ed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I’m sorry to cry,” he said.
“I don’t know who is going to see my situation.”
Ahadi said with council’s decision, he will lose the $300,000 cost of the plate, money he still has to pay back to the bank.
“We lost the value of the plate – it doesn’t help the people. The city, they made the wrong decision. Why did they take the value of the plate down and why did they let me buy the plate?” he said.
Joel Barr has been an owner-operator of a Standard plate for 34 years. Drivers like him and Ahadi compromise about 23 per cent of the city’s cab drivers, who have seen a major financial investment “wiped out” by the city hall decision.
On Feb. 19, councillors voted to approve the Toronto Taxicab Licence (TTL) which would regulate the sale of Standard license plates.
“Everybody says the same thing, ‘I can’t believe what they think they can do,” Barr said.
“It’s just devastated our livelihood and my retirement. I’ve been wiped out. ”
The city introduced legislation allowing the purchase of Standard licenses in 1963. Barr purchased his license in 1980 for $37,000.
“When I bought [my license], a house cost $100,000. I thought, I thought, here’s something I can invest in – I won’t be a rich man, but I’ll be comfortable. And I can love my job.”
In early 2013, plates were selling for $325,000 or $350,000, Barr said. After council’s decision, the plates are worth “pretty well nothing – it’s unknown territory.”
The city said that the new laws were put in place to help another segment of taxi drivers, the roughly 76 per cent who don’t own their own vehicle.
“We did extensive consultations on the issue…there is vast support from shift drivers for these changes,” Vanessa Fletcher, the project manager for the Taxicabs industry review, told CityNews.
“It’s fair to say that the industry is fractured,” she added.
Barr said he and other drivers are recommending an injunction be put on the city’s plans, and have the TTL reconsidered once the next council is elected in October.
Another option, Barr said, would be to grandfather the extinction of the licenses, possibly over 40 years.
Fletcher acknowledged that there were “differing opinions” from whether changes were implemented too slowly, too quickly or even at all.
The 10-year deadline remains an issue for owner-operators, who are concerned that since buyers know there is a deadline to sell, they’ll wait as long as possible to make their purchase.
“When people sell their standard license, the city would issue the new purchaser the TTL. You can still sell the license, it’s just that the new person is subject the new conditions of the [TTL] license,” Fletcher said.
“The value of standard license is on a secondary market, which isn’t regulated by the city industry. To us, the TTL continues to be transferable, allowing entry and exit from the industry.”
It’s not enough, Barr argued.
“The city set up the rules back in the ‘60s,” Barr said, “we’ve just been following them.”
Ahadi feels the same way: “I thought this is nice free country to do business, to just work hard. I was really happy. And that’s not only my life – it’s my children lives, my wife’s life. The city…needs to care about us.”
CORRECTION: Taxi plates cannot be willed. If an owner dies, their estate has one year to sell the plate.
