Beck Taxi suing City of Toronto for allowing untrained drivers to ‘fill our streets’

Beck Taxi is suing the City of Toronto for allowing thousands of untrained commercial drivers to operate on city streets.

Beck is seeking $50,000 in damages, claiming city officials have ignored their own bylaws and failed to create and implement regulations that protect public safety when it comes to issuing new licenses for vehicle-for-hire drivers.

The City was served with the court application on Friday.

According to the city’s largest cab company, taxicab drivers were required to undergo extensive training as a condition to drive until 2016 when the City eliminated all training requirements following a recommendation by City staff.

Following an incident in March 2018 in which a passenger died involving an untrained driver, the City voted to implement an accredited training program for all new and renewing licensees in June 2020. That program was not fully enacted until April 2022 but Beck claims it was only for new drivers and in-between the City continued to issue and renew licenses.

According to Beck the program was an online-only driver training course that could be completed in less than an hour, had no provisions to identify that the test taker was the same person requesting the license, and did not require any in-car defensive training.

While the program was eventually suspended following an audit, a lawyer for Beck Taxi says thousands of vehicle-for-hire drivers obtained licenses and the City decided to allow them to keep those licenses.

“There are now thousands of drivers on the streets of Toronto who clearly have no training or inadequate training and as a result,” said Eric Gillespie. “Beck also seeks the revocation of these licenses.”

While the City has reinstituted basic driver training with six accredited providers, Beck claims the training contains many of the deficiencies and flaws previously mentioned. The cab company says it worked to design and implement a driver training program with Centennial College but that effort was also ignored by the city.

Beck’s lawsuit says it is looking to be reimbursed for those expenses which their lawyer says will be donated back to the college in order to allow them to re-institute their training program.

City officials in response to the lawsuit say it has “robust licensing requirements for vehicle-for-hire and private transportation company drivers to ensure the safety of both its drivers and passengers.”

It adds the six driver training programs regularly undergo audits through the City’s quality assurance program to ensure they meet the requirements and criteria.

“The training is not meant to cover core driving skills or defensive driving training; that is provided by the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) as part of the provincial driver’s licensing system, which requires in-car examinations,” read the City’s statement.

The City added they last spoke with Beck Taxi on Nov. 28 via email. “This communication included information about the history of driver training and requirements, mandatory driver training program criteria, Accessible Driver Training, and the updated requirement to have all existing licenced drivers complete mandatory training before their licence is renewed in 2023.”