3 Blueline taxis vandalized overnight as cab dispute continues

Three Blueline taxis were vandalized overnight in what Ottawa police believe were targeted incidents as a labour dispute involving airport taxi drivers continues.

Varun Walia, who has been driving a cab for nearly four years, said he was woken up early Wednesday morning by another cab driver in his neighbourhood who called to say that the windows in both of their Blueline cabs had been smashed.

Police were called at about 6:30 a.m. to the 100-block of Mancini Way in Barrhaven, where both of the damaged cabs were parked.

Officers also received another report of a damaged Blueline cab on Mozart Court in south Ottawa on Wednesday.

Walia and his colleague Amrinder Dhaliwal said they believe the vandalism was a kind of retaliation against Blueline drivers who are picking up fares from the Ottawa airport.

Airport taxi drivers are currently locked out of the airport taxi stand in an ongoing labour dispute with their dispatcher, Coventry Connections, over an increase in the fees Coventry is charging drivers for the right to pick up airport fares.

The new fee amounts to about $4.50 per pick-up, $3 of which goes to the Ottawa airport authority and $1.50 of which goes to Coventry Connections, according to Coventry CEO Hanif Patni.

Roughly 450,000 pick-ups are made at the airport each year, Patni said.

Ottawa police spokesman Const. Marc Soucy said that while police believe the incidents of vandalism were targeted, officers have no evidence to link airport drivers to the vandalism.

The chair of the airport taxi unit of Unifor, the taxi drivers's union, said the vandalism could have been done by anyone.

"I don't know if the membership has done that and that's not something we advocate, that's not something we condone, that's not something we like to see happen," Abed Madi said.

The investigation continues.