The NDP government’s preoccupation with studying and re-studying the idea of ride-hailing in B.C. has left one of its MLAs exposed.
North Delta MLA Ravi Kahlon sat on the legislature committee that held numerous hearings on ride-hailing last year and wrote a lengthy recommendation about how to handle it.
He stayed on the committee after the government backed up and did the same thing all over again. It referred still more questions to the committee even after a bill was introduced last November to bring ride-hailing to B.C.
All that exposure to the issue finally revealed a fact that the opposition B.C. Liberals brought to the legislature Monday — Kahlon’s father has a taxi licence in Victoria and is just wrapping up a long career as a cab driver.
So the MLA is sitting on a committee making recommendations on a change that is widely expected to have a major impact on a sector that his father works in.
Grilled by reporters after the opposition’s questions about the propriety of all that in the legislature, Kahlon said some other MLAs knew about the family connection. It seems to have become known casually.
He would have been much better off formally disclosing the connection at the outset, because it looks embarrassing to have it come out at this late date.
There’s no hard and fast rule about sitting on committees when personal interests come into play. But the general conflict-of-interest law doesn’t make any distinction between real and apparent conflicts. Kahlon’s continued membership on the committee looks problematic.
Ride-hailing has become an intensely political issue over the years that the B.C. Liberals and now the NDP have been kicking it around. It’s a wonder that didn’t move anyone to double-check potential problems when they were rounding up MLAs to tackle the issue.
The only saving grace is that the committee is being used as a time-wasting stall by the government to put all the headaches associated with ride-hailing off as long as possible.
So even if Kahlon is compromised as a member by his father’s occupation, it wouldn’t have a direct impact. Because the committee is just spinning its wheels.
It was handed ride-hailing the first time around in November 2017, as a move to appease Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver, who was agitating for faster action.
It heard a few dozen witnesses in short order and wrapped up hearings in January 2018. It came out with a report later that concluded ride-hailing firms should be permitted to operate in B.C., “within a provincial regulatory regime.”
It stressed the need to modernize the taxi business at the same time, to allow for equitable treatment of the two competing sectors.
MLAs wrestled with the idea of capping the number of vehicles and setting boundaries on areas that could be served. If ride-hailing firms could operate without boundaries, the thought was that taxis should be allowed operate outside their jurisdictions in some circumstances.
One of the key recommendations was that ride-hailing drivers could use a Class 5 standard licence, rather than a more stringent requirement.
But when Transportation Minister Claire Trevena introduced the framework legislation in November, it ignored that and required a Class 4 licence.
The rest of the bill deconstructs most previous law on taxis and lumps taxis and ride-hailing firms together as passenger-directed vehicles in the eyes of the government.
It also removed a lot of authority from local jurisdictions and vested it in the provincial passenger transportation board.
To ease any worries about moving too quickly to give people what they want, Trevena gave herself a year to bring it all into effect. But not before — you guessed it — another study.
So the bill was shipped back to the committee that had already exhaustively reviewed the issue.
This time around, there are just a few details in the terms of reference. One of them is the Class 4/Class 5 licence issue. Trevena wants the committee to reconsider something she’s already ignored the first time it looked at it.
However Kahlon’s issue plays out, it won’t work toward a quicker arrival of ride-hailing. It’s on the slow road, and could be getting slower.
