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There are two Passport Parking apps that exist. One is Canadian; the other, an American company owned by the giant investment firm, Sixth Street, who has stakes in Spotify, San Antonio Spurs, Airbnb and more, and just opened up their India office for Passport Labs Inc.
Guess which Passport Parking app Orillia uses. Did you guess the U.S. one, because otherwise, why would I be writing this letter? You are correct and very clever.
Firstly, there’s the issue of customer confusion. I’ve directed a couple of people to the proper app when they were having trouble getting Passport Canada to find Orillia parking spaces on their phone. A ticket was given to one person (a friend of a friend and definitely not me) in Prince Edward County when they mistakenly paid for their parking on the U.S. Passport app that Orillia uses. And when that person (not me) tried to contest the ticket, the woman they spoke to did all but call them stupid for not noticing an app with the same name, built for the same purpose was a different app.
But that’s not even the biggest issue. In a time when “buying Canadian” is on the forefront of many people’s minds, why would we then pay a slice of our parking fee to some giant investment firm in the U.S.A.? I would rather curse at a Canadian company when I’m having to pay downtown Orillia’s exorbitant parking fees. If I’m throwing away money, at least let it stay inside Canadian borders.
And would you believe there may be an even bigger issue? Just read the fine print in the terms and services. I know you all have. CBC Hamilton published an article in August of 2020 titled “Using Hamilton’s parking app could send your personal data into the U.S.,” which pointed out that some wording in the privacy policy allows our “data to be stored in other countries, with different privacy laws and fewer protections.”
So, why would we provide our money and our private information to some enormous U.S. investment firm instead of a Canadian company with the exact same name and product? I think that’s an important question to examine and one that’s very important to me. And I’m definitely not just writing this because I got a ticket and am really bitter about it, because I told you, that was a friend of a friend, and they are a real person.
Brolin Devine
Orillia
