Iqaluit plans sweeping review of taxi businesses

Iqaluit’s chief bylaw officer wants the city to do a big review of the taxi bylaw to cover a long list of issues, including more efficient criminal record checks on people seeking taxi driver and livery licences, car safety regulations and putting a cap on the number of taxi licences. (PHOTO BY GABRIEL ZÁRATE)

Iqaluit’s bylaw chief says the local taxi industry is long overdue for an overhaul, and he’s pushing for a review to tighten standards on cabbies, their cars and their bosses.

“It’s time to review the entire industry. It’s a big industry,” said Doug Vincent, Iqaluit’s chief municipal enforcement officer.

Vincent has a long laundry list of issues he wants to see addressed during an upcoming review of the city’s taxi bylaw, which governs much of how the industry operates.

Near the top of that list is the difficulty of making sure that licenced cab drivers aren’t lawbreakers.

The present bylaw demands a criminal record check before a new cabbie can get a taxi licence, but there are administrative issues that make that difficult.

Without a fingerprint check, the RCMP will never definitively confirm that a person has a criminal record if something comes up in their files.

The closest they will come is to declare that the applicant “may or may not have a criminal record.”

This is because there may be someone else in Canada with the same name and date of birth as the applicant.

The amount time needed for a fingerprint check to come back from the national database is usually at least a month, according to an RCMP spokesperson.

But Vincent said the turnaround on a fingerprint check is more often six months to a year.

In such cases, Vincent asks applicants to sign a form swearing they don’t have any criminal convictions of the types that could bar them from working as taxi drivers.

The bylaw prohibits cabbies who have been convicted:

• within the last five years of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily hard, sexual assault, robbery, extortion, homicide, abduction or criminal negligence;

• within the last two or three years of any drug offences, depending on their severity;

• within the last five years of the illegal sale of liquor under the Nunavut Liquor Act (or similar acts in other parts of Canada)

• of three offences within a 12-month period under the taxi or traffic bylaws or Motor Vehicle Act.

A related problem is that even if a cabbie has a clean record, if he’s convicted of any such crime after he starts work, the bylaw department isn’t informed.

Vincent would also like to see barriers to employment for people who have been charged many times, even if they haven’t been convicted.

To cite the example of another profession, Vincent pointed to teachers who are subject to disciplinary action if a student accuses them of sexual misconduct even if criminal proceedings don’t end in a conviction.

Another issue Vincent wants to see addressed is that livery license-holders aren’t held to the same legal standard as drivers.

There are no barriers to convicted offenders getting a livery license if they pay the necessary fee: $500.

“These are one of the things I’d like to tighten up,” he said.

There are 15 livery licenses in Iqaluit.

There’s also the issue of the vehicles themselves, many of which are decades-old, “Crown Victorias with duct tape on their bumpers,” in Vincent’s words.

Another question is how many taxis the city needs, something that most municipalities control but Iqaluit didn’t limit until recently.

In September 2009 the previous city council approved a moratorium on issuing new livery licenses until the taxi bylaw is reviewed.

Until the city took action to limit the number of taxis on the road, competition was fierce.

Stories abound of aggressive driving and even violence between taxi drivers competing for fares.

Iqaluit’s taxi industry is complicated. Some drivers own their own cars, but most work for the owner of the vehicle.

That owner may own several cars and may or may not be a driver himself.

In many cases, the owner of the vehicle isn’t the livery licence-holder, but instead owns their cabs as part of a company and pays for the dispatch service and brand-name.

Vincent said he reckons there are around a hundred independent taxi business owners in one form or another.

The situation has become so complex, Vincent said it’s not clear who would be liable if a taxi driver were injured on the job and the Workers Compensation Board got involved.

It also means he’s not sure who can speak for the taxi industry during the upcoming review of the bylaw.

The livery licensees are the easiest to include because the city knows who they all are and how to contact them, but no-one else.

“We have to decide who is going to represent the industry,” he said.

That may involve consultation in summer – normally a bad time for meetings – and more in winter.

The tender is only now going out for proposals to review the bylaw, which was introduced in 2004 and which Vincent said had too many loopholes.

Depending on the public’s engagement and how quickly the City Council moves on it, Vincent said he hopes to present a draft to the council by the end of 2010.

Based off his own math of the fees that cabbies pay – dispatch services, car use and other costs – Vincent estimated that taxi drivers collectively spend at least $30 million a year to operate in Iqaluit.