The complainant Rajiv Kapil had told Calgary city regulators that his Black Top boss and manager, Baljinder (Bill) Bhullar made him pay an annual $7,000 above standard fees for the right to drive with a company-owned taxi licence.
CALGARY — The city’s third-largest cab company, largely owned by Indo-Canadian driver-shareholders, will cease operations this month, meaning it will not face a proposed review hearing into whether the broker had been improperly charging its drivers thousands of dollars in fees.
Black Top Taxi’s 79 cabs, the only ones in Calgary to operate with a traditional radio dispatch system, will instead drive under the banner of another company or companies — only four remain in Calgary’s ever-consolidating cab industry, reported Calgary Herald.
Rajiv Kapil had told city regulators that his Black Top boss made him pay an annual $7,000 above standard fees for the right to drive with a company-owned taxi licence.
“No driver would dare to come forward with that issue, with the fear they would be fired,” he told the Herald.
Kapil, president of the Calgary Cab Drivers Association, was let go last May, around the time he filed the complaint with the city.
By this April, the city’s manager of compliance services, Marc Halat, had found multiple potential cases of wrongful fees and was ready to pursue sanctions against Black Top and its manager, Baljinder (Bill) Bhullar.
A review hearing could have led to a suspension of the brokerage licence, said Halat, who oversees city taxi regulations.
Halat said Bhullar told him Black Top would instead cease operations — shareholders had already looked at liquidating.
“He felt it was just in his better interest to let it go and that’s what he did,” Halat said.
Cab companies are permitted to charge fees above what’s called “standard rent” for dispatch and other services, but they must substantiate every surcharge dollar it demands of drivers, according to city regulation.
Black Top will no longer exist as a cab company by May 18, Halat said. As a result, no hearing will be held into accusations against the company.
Bhullar could not be reached for comment.
Black Top’s 26 shareholders have agreed to sell the company after 28 years in business, company legal adviser Gurprit Dhaliwal said Sunday.
“They’ve been all doing this since 1984. It was time,” she said. “Essentially, they’re just going to empower independent drivers.”
Asked about allegations by Kapil and remarks by Halat, Dhaliwal said: “If those comments have been made, we would be treating those comments as slanderous, subject to litigation.”
Prohibited from selling taxi licences to other companies, Black Top has applied with the city to transfer its 54 company-owned plates to independent drivers. They each have a market value around $150,000, a consultants’ report to the city said in 2010.
The other 25 licences under the Black Top banner were already held by drivers. They didn’t have to pay the same extra fees, said Kapil, who said he worked four years at Black Top.
The remaining Calgary cab companies are the two industry titans Checker (667 cabs) and Associated (546), as well as Mayfair Taxi (75) and Advance-Delta (38).
There were six firms until two years ago, when Advance and Delta merged amid industry consolidation that sent drivers flocking to Associated — which had won exclusive access to the airport — and Checker, the king of downtown.
Black Top was lagging behind in technology. As all other firms adopted electronic dispatch systems, its cabs used old CB radios. In three years, it would have been forced to go digital to meet the passenger data requirements of new taxi service standards.
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