The province has appealed the decision in Cycle Toronto's case against Ontario's anti-bike lane legislation that would remove the lanes on Yonge, University, and Bloor.
The strength of the evidence and the reasoning of the decision gives our incredible lawyers from Ecojustice and Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP confidence as we head to the Court of Appeal for Ontario to defend our win for people in Toronto and across the province.
Read our media release with Ecojustice.
(Cycle Toronto supporters gather in front of Queens Park to celebrate the victory. Photo: Joshua Best)
The decision in Cycle Toronto v. Ontario affirmed that the Charter exists to protect the rights of all Canadians, regardless of the whims of this or any government. Unfortunately, Premier Ford is questioning the rule of law and undermining the decision of the judiciary. The facts are clear that the Ontario government is ignoring its own experts and wasting taxpayer money by indulging in magical thinking that everyone can drive for every trip. This year alone, more Torontonians have been killed in traffic collisions than in homicides. Ripping out protected bike lanes will not reduce the time you are stuck in traffic.
Read more from pundits praising across the political spectrum:
Andrew Coyne, The Globe and Mail:
Nothing in the decision obliges the government to build new bicycle lanes. As such it involves no “positive rights,” which conservatives are right to oppose. It simply requires that before a government takes the extraordinary step of ordering the removal of lanes that have already been built – an action guaranteed to cost some lives and put many more in peril – it ought at least to have some basis in evidence or logic for doing so.
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.
There is no Charter right to bike lanes, before or after Schabas’s decision. The only thing bike lanes and the Charter have in common is that they both protect cyclists, a fact which drives Ford, his cabinet, and the PC majority in the legislature to distraction. This week’s decision was about something both much simpler and far more important: the threshold a government needs to meet before it can cause harm to its citizens, and how many falsehoods it can tell in the process.
Leonid Sirota, Double Aspect blog:
When I started writing this post, I thought that Justice Schabas must be wrong, though it was a closer call than many of his critics allowed. I have changed my mind. This won’t be a popular opinion, but I think that, while counterintuitive — including to me — his decision is correct, given the unusual circumstances of the case. But even if it were not, the demands for the notwithstanding clause to be used to deal with his judgment are as uncalled for as they are predictable.
