Is Carpooling Legal?

Absolutely! Carpooling is legal with respect to two criterias:

• The trip must be planned in advance.  In other words, the driver would have made the trip anyways.
• The money exchanged between drivers and riders serves the only purpose of reimbursing the drivers’ costs of using his car for the trip.  In other words, if the driver gets a revenue out of such an activity, he becomes a transport company and must have a permit to do so. 

 The Ministry of Transportation encourages carpooling among citizens. According to the Canadian Transportation Act, carpooling involves a transport performed on a common route and does not require any license or transport permit. The exchange of money would only be covering transportation costs with no profit making. Only the owners of taxi permits are allowed to make revenues out of transport activities made by car. 

Moreover, the Quebec Action Plan 2012-2020 on Climate Change supports the carpooling concept and states that this is one of the government priorities (priority # 13). Carpooling could be legally and easily combined with any other mode of public transport. In the Article 27 of the Act of The Metropolitan Agency of Transportation , the AMT supports any activity favoring and promoting both carpooling and the use of different public transit options. With Netlift being an extension of the public transit system, our activities combining carpooling and public transit are approved and supported by the AMT.