VICTORIA — B.C.’s New Democrats will begin the delicate process on Monday of climbing down off the fence its MLAs have been sitting on quite comfortably these past few months over the controversial issue of ride-for-hire services like Uber.
The NDP government will unveil what Transportation Minister Claire Trevena called a “path forward” on how to approve ride-hailing, while trying to maintain a fair set of rules to allow the traditional taxi industry to compete.
“We need to look after business, we need to look after passenger safety, but we do need to make sure we are giving people the choice they are anticipating,” Trevena said in an interview last week. “The next steps announced Monday I’m sure it won’t please everybody, and I’m sure there will be lots of room for discussion, but at least we’re working on it.”
The NDP has been quiet on ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft during its first three months in office, mainly because it won thousands of votes in the spring election in key Lower Mainland ridings with a promise to protect and preserve jobs in the traditional taxi industry.
That was great election politics at the time, helping the NDP to win three Surrey ridings from the B.C. Liberals and to topple two cabinet ministers — including the architect of the Liberals’ own Uber plan, Peter Fassbender. But lost in all that politicking was any semblance of an NDP plan.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to make any sense out of the NDP’s election proposal for ride-hailing, other than the party would “create a truly fair approach to ‘ride-sharing’ in British Columbia that doesn’t unfairly benefit – or punish – one group over the other.” Almost 100 days later, it’s still unclear what that means.
The Liberals had also claimed to be creating a “level playing field” with their proposal in early 2017, which would have given ride-hailing companies the driver’s licence class and pay-per-use insurance rules they wanted, while relaxing geographic restrictions on existing taxi companies and lifting a cap on traditional taxi licences. Taxi companies complained that drivers who’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy one of the limited number of taxi licences would suddenly find those investments worthless when competing against ordinary people using their own personal vehicles for Uber.
“I know we keep blaming the previous government, but it was the previous government that left us pretty much in a mess,” said Trevena.
Uber representatives were in Victoria last week. The San Francisco-based company has clear demands. It likes much of what the Liberals proposed, minus the headaches from the traditional taxi industry. Uber insists its business model is different from taxis, and the government doesn’t have to get bogged down in reforming the taxi industry at the same time as it green-lights ride-hailing. But, politically, with all those thousands of votes on the table, the NDP isn’t going to be able to do one without the other.
Uber’s voice carried significant influence within the Liberal government, because it had hired several well-connected Liberals as its lobbyists. But Uber’s competitor, Lyft, has better clout with the new NDP government, thanks to its hire of Michael Gardiner to lobby on its behalf. Gardiner, who helped direct Premier John Horgan’s leadership campaign, and was the NDP’s top official for two years before the election, isn’t prohibited from using his vast list of contacts to help Lyft open doors inside the NDP administration, thanks to one of the many loopholes in Attorney General David Eby’s recent lobbying reforms.
“We see tremendous opportunity for ride-sharing in British Columbia,” Lyft spokesperson Chelsea Harrison said in a statement. “We’ve begun outreach to stakeholders across the region to listen and learn about how Lyft’s reliable rides could benefit their communities. Lyft is open to engaging in conversations with lawmakers around the creation of regulations for this industry.”
There is no easy path for the NDP on ride-hailing, caught as it is between the promises it made to protect taxi drivers and the persistent voter pressure to reform a taxi industry dogged by complaints about long waiting times and limited cab service.
The Liberals had promised to have ride-hailing in place by Christmas. The NDP had promised to “support the passing of new rules in introduce ridesharing to B.C. in 2017.” British Columbians are going to get neither.
Instead, expect Monday’s announce to lean heavily on the familiar fallback that New Democrats have used to buy them time on controversies: a fresh round of public consultation. When in doubt, consult.
“We need to do this logically, we need to do this thoughtfully,” said Trevena. “We don’t think the previous government’s timeline would have done that. We think it would have ended up with a chaotic system. We are going to be thoughtful.”
Don’t expect to start using your favourite ride-hailing app in B.C. any time soon.
