Toronto's bike lanes are protected...for the moment.
We can celebrate, but the war isn't over yet.
Last fall, I covered Doug Ford’s Bill 212, which sought to forcibly remove the bike lanes that Toronto had built on Bloor Street, University Avenue, and Yonge Street, and indemnify the province against any and all legal damages resulting from cyclists being injured or killed as a result of removing those bike lanes.
Obviously, this is evil. Bike lanes were built because they create a significant reduction in these violent incidents, protecting vulnerable cyclists from being splattered into paste by numbskull motorists. The Ford government admitted, with the legal liability shield they put into their law, that ripping up the bike lanes may very well kill innocent people, but the Ford government does not care.
Neither the Ontario Liberals nor the Ontario New Democrats were able to stop Ford from passing this law, and Mayor Olivia Chow failed to mount any serious opposition, despite Chow admitting in a Reddit AMA to using these bike lanes and being maimed and scarred by a motorist while cycling. And if she won’t fight for herself, she certainly won’t fight for us.
But where politicians fail us, the community will save us, and thanks to a legal challenge mounted against the bill by Cycle Toronto, Ford’s law requiring the removal of these three bike lanes has been struck down as an unconstitutional Charter violation, by Justice Paul Schabas of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
To break down exactly what this court decision means, I’ve reviewed Justice Schabas’ reasons for judgment, as released today on July 30th. While the document for 2025 ONSC 4397 has not yet made it online to CanLII, I’ve uploaded a PDF copy for all of you at home to follow along with me:
According to Paragraph 4, Cycle Toronto made the argument that the removal of these existing bike lanes would violate Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the right to life, liberty, and security of the person.
The counter-argument made in Paragraph 5 by the Ford government is that this is allowed under Section 1’s “reasonable limits” clause, as it seeks to accomplish an important objective, relieving “traffic congestion.”
Justice Schabas concludes in Paragraph 12 that it is Cycle Toronto who is correct. He recognizes that the evidence establishes that “removal of the target bike lanes will put people at increased risk of harm and death” and violate their Section 7 rights.
Indeed, Schabas directly points out in his ruling that the Ford government anticipates such casualties, since they provided themselves a legal liability shield in Bill 212 against lawsuits for injuries and deaths inflicted upon cyclists by the bike lane removal.
Further, Justice Schabas dismisses the Section 1 argument, ruling in Paragraphs 15 and 16 that the Ford government did not provide substantive evidence that these measures would alleviate congestion to any degree, and that even if it did, it would be nowhere close to a “reasonable” limit to kill people in exchange for slightly faster traffic.
And in conclusion to his overview, before he goes deep into the weeds and minutia of the case, Paragraph 20 of Justice Schabas’ ruling makes his finding explicitly clear:
Accordingly, I find that s. 195.6 of the HTA, in the form passed in 2024, is inconsistent with s. 7 of the Charter and not saved by s. 1 of the Charter. As to the new version of s. 195.6 passed on June 5, 2025, I find that any “reconfiguring” which has the effect of removing the physical separation of the target bike lanes from motor vehicle traffic for the purpose of reducing congestion is also a breach of the Charter. It follows, as well, that any regulation permitting the removal of the target bike lanes for that purpose would also breach the Charter.
This is a victory, for sure, and cyclists in Toronto should certainly celebrate this milestone in their hard-fought struggle to make our city a safer place. But it would be negligent to ignore the fact that this war is not over, and the Ford government still has weapons at their disposal.
Firstly, the Ontario Minister of Transportation’s Director of Media Relations, Ms. Dakota Brasier, confirmed that the government would be seeking leave to appeal, claiming that removing bike lanes from major roads is part of the Ford government’s electoral mandate.
Perhaps she is right that Tory voters support bike lane removal, but that has no bearing on whether it is constitutionally valid. And if the Ontario Court of Appeal does not see merit in reviewing the case, it can simply deny the request to hear it.
Even when they do review the decision, they are merely examining for a flaw in the ruling’s interpretation of the law, and Justice Schabas’ ruling is both simple and legally sound. Ultimately, I do not have significant concerns over this appeal process.
What concerns me much more is the dreaded self-destruct button of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the illegitimate bullshit that is Section 33’s “notwithstanding clause”. Doug Ford has not been shy in the past, eagerly using this nuclear bomb to obliterate civil rights in Ontario.
The one and only time that Doug Ford backed down from using this clause, in a labour dispute with school workers, was solely because the public protest was so massive and severe that it genuinely made him afraid. We were lucky to achieve that kind of public support, but he reached that stage because he was emboldened by his previous successes with the clause.
So yes, I am very worried about the potential for Doug Ford to invoke the notwithstanding clause if his appeal is rejected. But I’m not worried about whether Cycle Toronto is prepared to show up en masse if he does do it; I know they are. I’ve seen the swells of cyclist at ghost rides, where they remember friends killed on their bicycles by careless and cruel motorists.
The war over bike lanes in Toronto isn’t over yet. But I’ve seen how hard the cyclists fight, and I’ve seen how cowardly Doug Ford can be. So if I were to gamble?
I’d put my money on the cyclists.