"A Little Disappointed"

Makes for some fascinating reading, the story about a handful of Ottawa taxi drivers scheming to enrich themselves at the trough of opportunity during a prolonged winter bus strike which had the effect of up-turning many peoples' lives, unable to use public transit because the transit workers had withdrawn their services through a well-timed (on their coercive behalf) strike right around Christmas, the longest such strike the city had ever been punished with.

Halfway through the strike the City of Ottawa, having compassion for those unable to meet doctors' appointments and other necessary travel, handed out taxi chits to those of its clients considered to be in need, to be paid for by municipal tax dollars. The city had paid BlueLine Taxi roughly $100,000 in administration fees for this ad hoc system and only latterly was it made public that a dozen and more taxi drivers conspired to enrich themselves illegally.

Two taxi drivers who shared a BlueLine cab between them cashed in $24,469 in chits which reality could not support, hugely inflating their take through false and inaccurate pick-up and drop-off information, improper dates, and lack of customer identification. Counting, no doubt, on an unwieldy or less than-diligent administration to just pass them through and pay up, without comment.

But Awais Mohamed Hassan and Mukhtar A. Eid, along with seventeen other taxi drivers aroused suspicion that they had abused the voucher system handed out to needy residents by the unlikely and excessively large amounts being claimed. Coventry Connection which managed the Taxitab chit system has agreed to repay $60,000 of irregular chits that should not have been processed.

A disciplinary hearing was held by the city's license committee which heard three days of testimony before Mr. Hassan finally admitted on the fourth day that he was guilty of attempting to illegally enrich himself through the submission of "irregular taxi chits for payment". His partner, Mr. Eid, continues to insist on his innocence of any wrong-doing.

Now that Mr. Hassan admitted his conduct was "adverse to the public interest", he is required to pay back $12,000 to the City of Ottawa and his cab-driving license has been suspended for 6 months. Incensed by the entire business whereby taxi drivers acted illegally at a time when the city was embroiled in a massive social-system upset, the licence committee chairman fulminated over the stupidity of it all:

"We admonish any other driver out there. We will get you. We will find out about you, and we will sit in this room for as long as it takes." Which hasn't appeared to impress Mr. Hassan's co-driver excessively, since he still declares innocence of intent to defraud, and was given a week-long license suspension for his troubles; his hearing re-scheduled for a later date.

None of the other drivers suspected of attempting to pass off faulty taxi chits as authentic and untampered-with reflections of service they provided have as yet stepped forward to declare their error in judgement. So additional time will of necessity have to be spent on the matter, and more tax money will be used to investigate further.

The misuse of an attempt by the municipality to ease the burden on the needy during the stressful period of a painfully-prolonged transit lock-out by a handful of taxi drivers who planned to make the most of an illicit opportunity that had presented to them, reflects badly not only on those relatively few drivers, but on the industry as a whole.

Their peers should make their irritation with their comrades' exercise of poor judgement well known to them, even though their union will likely find it in their charter to protect their errant members from additional criticism. This seems to be what trade unions do best.

That would most certainly seem to be the case, when Mr. Hassan, despite the reaction of those on the licence committee, professed disappointment at what he obviously takes as a too-severe discipline for his infraction of decent, civil mores.