Waymo announced last Thursday that it is coming to Toronto. Paid rides are targeted for 2028. Toronto-based Element Fleet Management will run the fleet. Mapping starts with human drivers, then safety operators, then nobody. It is Waymo’s first Canadian market and its fourth outside the United States after London, Tokyo, and Singapore.

The reaction was immediate. Mayor Olivia Chow raised safety concerns. Mayoral candidate Brad Bradford welcomed the technology. The provincial transportation minister’s office asked for a credible jobs plan. All of this landed ten days before a municipal election that CP24 and CTV News polling now calls a statistical tie.

I think that date was the smartest decision in the whole announcement.

A Waymo robotaxi in San Francisco. Photo: Sam on Unsplash

An announcement written for council, not riders

Read the Toronto release like a client sent it to you. Then read how the same company announced Austin or Atlanta. In the US, the announcements were about riders: here is the service area, here is when you can book. Toronto got none of that. No service area. No app date. No price.

What Toronto got instead was a local partner’s name up top, “hundreds of jobs” in maintenance and operations, and a note that the company was already approved for Ontario’s pilot program. The technology came last.

That is a company that understood the customer in Toronto is not the rider yet. The customer is permission. It led with a Canadian operator and a jobs number because the people who decide whether this happens sit at City Hall and Queen’s Park, not in the back seat.

It is a playbook any hard-tech company entering a skeptical market should study. We see it in defense constantly. The pitch to government is sovereignty and jobs before it is ever the product. Sell the local benefit first.

One honest note: “hundreds of jobs” is a hedge with no number in it. That is probably deliberate. A real figure can be argued with. A vague one cannot.

Why announce into an election

Announcing before the vote looks risky. I would have advised exactly that. Both candidates had to comment, which turned one press release into two news cycles. And whichever way Monday goes, the announcement already answered the jobs objection before it could become a campaign line.

The bet on rules that do not exist yet

Ontario’s automated vehicle pilot expires in October 2027. There is no commercial driverless framework after it. The 2028 target is a bet that one will exist.

A company funded in US dollars can make that bet. Hire a small team now, start the mapping, and let other cities do the persuading. Two years is a long time in this industry, and more cities will have driverless rides by then. By 2028, Ontario writing rules will look like the default, not the risk.

A Canadian startup cannot wait two years for the ground to shift. For them, waiting is not strategy. It is survival. That gap is the real story under this announcement.

Hard places make better products

One of our clients, Lyntris, wrote a piece on building in contested environments that did very well with readers. The idea is simple: build where conditions are hardest and the product gets better.

Toronto is that for driverless cars. Most of this technology has been proven in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. Warm, dry, grid-planned. Toronto in February is the credential nobody has yet. Whoever earns it here will have earned it anywhere.

Do not do to robotaxis what we did to banks

Toronto has its own autonomous vehicle company. Waabi raised a billion dollars in January, including money from Uber for robotaxis, and it already operates in the US. Good. Now a US company is coming here. Also good.

I am a proponent of competition because the only person I want to win is the rider. I want as many players on Toronto’s streets as possible, Canadian or not, Waymo or Tesla or Waabi. The worst thing we could do is treat this the way we treat banks and telecom and decide only Canadian companies get to operate here.

The product showing up from California is not a Canadian commercialization failure. It is business. US companies move fast. What holds Canada back is copying what the US already built and calling it innovation. If Canada is going to win, it wins by building something the world wants to buy. Not by building a Canadian copy of one.

Safety ends the argument

I have lived in this city for almost 15 years. The 401 I learned to drive on is not the 401 I drive today. The city grew faster than its roads, and driving here feels more dangerous than it used to.

The 401 at night, shot from the Don Mills bridge. Photo: Roman Romanenko on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago I rode in a Tesla Robotaxi in Austin. I cannot describe how safe I felt. On the stretches that would have had me tense behind the wheel, I zoned out. If driverless cars crash 68% less than humans, as Waymo claims, then safety is not one side of the debate. It is the whole debate. I want it for myself and for everyone on these streets.

So, February 2029, Queen West, 11 p.m. I am taking the driverless car. And I hope by then I have more than one app to choose from.

Hero image: Frank Huang on Unsplash.