Ottawa taxi driver says Uber's arrival destroyed his retirement plan

An Ottawa taxi driver says he lost a fortune and had his retirement dreams dashed after Uber and Lyft rolled into the capital.

Ziad Mezher testified this week as part of the Ottawa taxi industry's $215 million class-action lawsuit against the city. The suit alleges the city was negligent and discriminatory when it changed rules to allow ride-sharing services to operate, penalizing cab operators who lost fares.

Mezher, 57, was in his early 20s when he left war-torn Lebanon in 1989 for Canada.

“It wasn’t a safe place, so I choose to come here with my brother, his wife and two kids,” Mezher said. “I started working at a bakery at the beginning. After that I worked at a grocery store and then a cleaner company, and from 1993 to 2000 I worked in a gas station.”

When that business closed, Mezher took a job as a taxi driver.

“A year and a half after that I started thinking maybe it would be a good investment if I buy a plate,” he says. “In that time, it used to be $50,000.”

For Mezher, that was a significant sum of money, on top of the cost of a vehicle and all the required equipment. But the expectation was for the value of the city-issued and controlled taxi license plate to grow.

It did grow, to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Business was steady for Mezher, until 2014 when Uber, followed by Lyft, rolled into town. The ride-sharing services would seemingly circumvent Ottawa’s strict rules and undercut fares. It was cause for protest amongst taxi drivers.

“There is no limit there is no regulation and in my concern, it's illegal,” says Mezher. “You [taxi drivers] cannot operate up to now without following all the regulations all the paperwork all the licensing, the care meters, the cameras, the education, it costs a lot.”

According to the union that represents area taxi drivers, before the city authorized ride sharing services to operate in 2016, there were more than 1,500 cabs on the road. Today that number has dwindled to around 700. 

“The state of the industry is not great. Our drivers are trying to make a living and they’re working longer hours,” says Marc Andre Way, president and CEO of Coventry Connections Inc., which operates a number of taxi fleets.

“What bylaw services is supposed to do is consumer protection, it’s accessibility, it’s safety issues and health," he added. "How is it that all of a sudden bylaw services can ignore all those three very important components for the ride sharing industry and look at us in a different way? There should be equity. They should be getting a taxi brokers licence, they should have commercial insurance, and they should be inspected yearly like we are.”

Taxi operators have made strides to compete, with more competitive prices as well as online tools and apps, which Way says are just as good.

But still, Mezher says on a ‘good day’, many drivers continue to lose at least 50 per cent of their business to ride-sharing services. He said that the value of his taxi plate was his retirement plan, and now the value is "down to zero."

“I want to see fairness and the city treat us equally,” he said. “I would like, in a way, justice.”

The city of Ottawa declined to comment on the lawsuit as the matter is before the courts. The trial is expected to last until mid-February.