Buckle up, Toronto, because driverless cabs are coming.
Earlier this month, California-based company Waymo announced that it will begin mapping and testing in Toronto in the coming days, eyeing a 2028 launch of its fleet of driverless cars. Already, Canadians are debating safety, data privacy, and road congestion – but the highest-profile conversations are happening around job losses for taxi and rideshare drivers.
If driverless cabs are ultimately cheaper for companies and customers, then drivers will soon find their line of work obsolete. This comes as rideshare drivers are just making strides in negotiating with platforms for better working conditions. The question everyone’s asking: does Waymo have an obligation to help the workers it’s displacing?
Already, Waymo has expanded into cities across the US and Europe, and the impact on human rideshare drivers has been immediate. Since Waymo launched in Atlanta in June 2025, drivers report lower pay, longer wait times, and fewer rides; in August of this year, Futurism reported that the Atlanta Rideshare Drivers Union had been lobbying the city and the state to hit the brakes on further Waymo expansion. ARDU also asked Atlanta City Council to require robotaxi platforms to pay into a driver transition fund, to help support workers replaced by new tech.
Rideshare drivers in San Francisco, Seattle, and most recently London have also protested Waymo vehicles, citing similar concerns about job losses. In Toronto, Mayor Olivia Chow’s office told CTV back in April that the mayor “will not support Waymo if it costs jobs, drives down wages for other workers, or contribute[s] to precarious work in our city. Waymo must demonstrate this will not happen.”
But not everyone is so worried. Andrew Miller, who literally wrote the book on robotaxis, argues for The Hub that many innovative technologies created labour disruptions at first, but that we shouldn't let this stand in the way of adoption. And, he claims, “the ride-for-hire sector already sees annual turnover of 50 to 100 percent; as automation arrives gradually, natural attrition will absorb most of the transition without anyone being forced out.”
It’s tempting to believe that the disruptions will be minimal, especially when self-driving cars feel, to many people, like the first step towards tech-fuelled utopia. But as Pilita Clark writes for the Financial Times, rideshare and taxi driver jobs are particularly valuable for newcomers to a country, as driving allows for flexible work hours; rides can easily be planned around language classes, skills training, or parenting duties. Plus, the job has a low barrier to entry and doesn’t require a high level of English proficiency, making it a more accessible option for anyone still learning the language.
This past spring, roughly 1,000 rideshare drivers in Victoria, B.C. reached a collective agreement with Uber – the first of its kind in Canada.
Miller is, of course, correct that new tech generally disrupts the labour market, whether it's the power loom in the early 19th century to Claude Code in current day. But that shouldn't prevent companies like Waymo from making things easier on the drivers they’re replacing, and they should make it a priority.
In the short history of rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft, drivers have not had an easy time. As gig workers, they’ve historically lacked many of the rights and protections afforded to employees, and the pay is, by most accounts, pretty terrible. But in the last couple of years, there was a gradual shift; rideshare drivers started organizing locally and pushing for better working conditions. This past spring, roughly 1,000 rideshare drivers in Victoria, B.C. reached a collective agreement with Uber – the first of its kind in Canada.
The agreement secured new benefits for drivers on the platform, including a signing bonus, quarterly bonuses, yearly fee increases, a wellness fund of up to $500, and a formal complaint process. Another 1,000 drivers in the B.C. Interior joined the agreement in September, and some have speculated about whether this model could catch on in other Canadian cities. Now, with Waymo’s arrival, all of that progress might be cut short, leaving rideshare drivers stalled.
To some extent, Waymo has shown a willingness to help drivers navigate this shift; many of the people servicing and maintaining the company's self-driving cars were once rideshare drivers themselves. But, as Clark argues, the potential number of jobs eliminated is far greater. The company should take seriously the suggestion by the ARDU that it set aside money to help rideshare drivers retrain. Meanwhile, the rideshare apps expanding into driverless taxis should consider what benefits there are that only human drivers can provide – like the opportunity to have a good conversation (sorry, Claude).
In the best case scenario that Miller outlines, roads are safer, cars are greener, and traffic is down. That all sounds pretty 1 But Waymo should be helping human rideshare drivers fit into this potential vision of the future, so that they, too, can embrace and benefit from the tech – rather than having no choice but to resent it.
Importantly, this is not the only possible scenario that Miller outlines. It’s also possible, for example, that traffic will increase instead. It will depend on policy decisions and on organic human responses.
