Driver oversight: Documents reveal Uber's behind-the-scenes lobbying in Halifax

An Uber driver is seen after the company launched service, in Vancouver, Friday, Jan. 24, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore met with an Uber lobbyist a day before the mayor persuaded council to delay a vote on a proposal to increase oversight of ride-hailing drivers, newly released documents show.

The documents obtained by The Canadian Press reveal lobbyist Jonathan Hamel delivered a presentation to Fillmore on Jan. 12 urging the mayor to oppose bylaw changes aimed at aligning the way the background checks are handled for ride-hailing drivers and regular taxi and limo drivers.

Included in the 40 pages of documents is a slide-show that highlights Uber’s safety standards and contributions to the community, as well as pointed criticism of the proposed amendment.

The municipality does not have a lobbyist registry, which means details of the meeting and related correspondence would not have been disclosed to the public without a formal request under the province’s freedom-of-information law.

The documents also show Hamel, public affairs manager for Uber Canada in Quebec, exchanged numerous emails with senior staff in Fillmore’s office between October and November 2025 as council was preparing to debate changes recommended in a staff report.

The report noted that under the existing rules, taxi and limo drivers must submit results from all background checks to the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) for review, but ride-hailing drivers are not required to do so. Instead, their checks are handed to the companies, which conduct internal reviews.

The background checks are for criminal records, child abuse allegations and there’s a special police check for those who work with vulnerable people.

As part of a broader bid to modernize the region’s ride-for-hire sector, the staff report recommended ride-hailing drivers should do the same as their taxi-driving colleagues.

In response, Hamel sent an email to the mayor’s office on Nov. 19, 2025, arguing that Halifax’s screening process was already the most stringent in Canada.

“Halifax’s current bylaws already hold taxi and ride-share drivers to the identical screening standards and gives HRM strong audit and enforcement powers,” Hamel says in an email to Duncan Robertson, Fillmore’s policy adviser.

“Maintaining Halifax’s current framework — which already ensures strong safety standards and effective oversight — is the most balanced and modern approach."

There is no suggestion that the behind-the-scenes lobbying by the San Francisco-based tech giant broke any rules, but the documents shed light on the company’s concerted bid to maintain the status quo on background checks.

Uber has repeatedly argued that municipal officials have always had the authority under a data-sharing agreement to ask for any background checks. But the region’s licencing manager confirmed in January that staff had never submitted such a request. Steven Berkman told council he didn’t know why that was the case.

Meanwhile, Uber applied pressure on councillors on Jan. 9 by issuing a statement encouraging its drivers to send in complaints about the proposals. Councillors later reported receiving hundreds of emails, though some said that many of the messages mainly complained about poor pay.

During the council meeting on Jan. 13, Fillmore won approval to defer discussion on the matter until a regular council meeting two weeks later.

On Jan. 26, a day before that meeting, Uber spokeswoman Keerthan Rang emailed a statement to The Canadian Press saying the proposed changes would not deliver meaningful safety benefits. And she endorsed the mayor’s bid to appoint a committee to plot a way forward.

“This group would review HRM’s public policy objectives against the best practices from across Canada, with a particular focus on training, audit and compliance models used by municipal and provincial regulators,” Rang wrote.

During the Jan. 27 council meeting, Fillmore proposed shelving the changes and appointing the committee, which council approved.

Fillmore’s motion makes it clear Uber had a hand in the mayor’s approach. Part of his motion is virtually identical to a portion of Rang’s statement from the day before.

The mayor told council the new committee would “review the municipality’s public policy objectives against the best practices from across Canada, with a particular focus on training, audit, approaches to licensure and compliance models used by municipal and provincial regulators.”

Fillmore declined an interview request and his office did not respond to a question about the similarities between Uber’s statement and his motion.

His office instead sent a statement that said he regularly meets with stakeholders, including representatives from transportation companies and the taxi industry.

“The mayor’s position throughout this discussion has been consistent: safety requirements for (ride-hailing) drivers are important and already exist under the current framework,” said the mayor’s spokesperson, Ryan Nearing, in the statement.

Coun. Sam Austin, one of two councillors who voted against the mayor’s motions, said Uber had reached out to him several times.

“They were reaching out to everybody,” he said in an interview. “I might have had a phone call with them. And I heard from the taxi drivers, actually …. From what I was receiving, the taxi industry was nowhere near as organized as the ride-share folks were.”

Austin said he supported aligning the rules for background checks and other measures aimed at levelling the playing field for the taxi business and the ride-hailing companies because there wasn’t enough scrutiny of Uber when it set up shop in 2020.

“There was so much pressure to allow ridesharing,” Austin said. “We allowed them to come in while we tied up the local taxi industry’s ability to compete.”

The debate over background checks comes at a time when Uber is facing increased scrutiny in the United States, where the company is facing multiple class action lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment by drivers.

In August, the New York Times showed that between 2017 and 2022, Uber had received reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct almost every eight minutes on average across the United States. Citing internal documents, the Times said that amounted to more than 400,000 complaints, a level that was far higher than the company had previously disclosed.

The Times also reported Uber had tested tools to make trips safer, including mandatory video recording and pairing female passengers with female drivers. But the newspaper reported Uber delayed or did not require its drivers to take part in some of those programs.

In response, Rang at Uber Canada issued a statement in January saying safety is a core value at Uber, which offers several safety features including GPS tracking, encrypted audio recording and a RideCheck service that detects if a ride goes off-course or ends early.

“The vast majority of trips on Uber are completed without any incident,” her statement said.

“With millions of trips happening every day, Uber is not immune to societal issues — it persists across all parts of life and modes of transportation and we are continually working to strengthen our technology, policies and procedures to improve safety.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2026.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press