In an intriguing aside a third of the way into Justice Paul Schabas’ extraordinary decision (issued yesterday) in Toronto’s bike lane war with Premier Doug Ford, he reveals how, about a month ago, he learned that cabinet had tweaked some wording in its infamous “Reducing Gridlock” law and slipped those changes into an omnibus budget bill tabled in May.
The original legislation — Bill 212, which passed in the House late last fall — gave Queen’s Park not just the right to veto new bike lanes, but also the authority to remove existing ones and then shield itself from liability claims arising from cyclist accidents, all in the name of combatting gridlock.
As it transpired, those very lawyerly wording changes passed six weeks after Schabas’ issued an injunction blocking the government from proceeding with tendering construction contracts to delete the Bloor/Danforth, Yonge and University separated bike lanes from the map. It seemed to be a signal. Perhaps Queen’s Park was offering up some wiggle room in its absurd campaign. Instead of removing lanes, these new provisions talked about reconfiguring them, with government lawyers further contending that the whole case, brought by Cycle Toronto and several individual applicants, was therefore moot.
Schabas, however, was having none of it: “A distinction without a difference,” he wrote. Using its regulatory powers, the government “can still ‘remove’ the bike lanes.” Indeed, Schabas shot down any suggestion that the case was redundant and instead issued a 41-page ruling that categorically upheld all the Charter and evidence-based arguments advanced in favour of protecting existing bike lanes. The decision marks a huge victory, that will, I hope, drive a stake through the heart of the Tories’ nakedly partisan effort to brand itself as the anti-gridlock party.
Yet the ruling also reveals something foundational about the Ford government’s MO — an approach that frequently involves hyperbole, made-up statistics, and a chronic disregard for evidence. We knew all that before this case, but Schabas’ decision makes it abundantly clear, now and going forward, that governments can’t just pass laws that are steeped in, well, bullshit.
In fact, in a period when it feels like we’re adrift in a universe where political might has crushed any semblance of rational policy discourse, Cycle Toronto et al vs the Attorney General of Ontario et al feels like a balm — a moment showing that a strong argument can still win the day. In some ways, this outcome also reminds me of the Ford government’s Supreme Court loss in 2021, when it challenged Ottawa’s constitutional right to impose a national carbon pricing system — another moment when the Tories were blinded by pig-headedness and political hubris.
As Schabas relates in his examination of the facts of the case, Ford and his ministers filled the political atmosphere last fall with bogus claims, both about the allegedly low ridership on existing bike lanes and their purported impact on traffic across the city. The applicants, in turn, methodically dug up all sorts of government evidence to the contrary, including advice provided to cabinet by its own policy officials.
Undaunted, Ford’s emissaries doubled down. “When the new provisions were introduced on May 15, 2025, the Minister of Transportation stated four times in the Legislature that the government was going to `rip out those bike lanes,’ asserting, contrary to the evidence on this application and contrary to the advice received by the government, that ‘those bike lanes … have caused gridlock all across the City of Toronto.'” Hyperbole has consequences.
The applicants also methodically proved, again using expert testimony and reliable data, that removing existing lanes would drive up collisions, injuries, and deaths while actually creating more congestion thanks to the miracle of induced demand. The government claimed cyclists could find other routes or just not ride, and again the applicants convincingly showed, with both evidence and legal arguments, that these claims were essentially baseless: “The evidence presented by the [government] consists of weak anecdotal evidence and expert opinion which is unsupported, unpersuasive and contrary to the consensus view of experts.”
Indeed, the provincial government’s main expert witness, a TMU real estate management professor named Murtaza Haider, “did not address the issue of whether removing the target bike lanes and restoring a lane for cars would relieve congestion,” Schabas noted, adding, somewhat archly, “This is a surprising omission.” Tis.
It is obviously true that a mountain of compelling data didn’t get the applicants across the finish line. Their legal argument — that removing existing bike lanes violates Section 7 of the Charter, which guarantees life, liberty and the security of the person — held up in part because they made a point of not asserting that a decision in their favour meant municipalities would be compelled in the future to install bike lanes everywhere.
“The legislation,” Schabas wrote, “also imposes a high and grossly disproportionate cost on Section 7 rights holders. The negative effects of the impugned provision – injuries and death that will result from the restoration of a lane of motor vehicle traffic and the removal of the protected bike lanes – are completely out of sync with the aim of reducing traffic congestion.” That line also flows from the Charter, which states plainly that the “principles of fundamental justice” come into play if governments decide to strip people of their Section 7 protections. Needless to say, the liability shield in the original legislation could only be read as a giant red flag.
The upshot is that Ford & Co. wildly overplayed their hand and are now being held legally accountable.
While Ford promptly announced the government will appeal, the prospects don’t look good. An Ontario appeals court already rejected the government’s first attempt to quash Schabas’ injunction. And as Schabas himself points out, the Tories have, in effect, let all the air out of their rhetorical tires. After all, the evidence demonstrating the government’s flagrant disregard of the facts, as well as the mountain of documentation that puts the lie to virtually its entire legislative argument, means that any attempt to re-litigate this nonsense will invariably loop back to the formidable case assembled by Cycle Toronto, its expert witnesses, and its legal team.
The last point I’d make is that this decision broadly acknowledges the reliability of the policy and engineering analysis carried out by both provincial ministry-level officials and the City of Toronto when it comes to gauging traffic and assessing the impact of proposed bike lanes. The message is that the bureaucratic machinery that produces the advice needed to justify sometimes unpopular road allocation decisions remains robust, reliable, and, crucially, independent.
If it withstands further judicial scrutiny, Schabas’ ruling may ultimately mean that when the City of Toronto, or indeed other municipalities, install new bike lanes in the future, they’ll have a double coat of armour: one layer attributable to the rigorous analysis that already underpins such moves, and the other provided by a landmark legal decision that unequivocally affirms the importance, and therefore permanence, of separated bike lanes once installed.
Yesterday was a good day, one well worth celebrating.
Photo via City of Toronto
