Quote:
Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse
Read your own link. Does it say anything about insurance? No. The Edmonton bylaw only speaks to matters it controls, not the insurance industry's lack of willingness to cover ride sharing
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That's the point. Ride-sharing for profit, outside of vehicles with the city issued plates, is illegal in Calgary because of the city bylaws. Period. Insurance is an implicit requirement, but the threat of the $5000 fine that City Hall and Calgary is not due to lack of insurance, it's because of the city bylaw that explicitly outlaws ride-sharing for profit.
There's nothing stopping City Hall from coming up with a new bylaw draft, like Edmonton is doing, that makes ride sharing for profit legal under certain conditions. One of those conditions could (and will end up being) proper insurance, but to what level, to a degree, is up to City Hall.
City Hall, over the last 2 years, could have made a bylaw permitting ride-sharing for profit under these conditions:
a) such and such insurance
b) so and so type of licence
c) x number of vehicle inspections
d) blah
e) blah
f) blah
And then if a) was impossible because of the provincial regulation, City Hall could start blaming the provincial level. As it stands now there's an explicit bylaw that prohibits Uber. That falls on City Hall. The insurance is much more of a grey area that will certainly need to be worked out, but City Hall needs to be involved in that discussion to give Uber and Alberta an understanding of what will work to make ride-sharing for profit legal in Calgary.
And for the record, there is commercial insurance available that would likely cover Uber. As it stands now, it costs a lot and not many Uber drivers have it. But some people do have it, and yet they are still illegal Uber drivers in Calgary. So blaming insurance is very much a cop out in my opinion.