The Ontario government (and Premier Doug Ford) have won their legal battle for the right to remove multiple bike lanes in Toronto, after a court decision last year found that returning those segments of the street exclusively to drivers would violate the Charter right of cyclists to security of the person. The decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal, the province’s highest court, almost certainly brings an end to the judicial battle over the fate of the bike lanes in the provincial capital — but the long delay imposed by the efforts of advocates Cycle Toronto now puts the fate of the bike lanes squarely in the middle of municipal election season.
A unanimous decision in the case of Cycle Toronto v. Ontario by the Court of Appeal, written by Justice Grant Huscroft, is more than just a narrow victory on the specific bike lanes on a few kilometres of roadway in one city — and it’s more than just an immediate political victory for Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. The decision released Friday at noon is also a broad philosophical rebuttal to what the court (and many conservative legal advocates) argues is an overly broad interpretation of the Section 7 rights of Canadians under the Charter, and indeed overly expansive interpretations of the Charter at the expense of other, equally important parts of the Canadian constitution.
“[T]he application of those principles, divorced from a broader understanding of the constitution of which they are a part, has led to a surprising outcome: the conclusion that routine legislation regulating road usage is unconstitutional,” the decision reads in some of its opening paragraphs. “Something has gone wrong.”
The decision finds that the trial judge misapplied the relevant Charter jurisprudence, finding that there is no Section 7 right to bike lanes, and that even if there were the removal of those bike lanes with the government’s Bill 212 was not “arbitrary or disproportionate,” words with specific meanings in Canadian Charter law.
More than that, the court says in its decision that the initial decision violated a core part of Parliamentary democracy older than the Charter (and older than Canada): that no Parliament (or in this case, no provincial legislature) can bind its successors. If the bike lanes installed in Toronto in 2021 were not required by the Charter (an argument no party to this case made) then their removal by legislation passed in 2024 cannot be prevented by appeal to the Charter.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria predictably welcomed the court’s decision on Friday, saying in a release “Today’s court ruling is a victory for common sense and for respecting the appropriate division of roles between duly elected legislatures and the courts.”
Cycle Toronto, the group that launched the Charter challenge, said on Friday that it will continue to “keep defending our bike lanes to the full extent of the law.” That could potentially include appealing the Court of Appeal’s decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, but the country’s highest court only hears a small fraction of cases that seek leave to appeal.
If the battle in the courts is over or nearly over, there’s still a battle in the calendar, at least in two senses. It’s already mid-August, and even if the removal of bike lanes on Bloor Street and University Avenues isn’t exactly a monumental civic project, it’s also not going to be trivial for the government to achieve it before colder weather forces the end of the construction season for 2026, particularly if Cycle Toronto were to request and receive an injunction staying the government’s hands until the Supreme Court can decide whether to hear the appeal or not. That’s not guaranteed but a similar injunction was granted during the Court of Appeals process.
Even if no injunction is forthcoming, the government might be wise to wait and see how politics on the ground in the province’s biggest city play out. Mayoral challenger Brad Bradford has already proclaimed that, if he defeats incumbent Olivia Chow, he’ll remove the westernmost extension of the Bloor bike lanes, which happens to be the part of the bike lane that intrudes into Ford’s own heartland of Etobicoke. There’s a plausible way forward for the Ford government to get what it wants (Bradford’s announcement this week echoed the Ford government’s own talking points about bike lanes) while maintaining relatively clean hands on their part: if Bradford wins the mayoral election it will be the proper level of government (Toronto City Council) making the decision, not a legislative intrusion from the provincial legislature.
Every other path forward carries the possibility of more political pain for the Ford government. The court’s decision confirms that the legislature has the powers that Bill 212 sought and so Ford can do this directly if Bradford loses in October. But Ford is also less popular today than he was even last year, and the one Progressive Conservative MPP who was loudest in opposition to the bike lanes in Etobicoke was one of the few to lose their seat in the 2025 election: Christine Hogarth was replaced by Liberal Lee Fairclough. Ford doesn’t exactly have the magic touch when he wades into municipal affairs anymore, if he ever did: his preferred candidate in the 2023 Toronto mayoral byelection (Mark Saunders) went down to embarrassing defeat and a Liaison Strategies poll released Friday finds that his endorsement of any candidate in this year’s Mississauga mayoral race (where Ford once promised to “send an army”) would be a net harm to any candidate that received it.
All of which leaves us where we were before last year’s initial decision in the Cycle Toronto case: the Ford government can do this, if they really want to. But the court’s permission doesn’t make it wise or guarantee that it will be politically profitable for the Premier and his party.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article included reference to bike lanes on Danforth Avenue. In fact, bike lanes on Danforth Avenue were not a part of this court challenge. TVO Today regrets the error.