The City of Toronto turned to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice requesting an order for Uber to stop all operations, reports the Globe and Mail. Speaking with the newspaper, Tracey Cook, Toronto’s executive director of municipal licensing and standards, said that they took action out of “concern for the safety of passengers and drivers.”
The city believes Uber operates an unregulated business, putting public safety at risk, and the city has the responsibility to ensure the safety of passengers, no matter how they hail a cab.
Uber’s case doesn’t look good: Toronto has 36 bylaw charges outstanding against Uber Canada, so they may succeed with the filing.
The Canadian arm of the popular ride-sharing company expressed its disappointment over the city’s move to attempt to halt its progress and limit consumer choice in Toronto.
“Torontonians have taken to Uber in droves because it offers something better than what bureaucrats and the taxi cartel have provided to date,” the statement read. “It’s disappointing that city bureaucrats have deployed expensive legal tactics to attempt to halt progress, limit consumer choice and force a broken transportation model on the public. We look forward to sitting down with the city and working to find a common sense approach to regulations that promote public safety and create a permanent home for Uber in Toronto.”
The popular taxi service has been present since 2012 in Toronto. More recently, the company made headlines when senior vice president Emil Michael suggested digging up dirt on the lives of journalists who criticized Uber in the US.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
Basically passengers are not insured by Uber, so yes, shut them down if they don’t want to bring up their standards.
Uber is ten times better than the regular taxi system.
why? is it 10x cheaper than the taxi cartel?
It is cheaper, about 30% It’s also safer. All of the drivers have criminal background checks (not the case with taxis). There’s no cash involved. And there’s a record of the trip. I see the driver on my phone. It’s registered with the company, it’s billed to my credit card. And since my name is associated with the ride, the driver is also safer.
In Montreal, if you can find a taxi that takes a credit card, you’ll often be greeted with one of those paper imprint machines from the 1980’s. Seriously.
This idea that regular taxi drivers are highly trained in well maintained vehicles is silly. I’ve been in terrible cabs with terrible drivers on many occasions.
I’ve also heard of Uber reimbursing customers for rides that take ridiculous run around ways to jack up fares.
So yes, it’s much better.
“In Montreal, if you can find a taxi that takes a credit card, you’ll often be greeted with one of those paper imprint machines from the 1980’s. Seriously.”
this
also their interact/ cc machines always magically break down when they drop you off at trudeau, “there is a guichet inside mr.”
yep! and it’ll only add 5 minutes to your fare.
I forgot to add, you’re highly unlikely to lose your phone in an uber cab since it notifies you the moment the ride ends and should you somehow leave it behind (or anything of value for that matter), you have a receipt in your email telling you who the driver was.
Thank you government, for getting in the way, stifling innovation and making it hard to do business. I’m not sure at what point it was decided that government had to take responsibility for everyones safety all the time.
toronto has one of the more amazing cab systems in north america (montrealer here), i wish we had said passenger bill of rights
being said, let the market decide for crying out loud
you… clearly dont know bad cab drivers, not saying toronto’s are perfect, but they are amongst the best out of any city ive been to
Toronto council is not getting a $$ cut from Uber, so they consider it unsafe. LOL. If Toronto got a licensing fee from Uber, they would then love them!
It’s about protecting the system and jobs in place. New car companies are blocked at every turn to protect domestic car companies. They talk about progress, but the problem is political.