SCARBOROUGH MIRROR | Thursday, February 18, 2016 |
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opinion
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rime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrated his milestone of 100 days in office by marking what he hopes will be a new milestone for Canadian youth. Trudeau wants to get close to 70,000 youth working this summer, and the federal Liberals are committing massive amounts of money over the next three years to make that a reality. On Friday, he made a surprise visit to Toronto’s Dovercourt Boys and Girls Club where he announced the government would be injecting $113 million each year for the next three years to get young people in the workforce. The Canada Summer Jobs program provides funding to not-for-profit organizations, public-sector employers, and small businesses with 50 or fewer employees in an effort to help create summer job opportunities for students. The Trudeau government is our view on the right track to setting up students for success. Jobs today When people are offered help, there tends to be a ripple effect. create hope Support gives rise to more supfor tomorrow port, and a spirit of giving and receiving is created. At the centre of this decision is not political popularity, but an understanding that empowering youth today will make them the engaged adults of tomorrow. They will learn life skills by doing them. They will learn co-operation and interpersonal skills by dealing with employers, customers, and coworkers. They may develop meaningful friendships, build savings, and start dreaming of a future of possibilities. A job today equals an education tomorrow. A job today allows one to support her family in tough economic times. A job today gives a young person hope. The federal funding will be distributed to Canada’s 338 ridings. Areas that have higher levels of unemployed youth will get more funds. The program funds job opportunities for young people aged 15 to 30 years who are full-time students intending to return to their studies in the next school year. Employers and students interested in the program can visit servicecanada.gc.ca/csj for more information. The application period for Canada Summer Jobs 2016 has been extended until March 11, so there is still time to get involved.
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column
Sadness at the heart of the Uber-taxi battle There have been few issues at Toronto City Hall so consistently suffused with sadness as the Uber-X ride sharing fight with taxi drivers has been this past 18 months or so. From the outside, it’s been easy to confuse that sadness with rage. At the early February meeting of Toronto council, taxi drivers’ rage was certainly on display: several had to be removed from the council chamber as they watched councillors step away from seeking an immediate court injunction to stop Uber-X from operating in the city. Last week, Paul Sekston, one of those taxi drivers, took that anger to the airwaves and announced the new United Taxi Workers’ Association would be staging a protest to disrupt the NBA All-Star Game and run-up to it. It would have been a bad scene had it happened, but it didn’t. The same day, Feb. 11, he and other members of the taxi industry had a
david nickle the city sit-down with three city councillors – Janet Davis, Glenn De Baeremaeker and Kristyn Wong-Tam – after which, they decided to call it off. What clinched it? They simply needed to hear city councillors say aloud the thing that is undeniably true. Uber-X, as it’s currently operating in the city, is illegal. And there it was: the heart of the sadness beating beneath the crumbling front of rage. Taxi drivers, or at least Sekston, need if not a hug, then at least some clear allies in what they perceive, correctly, as the fight for their vocational lives. Mayor John Tory has tried to provide some assurance after he mused about the inevitability of disruptive technologies in a way that seemed to be giving Uber-X a moral if not entirely legal break.
And from the perspective of taxi drivers seeing their livelihoods dry up, Uber-X has gotten an easy ride from almost everyone else on the legal front. Yes, it’s complicated. When cab drivers came to the Toronto Police Services Board demanding more drivers be charged, Chief Mark Saunders explained doing so en masse is legally and operationally challenging. And when cab drivers demanded Toronto enforce its own bylaw – passed just last fall – setting up requirements for UberX’s continued operation that the ride-sharing app and the drivers who use it couldn’t and wouldn’t meet, council demurred. Again, it was for strategic reasons: if an injunction can’t be heard for three months, and the city’s new regulations governing ridesharing apps will be before council in two, the entire matter may become moot. Meanwhile, Uber Canada continues its charm offen-
sive, delivering kittens to stressed-out office workers and experimenting with shuttle services to underserved communities near the downtown – and, of course, by undercutting taxi fares for customers who are becoming used to trading fare savings for the invisible risks of riding an unregulated service. And to add to the sting: the Toronto licensed taxi model isn’t a sterling alternative. While taxis are regulated, the vehicles more rigorously inspected and drivers more comprehensively insured, Toronto’s system of commodified plates and absentee owners still makes for an ugly feudalism under which drivers work now. It’s been awful to watch, no doubt awful to live, and it’s hard to see anything near a happy ending to it all.
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David Nickle is Metroland Media Toronto’s city hall reporter. His column runs every Thursday. Reach him on Twitter: @DavidNickle
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