August 14, 2026 - A panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal for Ontario has reversed a lower court decision made in July 2025 and says Premier Doug Ford’s government can rip out 19 kilometres of protected bike lanes in Toronto along Bloor St., University Ave. and Yonge St. reports CBC and Toronto Today.
The government’s initial attempt to remove the bike lanes back in Nov. 2024 via Bill 212 (the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, 2024) was initially blocked by Justice Paul Schabas who ruled the removal would be unconstitutional because it violated the Charter and would put people at increased risk of harm and death, which engages the right to life and security of the person – read more here.
The Ford government appealed, and arguments were heard in January 2026 with today’s court ruling stating, “The legislature is free to legislate to remove a bicycle lane from a road — indeed, it may remove a road entirely — without implicating the Charter.”
According to Toronto Today, it’s still not clear whether the city’s cycling advocates will take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada for a final say.
In reversing the lower court decision, the panel claimed that the Schabas ruling inflated the negative impacts of removing bike lanes. “[The original ruling is] talking of injuries and deaths that will occur only if the bicyclists choose to ride on the roads that have no bicycle lanes.”
According to Justice Grant Huscroft, “The application judge erred in law in interpreting and applying s. 7. But his decision is wrong in a more profound sense, for it subverts a fundamental principle of our democratic constitutional order.” The government “exercised its law-making authority” in passing the bill, which he called “the sort of decision legislatures make routinely without attracting any concerns about the constitutionality of their actions.”
Despite the province’s own advisers and external experts broadly agreeing that removing bike lanes wouldn’t accomplish its stated goal of reducing traffic congestion and could make people less safe, the appeals judges wrote, “legislative policy is not arbitrary just because some or even many advisors, experts, and citizens predict that it will not work.”
In the end, Huscroft wrote that the key issue was simply the division of powers between the state and the judiciary, “Courts play no role in the policy development process, no role in the choices made by the government in proposing legislation, and no role in the legislature’s decision to pass a law.”
According to Michael Longfield, executive director of Cycle Toronto, the decision is a step back for evidence-based decision making. “I want to be clear that bike lanes do not cause traffic congestion. Removing them will put people’s lives at risk,” he told CBC.
Longfield added that he is still weighing with his legal team whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. “It’s too early to say definitively, but we do intend to keep fighting this to the fullest extent of the law. We’re still reviewing with our legal team, but suffice to say, we don’t accept that this is over,” he told Toronto Today.
“This decision does nothing to change the facts that were affirmed in our original win, and from the government’s own effort that bike lanes do not cause traffic congestion, and removing them will put people’s lives at risk,” he added.
