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Weekend Newsstand: January 24, 2015
Get out there and enjoy the weekend! But before you do here's some news: the TTC has released a new customer charter, Uber alleges more than two dozen Toronto taxi drivers failed to meet the company's standards, and a former Toronto inmate has lodged a human rights complaint.
The TTC has released a customer charter (which is more a list of things to accomplish than the organization’s governing document, which the term “charter” calls to mind). This is the third year the TTC has released such a document; of the 39 items on last year’s charter, only seven were completed by the year’s end. However, TTC CEO Andy Byford says uncompleted projects are added to the next year’s list rather than ignored. “We won’t let it drop, won’t let it quietly disappear. We will bring it back… and keep reporting until it is delivered.” Among the 38 items on this year’s list: more blue priority seats; WiFi access in the “U” of the Line 1 subway; allowing people to pay for single fares with debit and credit cards; and fixing the ground-level elevator at Dundas West Station.
The general manager of the Toronto chapter of Uber—the wildly popular and almost as wildly controversial taxi app—has claimed in a court affidavit that 26 licensed Toronto cab drivers failed Uber’s background checks or didn’t meet the company’s standards. Ian Black of Uber Toronto said he has no “personal knowledge of the details of the background checks needed to become a municipally licensed taxicab or limousine driver in Toronto. However, I am aware of at least 26 uberX applicants, who were current licensed Toronto taxicab drivers, and who failed to meet the above-noted standards.” UberX allows drivers to use their own cars to ferry passengers, and is touted as the low-cost option in the Uber offerings. The City of Toronto had no comment because, a spokesperson said, its legal team hadn’t had a chance to review the documents. Sam Moini, an executive member of the Toronto Taxi Alliance, called the process of getting a taxi license in Toronto “very stringent.”
Jamie Simpson is a former inmate who spent part of 2014 at the Toronto South Detention Centre, the new superjail that replaced the Don Jail. He alleges that during his time there he was placed in solitary confinement (referred to in Canada as “segregation”) for more than 90 days because other inmates were uncomfortable with his status as HIV positive, and that he suffered significant ill medical effects because of this segregation. He described “filthy and deplorable conditions” in the segregation unit and said there were a number of inmates held there who had medical and mental health issues that were largely ignored. When Simpson himself developed an infection and requested a transfer to the medical unit, he says he was told it wasn’t open. Simpson has lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and is seeking a number of changes to the correctional system and its treatment of patients with HIV/AIDS.