn’t have to be within kind of the confines ofthe code.

There absolutely should be an inspection. There are otherjurisdictions that have figured this out. I think, to what theminister was saying, they want to see an inspection in place.But if it’s a little bit different than what the system has cur-rently in place, if it can be improved for everyone, I thinkeveryone should be open to that.

R. Kahlon: Yes. Sorry. I should clarify. I meant both thenational auto inspection policy that we follow….

M. van Hemmen: Again, that’s just in B.C.

R. Kahlon: It’s just in B.C. So you said some jurisdictions


have gotten that right. Can you give me an example?

M. van Hemmen: For sure. An example would beEdmonton or Toronto, where it’s much more streamlined togo through than it would be here. But all the inspectionsare still being done by provincially certified mechanics. It’s asimple form. They know what to do. Records are maintained,so the regulator can check at any time.

R. Kahlon: Okay. Thanks.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): I’m going to follow up onRavi’s questions around wheelchair access and wheelchairs.I am concerned that a ride-sharing company like yours can’tprovide and won’t provide adequate equitable access,because cars are more expensive. The amount of money itwould cost to invest in a wheelchair-accessible vehicle toprovide ride-share service couldn’t be made up, unless youare working about an 80-hour week. I just can’t see how thatcan work.

How would your company, in this jurisdiction, suggestthat we could enhance service without off-loading the cost ofthat service onto your competition, the taxi industry?

M. van Hemmen: Yep. Absolutely. What we have doneelsewhere…. I’ll look at Toronto as an example.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): It’s not a good example. No.I’m going to give this context. There is almost no jurisdictionin North America where they have better accessible servicethan British Columbia, especially if you look at Vancouver.

We’re actually looking at a possibility of going backwardsfrom a percentage of available transportation. I’m concernedthat you’re going to incentivize service not being provided,by adding the competition to the marketplace.

M. van Hemmen: The reason I was starting withToronto…. I agree that there are absolutely differences.

One, we’re talking about a province as opposed to a city,which I think is obviously the biggest distinction. But thereason I was going to start with Toronto is that one of thethings that we found is that, actually, there are wheelchair-accessible vehicles out there, but one of the biggest chal-lenges we found in service levels is, actually, that they’re notalways being used for wheelchair-accessible service. They’rebeing used for other trips as well.

What we have done in Toronto is we’ve actually done part-nerships with a variety of different owners of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Actually, some companies have startedup in order to be able to partner with us on this. What wedo is we provide financial incentives in order for them toaccept those wheelchair-accessible trips. The feedback thatwe’ve heard initially has been very positive. I think there isstill a lot more work to do, but the situation is getting betterfrom where it’s been.

Another way that we can talk about improving the asset

utilization is through partnerships with transit. In Boston,we have a partnership with the metro Boston transit author-ity.

One of the things that they’ve found is that, like ourhandyDART service…. Actually, I talked to TransLink here.It’s the same here. Eighty percent of the trips that are done byhandyDART aren’t actually taken by people who are in fixedwheelchairs. They’re people who have other point-to-pointtransit needs. They require some additional service and helpfor one thing or another.

If we can help move those people from handyDART — theactual minibus fixed-wheelchair service — and move themto alternatives, whether it be taxi or whether it be ride-shar-ing companies, like we are in Boston, then you’re able toprovide that same existing asset.

[2:35 p.m.]Now, 80 percent of its passengers have been moved to

modes that make more sense for them. They’re better served.At the same time, you can have some better wheelchair-accessible service.

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): I don’t disagree with you,except for the fact that most of the people who would use anaccessible taxi service would never use an accessible handy-DART service. They’re completely different services. Thepeople who would be using the taxi service would not evenbe eligible to partake in a public transit or paratransit ser-vice.

M. van Hemmen: Yes, I think more what I was trying tosay is there’s two different….

S. Cadieux (Deputy Chair): I’m comfortable with youranswer about providing a subsidy or such arrangement topotentially ensure that that service doesn’t decline.

My second and very quick follow-up is also to a questionraised by Ravi. That’s around the employment relationship.This is new territory for governments, and certainly for gov-ernment and law in British Columbia, I think. The more welook at some of the things that are necessary, like insurancecoverage and these sorts of things…. The more we look atthat being provided in a fashion, via the ride-sharing com-pany, global coverage for our users, we’re more likely to findthat the law will find that drivers are not independent con-tractors, and they are, in fact, employees.

We’ve got some things to work through as governors, overtime, as these things evolve. I don’t think there’s any argu-ment from around the table that ride-sharing is somethingthat’s coming. It’s now how we’re going to do that.

I am curious about how we will manage those issues,because the more that is provided by the parent company,the fewer arguments that can be made that people are inde-pendent contractors.

M. van Hemmen: I think that’s absolutely correct. Thisis one of the areas where, actually, ride-sharing and taxi


are very similar. Taxi drivers in Vancouver today are inde-pendent contractors, right? Each driver is a small business.They’re going and they’re paying the owner of the vehicle afee up front in order to be able to provide the service. Theexpenses are actually their own, with the exception of theinsurance, which is purchased by the vehicle owner, as is therule in B.C.

B.C. is a little bit different in the sense, as well, that weactually have fairly progressive labour rules already. As anexample, I saw workers compensation up on the screen.There’s actually a model that already exists for drivers to par-ticipate in that. In the same way, nationally, with employ-ment insurance, we have a framework in place that inde-pendent contractors can already participate in EI and CPP,which doesn’t exist in the United States and in other jurisdic-tions. One of the ways that my job is a lot easier is becausewe live in a country that actually is fairly progressive and hasthose structures in place. There aren’t the same types of ques-tions or gaps that might be occurring in other jurisdictions.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thanks for this.Surge pricing. We’ve talked about it. It’s one of those easy

things to understand, particularly when it involves horrificevents, unfortunately. Those are the ones that hit the news —where the price jumps through the roof when people are try-ing to escape horrible things. I know Uber apologizes everytime it happens, but it seems to keep happening. I just won-der about it. I don’t…. It just seems unethical to me in someways.

M. van Hemmen: For sure. Do you want me to addressthat?

S. Chandra Herbert: I will just finish, if I could. Is itsomething that you think that a cap could be put on? Or areyou looking at addressing a cap so that it really doesn’t moveinto the realm of price gouging beyond a certain extent, Isuppose? The reason I ask…. Edmonton — I think it was$1,000 taxi ride on New Year’s Eve. Everyone says: “I need acab on New Year’s Eve.” People wouldn’t want a cab on NewYear’s Eve if they knew it would cost a thousand bucks —most people, anyways.

Can you tell me about that? It is a concern of mine.

M. van Hemmen: Yeah, sure. I think that’s a great point.One of the most important points is that the consumer

actually have the information up front. When you’re going toorder a ride, you know exactly how much it’s going to cost atthat time. That’s one of the mechanisms that has been put inplace now. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken an Uber, but ifyou do that now, you’ll see a variety of options on the bottomof different types of services, and you’ll see the price associ-ated with that service.

As I mentioned before, the reason surge pricing existsis that even in different areas of the city, there might beevents happening at different times with different levels of

trip demand. By having variability in price…. Even if itmight seem odd, but between…. If it’s, overall, already elev-ating, and we’re trying to get more drivers in general, tryingto send them to one part of the city or encourage them togo to one part of the city as opposed to going to another isimportant.

[2:40 p.m.]Then I think on your natural disaster point, that is, abso-

lutely, point taken. The algorithms run automatically. Assoon as we’re able to identify that something has happenedlike that, there are absolutely refunds that take place. There’sno need or no desire to make money off of those types ofevents. At the same time, you want to have a service availablefor people to get reliably where they need to go, especiallyduring those scariest moments that we, unfortunately, haveto experience.

S. Chandra Herbert: Right. Thank you.It’s not quite the same question, but in B.C., the Passenger

Transportation Board requires, to an extent, “eco-friendlycars,” they say. So the Prius. It obviously makes sense for abusiness reason as well.

How could we be assured, should ride-sharing come toB.C., that we’re actually going to be driving down carbonemissions, not increasing them? Certainly, some studies I’veread have suggested that in New York, 3 percent to 4 percentof the new traffic has come because of ride-sharing. It’s actu-ally not reducing congestion. It’s actually increased conges-tion because people…. In the case, I guess, of the UberPoolexample, instead of the two of them getting on a bus and tak-ing the bus, they get in the same car together. So you’ve got anew car on the road that didn’t exist before.

Now, that’s a New York example that I’m talking about.It may work differently. I don’t see why it would in B.C., orVancouver, specifically.

M. van Hemmen: I think fuel efficiency is a really import-ant thing to touch on. On the first side, you see it’s in thedriver’s economic self-interest as well to have the most fuel-efficient vehicle possible. Now, of course, most people areusing their personal vehicles to do this, so they won’t see thatover time.

One of the exciting things that we’ve done in other jur-isdictions that especially have low electricity prices — ofwhich B.C. is one; the example would be Portland — is byactually doing partnerships, again, with the utility provider,who sees a certain level of incentive of using electricitydemand during off-peak hours — so at night when you’recharging a car — and actually helping provide and encour-age the use of electric vehicles on the roads. I’d be happy toshare more information about our Portland partnership, aswell, that we have to encourage electric vehicle usage.

B. Ma (Chair): Fantastic. I have on my list Ma, Milobar,Sturdy, Weaver. So Ma — that’s me.

I’m going to start with a few small questions. I have a


question forming, but I need to understand a little bit moreabout your perspective before I can actually ask it.

M. van Hemmen: All right. Yeah.

B. Ma (Chair): Do you believe that taxi drivers shouldbe able to drive personal vehicles when driving passengersaround?

M. van Hemmen: I’m not sure I understand the question.

B. Ma (Chair): Hypothetically, in terms of the types of….Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to be so leading.

What I’m struggling with understanding is…. From a reg-ulatory perspective, my understanding is that your app isnot regulated. You can use your app…. It’s completely legalfor the app to be used in B.C., but what is currently beingreviewed is how the drivers who are using that app — howtheir vehicles and how their service — are regulated. As faras I understand, that….

M. van Hemmen: Are you looking for what’s stopping usfrom providing service now?

B. Ma (Chair): Yeah. I guess I’m trying to understandwhere the fundamental difference is between a ride-hailingservice through your app and a ride-hailing service througha taxi company — recognizing, of course, there are techno-logy advances in terms of the app.

The door-to-door service. I’m wondering: what is the dif-ference? Why do you believe that there should be a…? I’mnot saying that there shouldn’t. I just want to understandwhat you believe is the fundamental difference.

M. van Hemmen: The biggest and most obvious wouldbe that you’re using a personal vehicle that the vast majorityof time is just for personal purposes. So you have personalinsurance on that vehicle. The vast majority of your kilo-metres on that vehicle are going to be personal usage.

What we’re asking for is a regulatory framework that saysthat that is okay to use that for personal purposes and okayto use it for commercial purposes, as long as these rules arefollowed when you’re going to be using it for commercialpurposes. That would be things such as the usage-based,kilometre-based, commercial insurance, right? That wouldbe something like that. That would be as well as saying thatas long as you’ve done an inspection, but with the caveatthat if you’re driving this, your personal vehicle and — guesswhat — you decide to drive it, like, 50,000 kilometresbecause you’re ride-sharing full-time, well then, yeah, yourinspection should be treated the same as a taxi that’s driventhat many kilometres.

[2:45 p.m.]The difference is that the vast majority aren’t. So if you

were to look at a Vancouver taxi…. I’m sure the peoplebehind me could speak better to how many kilometres are

put on them, but I’m guessing it’s close to 100,000 or more,right? For that level of activity, there’s a certain amount ofwear and tear that is very different than for a personal vehiclethat’s used most of the time to drive around, you know, mykids to their soccer and their dance in Port Moody.

It’s just creating flexibility to allow that other use. That’sthe biggest difference. Then also, by doing that, creating aframework that ensures reliability. Right now what we haveis a framework that provides certainty on price, but it doesn’tprovide you certainty that you’re going to get a ride.

The inverse is that with ride-sharing, you have a bit ofvariability with price. The vast majority of time, we’re acheaper option, but sometimes we’re not. At that point intime, you have a choice, right? Take a taxi, if you see one. Istill do. In Edmonton, occasionally I’ll take a taxi. It’s not theend of the world. I want to get to where I want to go. I wantto have choice. But if one’s right out the door, then you cando that.

B. Ma (Chair): Thank you. That was very helpful, and itdefinitely got to the question I was attempting to ask.

I do want to talk a little bit about public safety, because, ofcourse, public safety is absolutely paramount, especially fora government to look after. Whether an injury happens ina personal vehicle or a commercial vehicle, it doesn’t reallymake a difference to the person who’s been injured or assaul-ted or so forth. I am very concerned by some of the reportsthat have come out over the last several years about Uber’srecord on public safety.

I’m not trying to…. Well, I guess you are on the spotbecause you’re presenting here.

M. van Hemmen: I’d love to address any questions youhave.

B. Ma (Chair): I do appreciate what you’ve mentioned interms of a safety standard across B.C. I guess my question foryou, at this point, is about enforcement. What do you thinka regulatory regime put together in B.C. could do to ensurethat enforcement is done properly and effectively in order toassure that public safety is always held paramount?

For instance, we have a backgrounder here that tells usthat in Colorado, the Public Utilities Commission did have aregulatory structure for on-demand transportation networkcompanies, which your company was found to be in viol-ation of. They fined the company $2,500 per day for everyday a disqualified driver was found to have worked, a dis-qualified driver being a person with a previous felony con-viction, a previous alcohol- or drug-related offence or some-body who didn’t even have drivers’ licences at all.

Uber ended up being fined $8.9 million, but then yourcompany went back to contest it. I guess, as a legislator, thatreally concerns me. It’s really important that a regulator bodyis able to enforce properly and ensure that service providerswho are providing the service in the province are followingthe rules.


Can you maybe tell me a little bit about your experienceon that and what you would recommend to us?

M. van Hemmen: For sure. I think it’s absolutely import-ant, to not just regulators but to the general public, that rulesare put in place and that then the rules are followed. Herein Canada — as I’m part of the Canadian team, I can speakmost definitively about that — we work very hard to not justwork with legislators but to work with people like Kristin,who presented, and other regulators to ensure that they haveaccess to the information that they need to do their jobs cor-rectly and that we can build a relationship of trust.

If you look across Canada at different regulators, whetherit be the city of Ottawa or the city of Toronto, that haveput out reports about Uber’s compliance here in Canada, wehave made it a high, high, high priority to follow the rulesthat are put forth, especially when those rules were created,basically, specifically to allow businesses like ours to operate.They were put in place very recently.

B. Ma (Chair): In terms of the regulatory, like a legislative,framework, placing fines on those sorts of violations…. Doyou believe that that’s an effective way to go? How did youfeel about the $2,500 a day? Do you have any frameworkfor…?

M. van Hemmen: The way that I would answer that is thatI think most jurisdictions have monetary penalties as a partof an administrative enforcement regime. That’s not unusual.

[2:50 p.m.]

P. Milobar: I have a bit of a hotelier background, and wedo have surge pricing protections in place in B.C. already. SoI wouldn’t think it would be that big. That’s why, in everyhotel room you go to, you see a maximum-daily-rate card,either on the back of the door or in a closet. That’s by law. Ithas to be there. It tells you the max that the room can be ren-ted for on a daily basis.

M. van Hemmen: I didn’t know that.

P. Milobar: If there’s a cruise ship in town, or a concert,they can’t exceed that price. They can set their price, but it’sthere ahead of time, and there you go. If you ever check intoa hotel and you think you’re getting gouged, look at the backof the door and see. We do have the ability to do things likethat, and I don’t see why a taxi or an Uber industry should betreated any differently in that respect, in terms of consumerprotection.

There’s no great magic to why Uber would be able toprovide a ride cheaper than a cab. It’s all about business inputcosts for that ride. Uber drivers are not driving at a loss todo me a great favour by driving me somewhere cheaper thana cab might be. It’s because some of the business input coststhat a taxi company would have would be cheaper.

My question is around blanket insurance. That’s obviously

a big cost for a taxi, and it’s obviously a big cost for Uber,or you wouldn’t be trying to get blanket insurance as partof an implementation. Given that a car is a car, and a driveris a driver, do you not see that blanket insurance should beavailable for anyone that’s driving? I ask that because I knowyou’re going to say it’s a personal vehicle, and it’s not underuse all the time.

I can understand that, but a cab isn’t sitting waiting if itdoesn’t have a fare either. Under your example, as I under-stand it — unless I misunderstood how you showed the appworking — if I’m an Uber driver and I’m sitting waiting forsomebody to hail me, I’m not paying that commercial insur-ance rate yet. It’s only once I accept that fare. A cab sitting ata curb waiting for a fare is really no different than the persondriving around in a personal car waiting for a fare.

Would you be advocating that blanket insurance shouldbe equal across the board? Or should it be blanket only avail-able for Uber, and “Taxi industry, you’re stuck with what youhave”?

M. van Hemmen: Great question. I wouldn’t be speakingfor the taxi industry one way or another on what type ofinsurance they would be seeking. I think we can call itblanket insurance, but it actually exists in another term rightnow. It’s basically non-owned-fleet insurance.

Right now taxis purchase a kind of owned-fleet insurance,because they own the vehicles. In this case, it would simplybe a non-owned-fleet insurance. It already kind of exists. It’sjust that someone who’s not the owner of the vehicle wouldbe purchasing that insurance for that period of time.

If there are effective and actuarially sound means toreduce rates for any other type of business, I think that’sabsolutely up to them to try to pursue as much as they can.We’re not trying to find a discount or a break on this. Whatwe’re wanting to do is to ensure that commercial insurance isin place when the vehicle is actually being used for commer-cial purposes.

P. Milobar: Then I’m not misunderstanding how yourapp works. So the commercial insurance for the Uber driverkicks in when they initiate a fare request.

M. van Hemmen: When they accept a request. That’s cor-rect.

P. Milobar: But if they’re sitting waiting for a fare request,they’re still on their own personal insurance.

M. van Hemmen: That’s correct. As an example, there’svery little way to know, at that point in time, if you’re goingto be going to wait for a friend to come in, right? If you’rewaiting for a friend, or if you’re going to go do somethingelse, you’re not actually on the system, engaging in commer-cial activity at the time.

P. Milobar: If I drive my Uber car home for the night and


I park it in my driveway, it’s on my personal insurance?

M. van Hemmen: That’s correct, unless you have a payingpassenger.

P. Milobar: If my taxi was parked in the yard for the night,it could technically be on a lower insurance, then, at thatpoint too?

M. van Hemmen: Yeah. I would say that ICBC wouldhave to have some insurance at some point in time. I thinkthe way that I would look at it there is that the overall risk isjust averages, right? If you were to look at how ICBC wouldtreat a commercial vehicle, it would be an average of the timethat it would be used in an incidence. In this case, it wouldjust be two different averages. One would be the commercialuse average, and one would be the personal use average.

P. Milobar: But does not your fare structure rely on know-ing what that per-kilometre cost of insurance would be? Thatgets calculated into a base fare, so that you make sure thatyou’re collecting, at a minimum, the Uber cut to cover theinsurance costs and all those others, and that would factorinto a bare-minimum price per kilometre.

M. van Hemmen: Insurance is baked into our cost struc-ture, for sure.

[2:55 p.m.]

J. Sturdy: There has been some concern expressed aroundthe revenue streams, on the 25 percent that you quoted.Could you tell us where that revenue goes, whether there arecorporate taxes or other taxes here in British Columbia?

M. van Hemmen: Yeah, for sure. There is no PST ontransportation, but there is GST on transportation, includingride-sharing in Canada. Of the 25 percent that would gotowards Uber, there are a number of costs that are actuallyborne locally. In fact, the vast majority of the costs are bornelocally. The first and obvious one, which we’ve talked a lotabout, would be insurance. The second one would be pay-ment processing. Another one would be background checks.Those are examples of costs that are all borne locally in thejurisdiction in which it happens.

Then there’s the marketing, which is providing incentivesto riders and drivers to participate in the service — bill-boards and things like that. Marketing happens locally aswell. Our team, which is based in Canada…. We have justover 100 people now across Canada, so those costs are allborne locally, including…. And then employees of UberCanada, so Uber Canada does…. It’s questions about tax.Uber Canada does pay income tax in Canada.

J. Sturdy: Okay. So for net income, is this a taxable incomein Canada?

M. van Hemmen: There is taxable income in Canada, yes.

J. Sturdy: There’s also been some suggestion that this isreally going to be an urban-focused service and that there’snot an interest or there wouldn’t be an interest or there’s, infact, somewhat of a disincentive, perhaps, even to make thisavailable to drivers in rural British Columbia. Would you saythat’s true?

M. van Hemmen: Absolutely not. I think we start ourbusiness in large municipalities, but our hope is to be able toprovide reliable rides for everyone, everywhere. Now, that’s apretty audacious goal, but that’s our hope.

I’m from the north end of Vancouver Island, a really smalltown 200 kilometres north of Campbell River. Like, if you’rethinking you hit north Island when you hit Nanaimo, no.That’s the middle of the Island. I grew up on the north endof the Island, right? Transportation challenges are actuallymore acute there.

It’s one of the reasons, as well, why you see…. In BritishColumbia, when we did polling in Metro Vancouver, wefound higher support for ride-sharing in Surrey and in theTri-Cities than we did in the city of Vancouver. It’s superhigh support across everywhere, but it was noticeably higherthere. At first, we didn’t get why that would be because wethought more people would be looking to use it in the city.

The reason was that people really want more optionswhere they don’t have lots of options. So in the suburbs andin rural and remote communities, there are fewer options, somore people are looking for it. Hopefully, we’ll be able to bein a position to provide it.

J. Sturdy: You don’t need a certain capacity or a certainnumber of drivers. Are there any thresholds that you need tomeet as a company?

M. van Hemmen: The main one that we look at is ifwe can reliably provide service. I think the most frustratingthing to anyone is if you open an app, and it says, “No ridesavailable,” right? No driver is there to provide service.

When I talked about Innisville, one of the best parts aboutthat type of partnership was that there was an incentive fordrivers to be available in order to be able to provide service— even in a smaller community that wasn’t 100,000 peopleor 75,000 people.

J. Sturdy: How do you deal with that in a place like Pem-berton or a place like Bowen Island or a place like PortMcNeill? At what point could that service be initiated?

M. van Hemmen: To be totally honest, we haven’t com-pletely cracked the nut on all of those things, as there arechallenges still to be solved. But for communities that areproximate to larger geographies that wouldn’t necessarilyhave the remote designation but that would be more rural, asopposed to remote, we have been able to solve that.


We look forward to working with you as we become oper-ational, hopefully, here — to be able to try to figure out howto do that in a creative way in British Columbia as well.

A. Weaver: I have a number of questions. Really shortanswers, hopefully. Number one, are there any jurisdictionsthat you are aware of, where Uber operates, where Uberdrivers have been required to have video cameras in the carfor safety reasons?

M. van Hemmen: No. Actually, Ottawa did a study onthat, so I’m happy to provide that.

A. Weaver: If you could provide it. I’m just getting jur-isdictional. Are there any jurisdictions where Uber operateswhere surge pricing, maximum pricing, has been implemen-ted in a regulatory fashion?

M. van Hemmen: Not that I’m aware of, but I’m mostaware about North America.

A. Weaver: Okay. Are there any jurisdictions where Uberis operating where pay-as-you-go insurance is in place fromeither a private or a public insurance company?

M. van Hemmen: Everywhere we operate in North Amer-ica.

[3:00 p.m.]

A. Weaver: Is pay as you go.

M. van Hemmen: Everywhere.

A. Weaver: Okay. So you pay by the kilometre because ofthe fact that you have your special blanket pricing.

M. van Hemmen: You basically buy all the exact samecoverages but at a commercial rating, which is a rating thatalways is more costly than a personal rating across NorthAmerica, across Canada, where we operate, and the same inthe United States. It’s like standard. It’s not….

A. Weaver: I’m creating a fair example, then. If the taxiindustry were also given pay-as-you-go insurance, the issueabout idling or not idling is actually moot, because if you’resitting waiting in a stall, you’re not paying.

M. van Hemmen: They would just have to have some baseinsurance for that other time.

A. Weaver: Okay. In British Columbia, if I loan my car outto a friend, my insurance covers my friend. Let’s suppose Idecide that I want to drive Uber all day long. Then I’m goingto go to sleep, and I’m going to loan my car out to my buddywho’s going to drive Uber all night long. How do you coverthat in terms of my private insurance and in terms of your

corporate insurance and liability there?

M. van Hemmen: Typically, every trip that’s connectedthrough the app is covered, regardless of who. That beingsaid, that experience that you just talked about, we don’twant that to happen. That’s one of the reasons why everydriver actually has to have their picture on the app, so therider sees the picture of the driver before they actually getthe car pulling up to them.

The rider is supposed to see the name of the driver, theirpicture, the licence plate and the make and model of thevehicle. If a different vehicle pulls up, and they say they’reyour Uber, don’t get in. They’re not your Uber. In additionto that, if you get in the car, or you’re looking in the car, andyou quickly see that this isn’t the same person who is on here,absolutely don’t get in the car. Absolutely.

A. Weaver: The final thing is…. I was wondering if youcould give me, and us, a sense of the demographics of yourtypical driver and how that might be different from otherforms of transportation — whether you have more women,more new immigrants or more middle-class moms and dadswho are just in-between…. What’s the demographic of thedrivers?

M. van Hemmen: Honestly, we see a variety of drivers.When you talk about women, across North America, 20 per-cent of our partners, the drivers, are female, which is differ-ent than traditional transportation providers.

You also see a large group of older men, kind of early retir-ees, the kind of guys like my dad, as he’s getting close to….Mom thinks of the idea of him retiring, and she’s like: “No,you’re not going to be here. You’re going to go out and dosomething as well.” We see a lot in that demographic.

Then we see a lot of young people as well. Not just MetroVancouver, but cities across North America are becomingmuch less affordable. So you see a variety of not just kindof traditional taxi drivers, although you see some of those aswell. It’s much broader.

B. Ma (Chair): You were a very popular witness. I let itrun long, so you’ve been on the hot seat for a little while.Thank you so much for answering all those questions.

M. van Hemmen: No worries. I appreciate the time ofthe committee. As well, I’ll be presenting written comments,especially addressing what you had made requests about.Thanks a lot.

B. Ma (Chair): Fantastic. Thank you. And thank you allfor coming up to the first day of hearings. We will reconvenetomorrow at 9 a.m. We are now adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 3:03 p.m.


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SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CROWN CORPORATIONS · 2018-06-07 · Vancouver Taxi Association C....

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