Passenger Licensing Electric Micro Vehicles (Motion 13)

Does anyone have a conflict of interest to disclose? Okay, seeing none, Councillor Fry, you have two minutes to introduce your motion. Yeah, there we go. Okay. Thanks, Chair. So you may have seen these bright blue buggies driving around town. Some of you may have ridden in them as they were running the shuttles at the Oak Ridge opening or in North Van where the Lower Lonsdale BIA runs shuttles for shoppers that go up and down the hill in North Vancouver. These are neighborhood zero emission vehicles. And they look like golf carts, but they are fully certified for street legal use under the Motor Vehicle Act. They have seatbelts. They have turn signals. They have laminated glass. They have backup cameras. They have headlights. They are fully street legal. And indeed, they are street legal in our city. What they are not, however, is licensed for passenger transportation. So if I – we can find these – actually, they park them. They have a fleet of about three dozen that they park at Bentall for the Heia, who will be speaking later. And they rent them outside of Canada Place. And they're very popular with tourists who want to go bomb around town, take little quick trips. Fun way to get around and experience nature. And as it turns out, they would be a fantastic way to experience our city for visitors. But right now, they are not licensed for passenger transportation. So this motion is really ceasing this opportunity. It is a process that is in the works with the province and the motor vehicle department, but it's not happening fast enough. And we had a real missed opportunity during FIFA where they were pretty much lined up to make it happen with a huge tourist push and Canada's jobs grant to actually hire young people to conduct tours in little microelectric vehicles, but the province has not moved to... And again, these are totally street legal. It's just a matter of making them available for me to pay money to somebody to drive me around and take me on a tour of Stanley Park or the Cherry Blossoms or down to Granville Island or what have you. So... The ask here fundamentally is just for the mayor to write a letter and for us to enthusiastically support this kind of idea. It's obviously a low carbon way to get around. When I was out test driving on one of them the other day next to these giant diesel gargling buses that were standing there idling, waiting for passengers and thought what a stark difference it is and how on brand it is for our city to provide a really fun electric way that doesn't burn fossil fuel and you can experience our city. And really, the fresh air part is the best. Oh, sorry. Lenny, you just let me keep going. You're so kind, Lenny. I'm so kind to you, Councillor Fry. Okay. All good. All right, so do we have a seconder for this motion? Seconded by Councillor Maloney. We will now hear from the registered speaker for this motion. Public speakers should stay whether they are in support or in opposition of the motion.

And they may only speak once. I will also ask speakers if they are residents of Vancouver, if it is not noted on the speaker's list. Speaker number one has withdrawn. Speaker number two is Tasha Maynard.

In person.

Oh, that's Tasha.

Over there.

Let's go ahead. Thank you. Mayor and Council, thank you for having me here today. My name is Tasha Maynard, and I am the co-founder of Hayek Arts. Before we start, I want to highlight we are speaking about NZEVs. These are already Transportation Canada approved. You can drive and park on the road just like a regular car, and you need a driver's license to drive them. We're not talking about the green mobility scooters we see on the Greenway. Those are simply illegal. So when the city of Vancouver needed shuttles for people with mobility challenges during FIFA planning, they rented our carts. This matters because it shows these vehicles are not theoretical. They're already being used by the city for exactly the kinds of short, practical, accessibility-supportive trips we're talking about. The difference is that when the city operates a shuttle service, it can do so under its own authority. To date, HAYA carts have been privately and safely used for shuttle service by the Vancouver Pride Society, Ironman Canada, the Vancouver Marathon, City of Vancouver, Oak Ridge Park, Vancouver BIAs, Destination Vancouver, and even recently the Institute of Transportation Engineers Conference that was just held in Victoria. However, if HAYA wanted to provide the same kind of shuttle service to the public with commercially licensed drivers and vehicles inspected every six months through the commercial vehicle inspection program, we currently cannot. We are not asking for a loophole. We are not asking to avoid regulation. We are asking for a clear pathway under the existing passenger transportation license framework. So normally the approval process for a general passenger transportation license is roughly six to eight weeks. We applied last year and our application has now been sitting for months with no meaningful response. To be fair, as far as we know, nobody in BC has applied before to operate neighborhood zero emission vehicles for passenger service with commercial drivers. We understand that this may be new for the Ministry of Transportation and Transit. We understand that staff may not know exactly where or how these vehicles fit. But right now, they're not asking us questions or giving us a pathway. The only answers we get is keep waiting. Meanwhile, these vehicles are already street legal, they're registered, they're Transportation Canada approved, they're ICBC insured, and operating safely as self-drive rentals. They're fully electric, quiet, low speed, and right-sized for short trips in busy visitor areas. Driver-guided NZEV tours and shuttles would help visitors, seniors, families, cruise passengers, and people with mobility limitations experience more of Vancouver without needing a full-sized car, taxi, van, or bus.

They could support Stanley Park, Canada Place, Coal Harbour, Gastown, and our local events. Approval of this motion would send an important signal that Vancouver supports safe, insured, inspected, and properly regulated NZEV passenger services. Thank you. Thank you, Tasha. Okay, speaker number three is Joanna Jaeger.

Speaker three is not on the line. Okay, speaker four is Julie.

Hello? Yes, we can hear you. Please go ahead. Thank you. Julie Struleski here, and I am in support of this motion. If you have seen the news, there are 800 active wildfires burning in Canada alone that are causing a lot of devastation right now. As we can see around the world, we are in a climate emergency. Hopefully this government will start taking this seriously as scientists have recommended. I think we have an ethical responsibility to take as much action as we can. NSAIDs have been around since the late 1990s. They're a proven solution, and it's long past time that all governments approve them for passenger services. If you are aware of the social and environmental impacts of EV battery life cycles, good news. The world's largest EV battery repurposing megafactory has opened in Surrey. and turns retired EV batteries into storage systems for hospitals, factories, and more. So I hope you will support this motion. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to circle back to Speaker 3, Joanna Jaeger.

Speaker 3 is not on the line. Okay, thank you. All right, so that's the end of the speakers list. Thanks, everyone, for speaking to the Standing Committee. Committee members, is there any discussion?

Okay, Councillor Maloney first. Thanks. Yeah, it's really nice to see an enthusiastic small business person trying to do something new and I think this is a very worthwhile thing to explore. I appreciate Councillor Fry bringing it and responding to, you know, a small business person who's hit a roadblock, not literally. So I'll support this.

Thank you. Councillor Domenato.

Thank you. Okay, seeing no one else on the queue, let's go to the vote for this motion. Also, please register your vote.

Okay, Councillor Bligh.

I think she's gone, right? Okay. Yeah. Okay, so the motion passed unanimously with Councillor Bligh, Mayor Sim, and Councillor Montague absent. Thank you. That completes Motion 13. Motion 14 is a policy framework for overdose prevention and harm reduction facilities. It is to be moved and introduced by Councillor Frye. Before we begin this agenda item, if anyone believes they have a conflict of interest, now is the time to declare it. Does anyone have a conflict of interest with this clause? Okay, Counselor Frey, you have two minutes to introduce your motion. Yeah, thanks. Of course, so as you will know, this was inspired by the relatively recent decision by this council to use any means necessary to bar the overdose prevention site at Hornby and Helmken. As I've illustrated in this motion, that was attempted by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2011 when he tried to shut down supervised consumption sites at Hornby. and it was ruled unconstitutional. It was a violation of charter rights. And as I argued at the time that this ban was being suggested, we were treading on dangerous territory, not the least of which for the legal reasons, but also because these are real human lives at risk. Now, that being said, I do recognize that... How these are run, and I was on council when we had approved the OPS at Seymour and Helmken, and it was problematic because it was too small and there was a lot of management issues. It occurred to me then, and the conversations we had were that there were no bylaw tools. We amply have conditions on bylaws licensing for all manner of business. Bars and restaurants have to follow certain rules and conditions that we apply to their licensing. Cannabis dispensaries can't, as a condition of their city licensing, cannot be opened next to a community center or an elementary school. And they have to have frosted glass and they have to have certain controls. These are all basic functions of doing good business. And we apply... thousands of conditions to our business licenses on the books. I'm going to quickly reflect on a real-world scenario that Councillor Zhou will be familiar with, where a small family-run business in Chinatown was very desperately trying to figure out a way to stop an oat clinic from opening up next door, and they were concerned about the impacts. Indeed, those impacts have been profound, and I can tell you that the owner of that small family business now spends $70,000 a year on security to run his own business because the The neighboring business, the oat clinic, is not managing their facility in a way that is conducive to good neighborliness.