The committee met at 7:07 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Welcome, everybody. My name is Mable Elmore. I’m the Chair of the Special Committee to Review Passenger Directed Vehicles. Nice to see you all here today.

I’d like to recognize that we’re on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking people, the Songhees and the Esquimalt First Nations.

We’re here today, and thank you very much. The agenda that we have here is a presentation from the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. I appreciate that.

I’d like to welcome Kaye Krishna, the deputy minister; Steve Haywood, executive director and registrar, commercial vehicle safety and enforcement; Kate Berniaz, senior manager at clean transportation policies and programs branch; Ellen Slanina, executive director and CFO, financial management, policy and compliance branch.

Before we get into your presentation, I’m going to have our committee members introduce themselves, please, so we can have you on the record.

J. Routledge: Hi. I’m Janet Routledge, MLA for Burnaby North.

D. Routley: I’m Doug Routley, MLA for Nanaimo–​North Cowichan.

K. Greene: I’m Kelly Greene, MLA for Richmond-Steve­ston.

J. Sturdy: Jordan Sturdy, MLA for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky.

M. Elmore (Chair): Terrific, thank you.

We have our very capable folks from the Clerk — our Committee Clerk, Karan Riarh; and committee researchers Jonathon Hamilton, Danielle Migeon and Lisa Hill.

Now, to start, would you like to make some remarks? I know we’ve got some documents here before we get started.

Briefings on
Passenger Directed Vehicles

MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION
AND INFRASTRUCTURE

K. Krishna: Just a few brief remarks today, as this is our third time before you in this committee.

We just want to say thank you for inviting us back. We expect to spend most of the time answering any questions you may have remaining from previous testimony or from any of the written documentation that we have submitted, as well as anything else that you’ve deliberated on or that has come up as the committee has convened.

We just thank you again for the opportunity.

Back to you, Chair.

[7:10 p.m.]

M. Elmore (Chair): All right, terrific. I’ll open it up.

We have some documents that have been included here, prepared by the Clerk’s office. Also, thank you for the submission from MOTI. These are follow-up conversations in terms of PTAP, primarily.

I’d like to open it up for questions, to the committee. Would anyone like to jump in, in terms of questions to get us going here?

J. Routledge: Well, I actually hadn’t anticipated that we would…. I thought you’d walk us through your submissions, but I do have some questions.

M. Elmore (Chair): Janet, is that what you would like? I could have them….

J. Routledge: I think that would be good.

M. Elmore (Chair): Okay. Thanks, Janet. I think that’s a good suggestion.

Yeah, if you could walk us through, that would help set the context.

K. Krishna: Sure. And just to clear, we weren’t expecting to walk through anything with a presentation. We were just told that we were here to answer questions. But just to be clear on what it is that we’re walking through, it’d be the response we provided to the seven questions. We provided a written response on March 28. Do you have any other documents that we should be walking through?

M. Elmore (Chair): That’s great. Yeah, the seven points. Sure.

K. Krishna: Okay, very good.

The first question was around the introduction of the per-trip fee — I’m presuming everybody has the materials in front of them, so you have the responses verbatim, but I’ll also just talk through the questions and answers — and why it was directed initially to apply to the TNSs, which are the ride-hailing companies, not the taxi companies. Then why the per-trip fee was increased from 30 cents to 90 cents per trip.

The transportation network services per-trip fee, or the TNS fee, was introduced to offset the additional costs required to implement this entire new ride-hailing framework, so it was the start-up costs associated with…. It’s really a fee-for-service model, which is not uncommon across various government entities in collecting fees to pay for services.

That was introduced as part of the ride-hail introduction in 2019. It was really to offset the costs, such as staff, IT development, infrastructure, maintenance, data-tracking, as well as any of the staff related to the program design and enforcement, and then, finally, to support anything related to accessibility and the development of the PTAP programs, as we’ve been referring to them.

It started off as a 30-cent fee at the beginning of the program, and then it was increased to a 90-cent fee in January 2023. That was aligned with the introduction of Bill 40 and the legislative amendments to Bill 40, which enabled our registrar to be able to direct payments to support access­ibility in passenger-directed vehicles.

At the time, if you look at some of the other materials we presented — specifically a report that we provided on March 5, following our February 14 testimony — you’ll see how the costs and revenues, including a base budget allocation and then the fees, have changed over time since the initiation of the program. During that time, we determined that in order to maximize the opportunities for accessibility to better meet the needs of accessibility, and to support the costs of the program, we would increase the fee to 90 cents.

As part of that analysis and looking at Bill 40 amendments, we also did a jurisdictional scan to understand what other jurisdictions were charging for ride-hailing at the time. And we found that, comparatively, 90 cents was within the range. It’s what Quebec was charging, and then we looked at other models, which were more hybrid models but sort of in keeping with the range that we were looking at. So it moved forward at that time.

It was effective January 1, 2023, I think it was. Then at that time, we also launched, following COVID, the PTAP program. So the first intake aligned with the increase of the fees in January 2023.

[7:15 p.m.]

Why does it apply to TNSs only? Part of it was the increase of scope and a framework to accommodate TNSs in the province. We previously had a tax regime, so this was to increase the scope and the overall framework and policies to support ride-hailing, or TNSs. It was also meant to offset the costs of accessible taxis.

I’m getting into additional questions that are kind of throughout the document, but accessible taxis are required in part of the taxi licensing regime. If you think of the difference between a TNS versus taxis and taxi fleets, TNSs are based on individuals using their own personal vehicle to provide services through a ride-hailing app, whereas for taxis, there’s an obligation as part of the licensing. But also part of the structure is a company with a fleet of vehicles owned by the company or the company owner.

The obligation to provide accessible taxis and to manage a taxi fleet is very different for a taxi company than it is for individuals who are doing full-time or part-time ride-hailing through an app-based company with their own personal vehicle. The obligation was for the taxis to continue that but also to offset the cost, which we know is more expensive, to acquire, retrofit, maintain and operate accessible taxis. The idea was to collect the fee to pay for the program expansion and scope but also, then, to transfer it to the taxis.

It’s only for the non-accessible services that the fee applies. Right now Uber and other TNS companies are able to provide…. There’s nothing preventing them from providing accessible services, but they’re not obligated under their licensing structure or the current regime within B.C.

That’s question 1. Would you like me to pause at each question and answer, or go through each — the full set of questions?

J. Routledge: Sure. Yeah, I actually have some questions at this point. This is a good pace, actually.

In relation to the first question, I’m not sure…. The PTAP, then, is not just dedicated to accessibility. It’s meant to offset other costs as well?

K. Krishna: No. The fee is not dedicated only to PTAP. The fee is program recovery, so any costs associated with administering the ride-hailing program — enforcement staff all across the province. It pays for all of the work of the Passenger Transportation Board, which is also presented to you separately, and their staff, any of the studies that they do or hire consultants or economists to do. It covers all of those. The fee covers all of those costs.

J. Routledge: And that’s 90 cents?

K. Krishna: The 90 cents. But it also covers PTAP. PTAP is a specific accessibility program that covers different areas of funding to help taxis with acquisition, retrofits and maintenance, and then future programs would be training and other driver incentives. PTAP is a subset of costs covered by the 90 cents, but it’s not one for one, and it’s not the only thing being covered by the 90 cents.

J. Routledge: Okay, that’s important. I’d have to look through this again, but I’m not sure it’s broken down so that we can actually pull from it what is dedicated to accessibility.

K. Krishna: We provided a report on March 5, after our second testimony, which was on February 14 of this year, which provided a breakdown, year over year, of what the categories of the expenditures were and what our base budget was. We received a base budget allocation upon the implementation of this framework, starting in 2019. It was dedicated for three years. That was a base budget to the Ministry of Transportation for $3 million year over year to help with start-up costs.

Before the fees…. The fees would be collected, but we expected that those would ramp up. So there’s a bit of a blended model of how the revenue-based budget…. And then fees come in.

You’ll see in the report…. You should have a copy of it. If you don’t, we can make sure that that’s redistributed. It shows the breakdown of the percent of the total expenditure and the percentage of allocation by cost category year over year.

What it shows is that the start-up costs, which is what we anticipated…. Also, it was during COVID for the first few years. Initially, the staff costs and the IT costs were a greater proportion. We didn’t launch the PTAP program until 2023, so there was no allocation in the first two years. But gradually, over time, the staff costs, as a proportion of the amount, have gone down. The IT costs have actually gone up.

As of this past fiscal year for 2022-23…. We don’t have the most recent one, because that just ended last Friday. We don’t have all the accounting finalized for that. But the proportion of funding went up.

[7:20 p.m.]

We launched the PTAP program in 2023, so that was at 22 percent of the total costs for ’22-23. The proportion of the other costs went down. Then this coming fiscal, or the one that we just wrapped up, we expect that that total cost allocation would continue to increase, with between 30 percent and 50 percent of the total fees collected going toward accessibility. So by design, we knew we had startup costs for the program, for administration, and that the program, the PTAP program, would increase over time.

A greater proportion of the fees would go to the PTAP program over time, whereas the costs for the program administration would become somewhat fixed and stabilize after we did the ramp up. That’s what we’re seeing in this third, fourth year of the program.

J. Routledge: It’s about what percentage?

K. Krishna: Last calendar year was the first year of PTAP, and it was 22 percent of the total fees collected. For the fiscal year just ending Friday, we expect it’ll be more like 30 percent to 50 percent when we finish all of the accounting.

D. Routley: At previous meetings, the deputy minister stated that the 90 cents was comparable to other jurisdictions, and you named a couple. But am I correct in saying that Calgary charges 30 cents, still, to this day?

In order to explain the difference…. If I’m also correct, they cover similar or even perhaps more functions. Is the difference, in your opinion, due to the size of the task they have versus a provincial task? It seems like a pretty large difference.

K. Krishna: I’ll just give you some examples.

Yes, Calgary is municipal. They also have…. As I understand it, they charge…. In addition to the per-trip fee, they have a different fee structure at the municipal level. That’s a fixed licence fee based on the size of the fleet, and that’s a graduated cost.

When a company has one to 100 drivers, they have a $5,000 fixed fee on top of these per-trip fees, but if they have a large company of 3,000 or more drivers, it’s a $50,000 flat fee. When I say hybrid model, not everybody has the same sort of fee structure.

Similarly, Quebec is more like us. We’re just doing 90 cents per trip, and that’s it. Ther’s no other hidden fee structure. There is a regular licensing fee that pre-existed, but this is sort of in addition.

Then somewhere like New York does a 30-cent per-trip fee, but they also add congestion pricing, depending on where the drivers are going. If they’re going into Manhattan, for example, they can charge $5.50 up to $11.50 for each trip. It’s a base per-trip fee plus, for congestion.

Everybody has a slightly different model, and the most comparable model, province to province, is Quebec.

D. Routley: The 50K threshold is at how many?

K. Krishna: So 3,000 or more drivers in Calgary. That’s just a Calgary model. It would probably be best, say, compared to a Metro Vancouver fee structure, but they don’t have the same setup and per-trip fee.

D. Routley: Difficult to make.

K. Krishna: Not apples to apples.

M. Elmore (Chair): That helps in terms of just getting some questions with respect to the fee that was collected and the disbursement. I think that helps too, to answer that.

K. Krishna: I wanted to add, to clarify, that part of the design of the program, as I mentioned, was that we initially had a base budget allocation for a program startup for the first four years. After the first three years, then the fee was increased. So the fourth year of the base budget allocation was actually removed.

We ended up not getting that base, but it was removed from our STOB. Instead, we just have a full fee recovery as of last year, so now it’s all about the fee recovery. Every­thing that the fees come in covers all the program costs for administration of the program as well as the PTAP.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): I’d like to pursue that a little further. I think that while it may be clear to the Ministry of Transportation the 90 cents covers administrative costs and a whole bunch of other things, when you’re told, “Oh, there’s a 90-cent fee, and that’s to actually help increase accessibility,” that is not what the money has done. The vast majority of the money has gone to run a program.

The reason I’m asking this question now is because of the comments you just made — that for the first four years, there was a base budget allocation. Can you tell us what that amount was?

[7:25 p.m.]

K. Krishna: Each year it was $3 million. For 2021 — and again, this is essentially in the report we provided on March 5 — the total amount that we had as a base budget, you’ll see, was $3 million. The total expenditures were $3.937 million, so a little bit over the base budget allocation. In that year, we collected $2.6 million in fees.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): So the base budget disappears, and the fee goes up to cover the money that’s now not in the base budget. Is that correct?

K. Krishna: By design, there was an initial budget to help with ramp-up costs, to then be recovered by only fees going forward, yes.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): But that is really the point. There was a conscious decision made that instead of actually funding the administrative costs and taking care of the base budget things, that the money collected, 90 cents per trip, which most people would think is going to increased accessibility, is actually going to administrative costs. The ministry, or somebody, decided that we’re going to take out the budget allocation, and we’re going to cover it by raising the fee — and by the way, what’s left over, in essence, goes to accessibility.

From my perspective, that is very difficult for people to understand, including me, that we have an accessibility fee which is actually covering administrative costs — and for four years, was covered.

When you look down the items that are included in the $3.9 million in the expenditures that are noted in 2021, it continues.

Perhaps someone could explain to us how the Passenger Transportation Board is covered in a fee that is supposed to be related to accessibility. We’re talking about: in 2022, the PT board is $1.689 million. How does that relate to the accessibility program, the PT board?

K. Krishna: The legislation, as it was passed and when the framework was put into place and even as the regulations went forward, by design, was a TNS fee. Within the legislation and the regulations and as it was rolled out, it was designed to cover costs.

As I say, and I’m sure you’re familiar, there are many programs within government where a fee covers the cost of the program. So it wasn’t meant only exclusively as an accessibility fee; it was a TNS program fee, and that was built into the legislation at the beginning. What changed in 2023 was the fee went up. It went from 30 cents to 90 cents to be a fully recoverable program through fees.

The things to run the program that are required are all of the PT board decisions around licensing, boundaries, rates, volume, and where and how and when applicants are decided to increase TNS services. All of the economic programming and design and analysis that the PT board does are covered through these fees. All of the technology investments and the data, which is a very data-heavy program and administration…. Previously, the sector wasn’t very data savvy. It wasn’t very well integrated with data collection. A lot of it was paper-based prior to the introduction of this new program. So it covered the cost of those elements.

It also was designed to cover all of the enforcement. As the program and the TNS services have grown across the province, so has the enforcement team to enforce illegal operators, of which we’re all familiar — the companies that operate illegally to provide ride-hailing services.

It, by design, was always meant to be a fee to cover all of the costs of the program. What changed was when we saw the total costs. We knew that they would stabilize, but we were also going through a period during COVID where the fees that were being collected were unclear, and we were reevaluating the program after two years. We decided at that time to increase the fees. Of course, that went through cabinet and Treasury Board and all of those decisions on how the recoveries would be done, but that was the decision at the time.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that answer.

Can you tell us what the total cost of operating the PT board is in 2022-2023?

K. Krishna: I don’t have their budget or have a full line of sight. You’d have to ask the PT board of their total cost of operating.

What I can say is the proportion that was allocated that is specific to ride-hailing administration is what we’re capturing in this fee. They provide other services for buses and other passenger-directed vehicles. They provide all kinds of other services and analysis to support passenger-directed vehicles through the passenger transportation sector.

[7:30 p.m.]

That organization, as you know, has existed for a long time. So this covers the net additional costs. For 2022-23, the costs associated with ride-hailing for the PT board were $1.689 million, which was approximately 15 percent of the total fees collected for that fiscal year.

S. Bond (Deputy Chair): When describing what this fee does…. People are expected to collect it; people are expected to pay it. Is there any sense that people think this is going to pay for the Passenger Transportation Board rather than actually ensuring we have adequate access­ibility, which we do not have?

Probably the biggest issue we have with this committee is that people with disabilities are not being served well, yet a fee which implies that it is about increasing accessibility, we find out…. When you look at the expenditures and the amount of money that’s actually going out to improve accessibility, I think people would be disappointed, to say the least. I am. I was under the impression that if we had a fee related to improving accessibility, that’s what it would do. It didn’t, and it hasn’t, yet we are desperately in need of improved services.

I absolutely understand cost recovery. I understand that there are fees created. I’m a little concerned that a fee that is attached to accessibility is, frankly, not delivering to the degree that one would expect it should be at this time.

Chair, you know my frustrations with this. The decision was four years of a base budget appropriation. Then, after four years, the fee not only triples, but it then suddenly covers base budget costs.

I’ll just hear the rest of the answers, but thank you for your indulgence in letting me have a number of questions. I appreciate it.

K. Krishna: Maybe I can speak to some of the outcomes that we’ve seen so far. As I mentioned, last year was the first year of the PTAP program, and it did represent 22 percent of the fees. Then this coming fiscal that’s wrapping up, we expect it will be between 30 to 50 percent of the fees collected. We expect that to continue to only increase.

For the first year of the program, we had…. Approx­imately 80 to 90 percent of the existing accessible vehicles or companies applied for funding last year, and they received it. Then we’ve seen an increase this year of applicants, a 20 percent increase this fiscal year for the increased funding to support the vehicles.

We also have seen an increase in the number of vehicles, going up approximately 6 percent from the prior year. So 23 more vehicles on the road this fiscal year after the funding started.

The program is a rebate program. Last year we funded 382 vehicles through the program. Again, it was about 90 percent of the total wheelchair-accessible vehicles that received funding. Then this year…. I think we mentioned in previous testimonies that we increased the scope of the program for this year, as well, to increase the incentive.

We previously started the program as a rebate for maintenance costs. This fiscal year we increased the scope to include maintenance as well as operations for and costs related to auto insurance and a fuel rebate. We also increased it to offset operating costs as well as acquisition and conversion rebates for people who applied for the program and bought or converted vehicles.

We’ve also continued to look at how we can increase training and driver incentive programs and are continuing to work with the taxi industry on exactly that.

We’re in our second year of the program, and so far we acknowledge…. By design, it has been ramping up, and there’s a lot more to do. But the idea is to really offset the disadvantage that taxi companies and wheelchair-accessible cars have and to incentivize them to have an equal playing field.

[7:35 p.m.]

The last thing I would say is that, as we know, the cost of operating the taxis, first acquiring and converting, is about $40,000 more per vehicle. We’re trying to find ways to offset that so it’s the same as having a regular vehicle.

Then for the maintenance rebates, it’s about $30,000 more per year to operate and maintain a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. So what we’re trying to do is really surgically fit the program and the funding into those gaps to help set kind of the equal bounds for incentives for wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you.

I have a question. What was the total amount for the last fiscal that was transferred to the taxis? I think it was 380 vehicles. Do you have that number?

K. Krishna: Yup. Well, we don’t have the fiscal year ending on Friday. But for the previous fiscal year, the total amount for just the grants was $2.563 million, which was 22 percent of the fees collected.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah. Great.

Then in terms of the plan to expand the program and cover the costs for acquisition and maintenance, are there other plans as well, going forward, in terms of addressing the cost?

K. Krishna: There are a number of things. The public commitments are around the acquisition and conversion, maintenance, training and other driver incentives. That was how the program was initially structured, those four pillars. But we continue to have conversations with the accessibility community, the taxi community.

Obviously, we’re looking at the Human Rights Tribunal ruling with Uber — the outcomes of that and what the implications of that could be, as well as the data. What are we seeing? What are we finding through the PTB that shows what the gaps are? Doing the analysis of how we can surgically identify the challenges and actually direct the funding to that.

We started off with the four pillars I mentioned, but we’re trying to constantly evaluate — through stakeholder conversations, data and then just other external factors like market, legal cases, and other things — how we tailor the program. Some of the things that we found, for example, and we’ve heard here are around just the challenges in rural and remote communities in ride-hailing services, especially accessible passenger-directed vehicle services, and really thinking about how we can tailor the program to better fit those challenges.

Some of those challenges include exceedingly long wait times and the challenges of the individual taxi drivers to maintain their vehicles — the challenges that they have with the cost and maintenance of those, and just the limited access they have to maintenance outside of the Lower Mainland to maintain wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

We’re really looking at ways we can tailor the programs and grow and change them over time. In the second year, we’ve done some tailoring, but there’s certainly more to do.

M. Elmore (Chair): So you’re looking at options like per trip, or…?

K. Krishna: Oh, absolutely. And to be honest, whatever comes out of this committee will certainly shape how we scope the programs for the next fiscal year.

J. Routledge: This is very helpful, but I guess I just…. As I hear you describe it, as I’ve read the responses, what struck me is that it seems like it’s a very demand-driven subsidy, that if a taxi company or a taxi owner chooses not to have a wheelchair-accessible vehicle, they can. There are no quotas. There are no…. It’s just providing a fund and support if they choose to go in that direction, at this point.

K. Krishna: Maybe, Steve, you can speak a little bit to….

The licensing structure for the taxi companies actually has obligations around wheelchair-accessible services. That regime around the licensing has existed, and the program really means to offset the cost to administer the licensing obligation. So the program complements the licence, but the licence actually has the obligations around the accessible vehicles.

S. Haywood: When the Passenger Transportation Board issues a licence, they contain terms and conditions of licence with that licence. Those terms and conditions will specify the requirement for a certain number of accessible vehicles — or not, depending on where in the province they are and what the needs are.

Some licences will have that you must have ten accessible vehicles and 50 taxis. Or you must have 40 taxis and, if you have 42, those extra two must be accessible. It really depends on what the board does with those licences and how they push those out when they do make decisions on the applications that come from the taxi industry.

K. Krishna: Thus far the program has been designed based on existing licensing and rebates to help support the existing vehicles, because we know that the vehicles that are licensed aren’t all on the road, or there are challenges with the existing.

[7:40 p.m.]

We started there, with the first two years of the program. What we’re also looking to do is: how do we incentivize more programs and more vehicles? How do we incentivize different behaviours in drivers so that they are out on the road more frequently or there’s an incentive for them to do more predictable and regular pickups for wheelchair-accessible or other accessibility needs?

Again, we’re really trying to grow the program over time and understand. What we started with was what we knew, which were the licences that already had obligations around wheelchair-accessible vehicles and how we could help offset and incentivize those existing vehicles to be on the road more regularly, more predictably and more often.

D. Routley: This may not be a fair question for you as deputy minister here in B.C., but if you know, could you tell us whether similar levels of organization are funded by the fees collected in Quebec, similarly the transportation board or whatever equivalent they have, beyond simply supporting increased numbers of accessible vehicles?

K. Krishna: That’s my understanding — that that is the structure and that we’ve designed our program and program recovery and fees based on other programs and lessons learned from those other organizations.

There are the two different levels. Again, there’s the provincial level, and there’s the municipal level, or even regional levels, and the boundaries and the structures and systems change.

We’ve really tried to look at other…. B.C. was a little later in the game than some of the other regimes, so we had a lot of opportunities to learn from other jurisdictions, and we tried to base it on that.

D. Routley: You can sense an unease around the clarity of what people are paying for — that, as Member Bond said, people would not know necessarily these things are being….

In these other jurisdictions, is there more transparency of that? Is it clear, or is it similarly one fee funding all of that? How would it be described to people — if you know?

K. Krishna: I don’t know all the details of all of the programs to provide a fully detailed or accurate answer.

My understanding is that’s how it’s been designed, but as I say, it’s hard to answer because it’s not apples-to-apples comparison of all of the jurisdictions. They have flat fees plus a per-trip fee that combines for how they cover the costs, so I’m not entirely sure. Our understanding, though, is the fees are designed to largely cover the costs of program administration and not solely accessibility.

D. Routley: Chair, could I ask that we ask the research staff — I hate to add to their burden — how these fees are described in these other jurisdictions — whether it’s clear to people paying them, the passengers, whether they are funding these other aspects of operation, or whether it’s more transparent than it appears to be in our system?

M. Elmore (Chair): All right. Thanks.

Now, I know we had invited you for 30 minutes. We’re past that. I’m wondering if you are okay to…?

Interjection.

M. Elmore (Chair): Yeah, we’ve got…. Okay, yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.

I have a question, and then we’ll go to Jordan.

Now, we had the recent ruling from the Human Rights Tribunal with respect to accessibility and ride-hail. What’s your view on that, in terms of what’s ahead, in terms of administering the program with that decision?

K. Krishna: Well, obviously, we are looking at the ruling and trying to understand the implications to the overall structure and even the licensing structure and the obligations, as Steve explained, between, say, taxi obligations and the ride-hailing licensing structures, which don’t have the same obligations.

It’s really in consultation with the Passenger Transpor­tation Board that structures the licensing and allocation of the volume of taxis and the obligations of ride-hailing and taxis, as well as, obviously, with legal counsel, then also just with industry.

We’ve had initial conversations with both the taxi in­dus­try as well as the ride-hailing industry. There’s an appetite to evaluate the opportunities to expand acces­sibility within the ride-hailing structure. It’s just it will require some fundamental shifts in how the program has been established in B.C. But it doesn’t preclude us, necessarily, from looking at how we could expand the PTAP program for the next fiscal year to increase incentives for ride-hailing com­panies.

[7:45 p.m.]

It’s not currently the design of the program, but it’s certainly something that we’re looking at, based both on the ruling as well as just the direction that the program is going.

Again, our hope and expectation is the committee will provide some recommendations on the overall structure, and that’s the purpose of really looking back on the past few years on what’s working well and what needs to continue to be evaluated.

The thing I would repeat, though, from what I said ear­lier is that the ride-hailing companies are not pre­cluded from providing accessible services. It’s just the nature of providing individual personal vehicles…. There aren’t that many, necessarily, that have individuals who have wheelchair-accessible services.

What we’ve learned, though, is in other jurisdictions — I believe it’s in Ontario — Uber, I believe, actually works with the taxi companies to arrange a connection. If there’s a call for a TNS accessible vehicle, they actually work with the taxi companies to hire an accessible taxi to go do the pickup. There’s a connection there that Uber commercially has made with the taxi companies.

That could be an option here, but it’s not something that we’ve delved into yet. I do expect that as Uber has a one-year deadline to respond to the ruling, that’s something they’ll probably look at as a model that they have here in Canada. We’ll continue to work with them, as well as the taxi companies, on what we can do to help support the expansion of accessible vehicles.

J. Sturdy: A couple different questions, if I may. It’s a bit all over the place.

Does the ministry have any sense of what would be required legislatively? Would amendments be required in order to be able to expand the provision or access to the PTAP fund to ride-hail, or alternatively, the idea of offsetting driver costs for accessible, either cabs or TNS, vehicles? Are there legislative requirements, or is that something that can happen within the ministry and within the PTB?

K. Krishna: I think it’s a combination of things that would have to happen. I don’t know about the legislation. Steve may know more. The regulations enable the registrar to provide payments to taxi companies for accessible vehicle grants. That would probably need to be expanded to include TNSs. That would be one change: just the ability of what the registrar is able to provide through grants.

I don’t think, though, that the legislation would preclude us from providing…. We have quite a bit of flexibility, other than needing to get permission, say, from Treasury Board on how we’re spending money. But there’s not a legislative restriction per se on the structure of the PTAP program — just that it’s covered by the fees.

One of the things we’ve talked about is evaluating the fee. We always made a commitment that when we increase the fee, we would continue to evaluate if it was the right amount. We are intending to do that too, and maybe the fee gets adjusted. But we also want to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the accessibility community. So before we change the fee again, we also want to make sure that we’re hitting the mark there, and we’re not quite there yet.

I think the other thing is just really consultation with all of the respective communities, particularly the taxi industry, as this program was put into place in 2019 and then put into force at the end of 2019 and really started in earnest in 2020. And then COVID hit. Part of the fundamental basis of the program was trying to create an equal playing field between taxis and ride-hailing companies and looking at what happened in other jurisdictions where the taxi sector was pretty decimated from ride-hailing. Part of the distinction was the obligation and also the distinction of accessible services in the taxi industry.

Equating that kind of upends the structure that was to try to create an equal playing field and create other service opportunities through taxis that ride-hailing didn’t offer. There’s some fundamental structural design in the way that the program was created that may warrant some legislative changes, but certainly requires structural and engagement conversations with the industry and probably an ongoing analysis.

Dr. Dan Hara did a couple of different sets of economic analysis to look at what the playing field would look like and where the advantages and disadvantages would be and what the impact to the taxi industry would be — kind of before, kind of the first sitting of this committee and during that time and then, subsequently, during COVID. The finding was always that unless we had some distinction between taxis, they would be at a real disadvantage.

[7:50 p.m.]

I think it was…. You’ve seen some of the data that we and the PTB have presented through different presentations. The number of taxis has kind of gone down, while the number of ride-hailing has really hockey-sticked in the past, especially since COVID.

I think we’ll have to think carefully about what the implications are and how we can even the playing field, maybe in a different way, for the taxi industry. It’s a long answer to your question. I don’t think it’s legislatively restricted, though, from a funding point of view, but there’s a lot of other framework and structure in place that is predicated on this distinction.

Steve, is there anything else you would add?

S. Haywood: No, actually. You covered it quite well, Kaye.

J. Sturdy: That would include the opportunity to offset the additional costs associated with driver time. That could be considered.

K. Krishna: PTAP could pay for that now…

J. Sturdy: PTAP could pay for that now.

K. Krishna: …but we could do things like in the example I gave.

I mean, I’m making this up. This is just an idea, but the kind of thing that could be considered here is requiring the TNSs to actually work with the taxis to provide wheelchair-accessible services versus having the Ubers, the Lyfts and the others provide the services directly through individuals. They could actually have some sort of contract or commercial arrangement with the taxis.

Again, this is all part of a program evaluation that would need to take place on how to set it up in a way that con­tinues to incentivize more accessible service in a fair, equitable and well-distributed way. We’re not there yet.

J. Sturdy: Fair enough, and I’m glad that I heard you mention the aspect of a rural lens, because the taxi industry doesn’t necessarily serve everybody well. When you’re thinking about equity and of the whole transpor­tation network, remember that the public has also said, “Well, this is a service that we like,” for whatever reason. I don’t think that’s something that can be ignored.

Do you know how…? Who sets the requirements for how a bill is identified for a TNS service? We were asking to receive a copy of a bill. I don’t know that we have.

K. Krishna: Like a receipt that somebody gets?

J. Sturdy: A TNS receipt, yeah. Who sets that requirement in terms of how the bill is broken down?

K. Krishna: Like when you get an Uber receipt or something like that?.

J. Sturdy: Further to MLA Bond’s question, does it say 90 cents accessibility fee on it, or does it say 90 cents PTB subsidy?

K. Krishna: Probably neither, but I’m not sure.

S. Haywood: We actually don’t have a requirement in the legislation on how the billing is done. Now, the Passenger Transportation Board does set the minimum rates. They set the minimum rates for the taxi industry and then also for the TNS industry. On the taxi, it’s a minimum rate — a base rate plus your time over distance. With the TNS, it’s just your base rate. Then from there, the TNS is able to move up and down as they see fit.

Now, I think that for a consumer, they would have to put that on the invoice to show what the fees are being used for. As somebody who has used it in the past, I can say that it is down there as 90 cents on the ones that I’ve used.

J. Sturdy: As an accessibility fee.

S. Haywood: I don’t recall what it said on the invoice, actually.

K. Krishna: It would likely differ by company too, since we haven’t dictated it. I don’t believe it’s dictated by the PTB. Each individual company or app probably describes it as they are choosing to do so.

J. Sturdy: Well, it has certainly been something that we’ve been talking about as a committee, in terms of transparency and cost, because some of these other fees — maybe an airport fee or whatever, or maybe not identified in the beginning when you’re accepting the trip — are not necessarily very clear at the end of the day. You want to be able to get in the vehicle knowing what it’s going to cost you at the end of the day. That’s one of the advantages.

K. Krishna: That is something that we or the PTB could probably regulate or require as part of reporting, as we’re looking at the data and collections but also at what is the obligation of the companies.

J. Sturdy: Could you give us other examples of program cost recovery within MOTI or CVSE?

K. Krishna: Through fees?

J. Sturdy: Yeah.

K. Krishna: It’s not something MOTI commonly does, actually. We don’t do a lot of fee collection or granting as a ministry, but I would give another example, like driver’s licence fees, for insurance and covering costs of ICBC or other things, or any sort of fee that you pay for an application for something. It’s something similar to that.

[7:55 p.m.]

J. Sturdy: Well, the taxi industry, for example, does not contribute to the administration of its operation through either the PTB or MOTI.

K. Krishna: The costs that are covered by these fees are the net new costs required to administer the TNS program, so anything that predated this that paid for the PTB or taxis or taxi programs was covered in a different way. This is a net new scope increase.

J. Sturdy: Fair enough, although something to think about when it comes to a level playing field.

At this point we could expect, given what you said, that between 30 and 50 percent of the accessibility fee going towards accessibility programs, that would mean somewhere between $13 million and $18 million or $19 million not going to, for this year, for 2023-24 and 2024-25…. It’s an awful lot of money.

Are we going to expect the PTB and MOTI costs to continue to escalate? At what point are they going to stabilize? And how would we look at assessing whether this fee is an appropriate fee or not?

How can we…? If we’re collecting, say, $26 million this year, I think is the number that you suggested…. Or that was last year.

So the expectation would be that it would be higher, I would think.

K. Krishna: This past fiscal year that closed on Friday….

J. Sturdy: We don’t know.

K. Krishna: Right, but we are estimating. Our budget for this past fiscal year, the estimated fees were $16.4 million. That’s what we had on the books. But what we’re showing is that it will be more like $25 million, so that’s what we’re projecting.

J. Sturdy: For 2023-24.

K. Krishna: This fiscal that just closed. For 2022-23, the actuals collected of fees were $9.347 million, and the fee expenditures were $11.517 million, so there was an overage. The base budget covered that overage. But then, starting this past fiscal is when we got rid of the base budget.

We had an allocation for four years. The fourth year got removed because the fees were increasing. We’re expecting that the program expenditures will be about $12 million, $13 million maybe, max. But we’re seeing that stabilize, and then the fees…. That’s why we can see an increase in the accessibility funding, because as the fees have increased and the volume of TNSs has increased and non-accessible rides have increased, that fee is then able to go back into the accessibility program, and we expect the cost will stabilize.

Part of the expansion over the past few years is…. For example, you’ll see the increased cost of the IT amortization and maintenance. It went up. From the first year, it was 16 percent of the cost. In the past two years it’s between 28 and 29 percent for IT alone and data.

Then the increase in cost of enforcement staff in 2021-22 to actually scale provincewide, but now we’ve basically scaled. And then the PTB opened up ride-hailing to all of the province. It was kind of around the same time that we scaled the enforcement to provincewide.

Unless there’s a major shift or increase in licensing, we’re getting to a steady state in the program, which was what we were expecting around year 2 or 3, honestly, probably, but because of COVID we’re kind of a year or two behind in stabilizing.

J. Sturdy: Thank you.

I want to make one more comment — to remember, when it comes to affordability and cost, this is not a fee on the company. This is a fee on the userl this is a fee on the public. Collecting $26 million to $30 million going forward of public dollars — it should be well spent, and hopefully….

I reviewed the recommendations from 2018 and 2019 of the Crown corporations, the Standing Committee on Crown Corps that did this work before. It was very clear that a fee was recommended for accessibility — period. It was not recommended to include operational costs.

Remember, it’s an affordability issue as well.

J. Routledge: I’d like to skip to question No. 6.

I was surprised at the answer. You can comment or not, as you see fit.

[8:00 p.m.]

I’m shocked, actually, that there were so few complaints and, even more so, that so few were deemed to be valid. Really, there seems to be a disconnect between that and what we heard, as a committee, from various organizations and individuals that spoke to us and, I think, also from what we know personally.

Do you have a sense of why? There have got to be more problems than there are complaints. Why are people not complaining, or do they not know that they can complain?

K. Krishna: It’s a good question. I was a little surprised by the numbers, too, when I saw them laid out. I think there are a couple of things here to explain.

Perhaps, Steve, you can weigh in.

First, on the complaints that go to Consumer Protection B.C…. Some complaints go directly to the companies, and some go to Consumer Protection. Those that go to Consumer Protection, where it’s a violation of the Passenger Transportation Act or a regulation, come to us. Those are the numbers that you see.

Anything related to service like driver behaviour, any other complaints — cleanliness, safety risks — those go directly to the company. So you’re right. These are only in response to those that are specific violations of the act or the regulation. It’s a much smaller number than the total number of complaints. Each of those taxi companies would have those, based on their service. Of the complaints that come through, what Consumer Protection B.C. has is probably a large portion, but we don’t have all of those numbers. Then the taxi companies get their own.

Another thing to just reiterate is that the TNSs have their own apps and their own rating systems. Oftentimes, in the structure of those apps, the bad reviews and other things affect driver performance and behaviour in a totally different way. It’s more real-time feedback, and it affects the experience of people. They also have that direct app response, which is different than even knowing to call Consumer Protection or the companies themselves to file a complaint.

There is a bit of a different structure, and I’m not clear how well known that would be, for example, for taxi passengers or the public around calling Consumer Protection.

Steve, is there anything else that you would like to add?

S. Haywood: Just to add that, yeah, I believe a lot of the concerns would be going to the company themselves. As a company- and client-type relationship, that’s usually where you’re going to have your complaint.

I guess as an example, if I go to Save-On, and I don’t like the pork tenderloin, I’m not going to call the city and complain about the business licence. I’m going to call Save-On and complain about the pork tenderloin. That’s probably a bad example, but I think the basis is that usually, those complaints are going there.

Of the ones that we do get, we follow up on every complaint that comes in and work with the client and the company to determine whether it was substantiated and then on what rectifications need to happen. Is there driver training? Is there discipline needed with the driver? Is there more that the company needs to do around policies for the drivers on when they’re picking up clients, or training? There’s lots that can happen in that interaction when they do come to us.

K. Krishna: The last thing I would add to that is the distinction between the accessibility challenges and the overall complaints. The data right now is not very well distinguished between when there’s an issue or issues related to accessible service, or the lack thereof, versus general complaints. There’s probably work to be done to better distinguish that and ways of thinking about how we can clarify the stories we’ve heard — to actually have that in a more complete data set and distinguishing the accessibility challenges specifically.

M. Elmore (Chair): Thank you. We’re at an hour now. Are there any last questions from committee members, while we have you here? We appreciate the time.

Okay. I’ll thank you all very much and thank you for extending your time here. It was really helpful in understanding the operation of the program and the evolution and plans for it as well. Thank you very much.

We’ll take a recess now for folks, five minutes.

The committee recessed from 8:04 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

Deliberations

M. Elmore (Chair): I’m going to call us back to order. Then I’ll ask for a motion to go in camera, please.

So moved. Seconded.

Motion approved.

The committee continued in camera from 8:16 p.m. to 9 p.m.

[M. Elmore in the chair.]

M. Elmore (Chair): Welcome back. We’ve had a very productive evening deliberating on the Special Committee to Review Passenger Directed Vehicles.

Thank you for your work and the support from the Committee Clerk and office.

I’ll ask for a motion to adjourn, please.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9 p.m.