Halifax council sides with Uber on proposal for oversight of ride-hailing companies

The Uber app is seen on an iPhone near a driver's vehicle in Vancouver, Friday, Jan. 24, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

HALIFAX — Halifax regional council has rejected a bylaw change that called for more oversight of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, choosing instead to take a closer look at the issue.

Under the current rules, there are different oversight requirements for ride-hailing drivers and those who drive regular taxis and limousines. While taxi drivers must submit the results of all background checks to the city, ride-hailing drivers hand the results to the ride-hailing companies.

In December, a staff report to council recommended changing the rules to require ride-hailing drivers to submit their background checks to the city, bringing them in line with the taxi industry.

On Tuesday, councillors voted against the proposal but endorsed a motion from Mayor Andy Fillmore to have a committee prepare a report on how other jurisdictions are handling training, auditing and compliance. The committee would include representatives from ride-hailing companies, the regional government and the taxi industry.

Before the meeting, Uber Canada made it clear the company opposed the proposed changes, saying Halifax already has the authority to request documents to determine whether ride-hailing drivers are complying with applicable laws. The company also argued the proposed rules were overly bureaucratic and would lead to higher fares.

Uber Canada spokesperson Keerthana Rang issued a statement Monday saying the company wants to avoid regulations that could impede access to flexible work for drivers and reliable transportation for riders.

Rang also said the proposed changes would not deliver meaningful safety benefits. And she endorsed the mayor’s idea of a committee tasked with plotting a way forward.

“This group would review (the Halifax region’s) public policy objectives against the best practices from across Canada, with a particular focus on training, audit and compliance models used by municipal and provincial regulators,” Rang said.

The wording in Rang’s statement is virtually identical to a portion of the motion Fillmore presented Tuesday to council.

During the meeting, Fillmore agreed with Uber on all counts, saying the proposal for increased oversight would increase costs for drivers and riders. And he, too, questioned whether the new rules would promote safety.

“Before introducing new requirements, I think we should strengthen oversight by using the mechanisms that we already have,” Fillmore said, adding that the regional government already has the authority to verify driver compliance through monthly audits.

However, the region’s manager for licencing standards said the municipality has never received the results from such an audit.

“There has been some lacking in reporting,” Steven Berkman told council, adding that the region had never asked for the background checks. “I have issued a letter to the company that they need to start doing that, and they seem co-operative at this point.”

As well, Berkman confirmed that municipal officials have no idea how many ride-hailing drivers are working in the region, though Rang’s statement suggested 250.

Fillmore said several other municipalities, including Toronto, Ottawa, Saskatoon and Winnipeg, already use the monthly audit method to check for compliance. And he argued that if hundreds of ride-hailing drivers were forced to submit background checks to the region, a massive backlog would result.

But Berkman said the process could be handled online through existing software that would have no problem ingesting the data.

“We do have staff capacity to do that as well,” he said.

Coun. Sam Austin said the region shouldn’t look to the ride-hailing companies to collect background checks.

“To just trust companies to potentially act in the public interest against their own financial interest is maybe a little naive,” he said.

Still, other councillors said they were worried about heaping red tape on ride-hailing platforms, which have offered consumers more choices in the vehicle-for-hire sector.

“If it’s such a good idea, why isn’t every municipality across Canada regulating (ride-hailing companies),” said Coun. Trish Purdy.

“These are international companies. They know how to regulate their drivers and we have the ability to make sure that that is the case.”

Coun. David Hendsbee said that prior to the arrival of ride-hailing companies in Halifax, the region struggled to deal with a taxi industry beset by legal challenges.

“We’ve had too many sexual assaults and other complaints in the past,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that we had criminal-records checks done for the (taxi) drivers.”

“(As for) Lyft and Uber and all these other (companies), I’m hoping they can be ... held to the same standard. But we don’t see their documentation. They don’t provide it to us. I think they should.... Let them come to the table and reach a compromise or some kind of arrangement.”

Coun. Kathryn Morse said she recently received hundreds of emails from Uber drivers opposed to the oversight measures.

“If the service they’re offering is a safe service … then they wouldn’t object to more transparency,” she said.

Morse then noted that Uber Canada’ parent, San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., is facing multiple class actions in the United States.

“Hundreds of passengers alleging sexual assaults and that the ride-share company did very little to prevent this,” she said, referring to reporting from the New York Times.

In August, the newspaper showed that between 2017 and 2022, Uber in the United States had received reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct almost every eight minutes on average, a level that was far higher than the company had previously disclosed.

The newspaper also reported the company had tested tools to make trips safer, including mandatory video recording and pairing female passengers with female drivers. But the Times’ report says Uber delayed or did not require its drivers to take part in some of those programs.

“This would be one of my concerns about not proceeding (with additional oversight) as staff are recommending.”

Rang’s statement said safety is a core value at Uber.

“Safety features are designed into the app from pickup to drop-off,” she said, pointing to more than a dozen safety features including GPS tracking, encrypted audio recording and a RideCheck service that detects if a ride goes off-course, stops unexpectedly or ends early.

“The vast majority of trips on Uber are completed without any incident,” her statement said.

“With millions of trips happening every day, Uber is not immune to societal issues -- it persists across all parts of life and modes of transportation and we are continually working to strengthen our technology, policies, and procedures to improve safety.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 27, 2026.

By Michael MacDonald