Winnipeg poised to unveil taxi regulation plan
Some councillors grumble about short notice, concurrence with other meetings
Winnipeg is poised to unveil a plan on Friday to regulate taxis and other vehicles for hire, including services such as Uber and Lyft.
The dissolution of the provincial taxicab board has left Winnipeg with the responsibility of regulating vehicles for hire as soon as March 1.
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A report about the regulations will be published Friday afternoon as part of the agenda for next week's executive policy committee meeting, Winnipeg communications director Felicia Wiltshire said.
City councillors were informed by email about this on Thursday and called to a closed-door seminar on Friday morning — concurrent with a public works committee meeting to scrutinize the 2018 budget as well as a Winnipeg police board meeting.
Several councillors, including Russ Wyatt (Transcona), Ross Eadie (Mynarski) and Jeff Browaty (North Kildonan), complained about the lack of notice and the conflicting council duties.
"The meeting calendar during budget time is always quite full. Public works has agreed to recess for a 90-minute break today, if we're not done, to deal with the ride-for-hire seminar," Browaty said Friday morning in a statement.
"If there truly is an urgent need to have this meeting due to an emergent issue, I don't mind dropping everything to schedule this meeting today. If it could have been scheduled (for today or another time) weeks ago rather than at the last minute, I believe it shows disrespect by the CAO and mayor's office for council's time."
'Time crunch'
Wiltshire said chief adminsitrative officer Doug McNeil is aware of the competing responsibilities but must proceed with plans to publish the vehicle-for-hire plan because of the short window for creating regulations.
"We are in a bit of a time crunch," Wiltshire said in a statement, noting if the city does not pass a vehicle-for-hire bylaw before the end of February, taxis and companies such as Uber would be effectively unregulated in March.
"We do not want to see that happen, so we are working as quickly as we can so this transition can occur and the regulation of the vehicles for hire industry will continue."
The city is nonetheless moving too quickly, according to a group representing Winnipeg taxi companies.
"We are extremely concerned that [the] city is rushing the bylaws through without robust consultations," Scott McFadyen of the Winnipeg Community Taxi Coalition told all members of council in an email on Friday morning.
"The lacklustre public consultations on the bylaw included one roundtable focus group and one working group meeting — and, in both cases, participants from the taxi industry were randomly selected," McFadyen said.