The Ontario government has officially passed Bill 212 — a controversial piece of legislation that gives the province sweeping control over municipal bike lanes and lets construction of Highway 413 begin before Indigenous consultation or environmental assessment is complete.
The fast-tracked bill, which passed at Queen’s Park Monday, requires municipalities to ask the province for permission to install bike lanes when they would remove a lane of vehicle traffic.
It also goes a step further and allows the removal of three major Toronto bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue — though the specifics of if all three of those lanes or just sections of them will be ripped out remains up in the air.
Provincial officials have provided few concrete statements about their plans, despite being pressed about them for weeks. Many cycling advocates have protested the move.
“This legislation has the potential to revolutionize the way we deliver priority highway projects in Ontario, and it would bring a common-sense approach to installing bike lanes on city streets to ensure they don’t impede the flow of traffic,” Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said during the bill’s final reading.
Sarkaria said the province will establish a clear set of criteria for reviewing municipalities’ requests to install bike lanes, including effects on traffic volume, road safety, and emergency response times.
“If we determine that building those bike lanes would make congestion worse, they will not get built,” he said.
Critics doubtful of ‘data-driven process’ claims
The province will also review bike lane projects that have begun in the past five years, the minister said.
“It will be a data-driven process,” Sarkaria said to peals of laughter from the opposition benches Monday. Critics suggest the move to remove the Toronto lanes is based on little more than anecdotal evidence and complaints from some local business owners.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Premier Doug Ford wouldn’t clarify amendments to the province’s new bike lane bill, instead accusing Toronto of “inflating the costs” of removing the lanes along three major roads.
Much like the bike lane portions of the legislation, Bill 212 has also drawn concern from Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, because it would allow work to begin on Highway 413 before an Indigenous consultation is finished and exempts the project from the Environmental Assessment Act.
Highway 413 would be a 52-kilometre highway that connects Peel, Halton and York — much of which falls within treaty lands. In connecting those regions, the highway would cut across wetlands, rivers, forests and agricultural areas, according to the outgoing director of the Department of Consultation for Mississaugas of the Credit.
Speaking in advance of the bill’s passing Monday, Opposition NDP Leader Marit Stiles slammed the provincial government and said officials should be focusing on things that really matter to Ontarians, like a shortage of family doctors and soaring rents.
“We have a premier who is so focused on his vanity projects and fighting battles that he lost on Toronto city council, instead of actually focusing on the priorities of Ontarians,” she said.
“People are really fed up with the fact that this premier is so obsessed with downtown Toronto.”
Opposition MPPs in Ontario say new changes to the Ford government’s controversial bike lane bill would mean cyclists or their families can’t sue the province if they’re hurt or killed after bike lanes are removed. Dave Shellnutt, founder of The Biking Lawyer LLP, discusses the potential impact on cyclists.
Stiles also touched on a last-minute amendment to the bill from last week, which appears to protect the government from lawsuits should someone be hurt or killed after the removal of bike lanes.
“They’re more worried about protecting their own behinds than they are about protecting the lives of road users,” she said.
Uncertain costs loom
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner echoed that sentiment in a statement, and said introducing legal protections as an amendment to the original bill shows just how much the province “values the lives of people who bike.
“This government knows that this bill is going to make commuting more dangerous, and they’re [plowing] ahead anyway. And they’re using the tax dollars of people in Kitchener, Sarnia, Huntsville and North Bay to do it,” he said.
“Slashing environmental laws, ramming through expensive highway projects, ripping out bike lanes — none of these things are going to reduce gridlock. They’re actually going to make it worse, because more highways and more cars on the road means more time spent sitting in traffic.”
Liberal house leader John Fraser said the government seemingly protecting itself from the consequences of its own decision-making indicates officials weren’t fully considering what it was doing when crafting the legislation.
“They’re in such a hurry to do it, they’re saying, ‘Hey, let’s protect ourselves from any future liability, because we made this really quick, rash decision, because we want to get elected,'” he said.
An early Ontario election is expected next year, though provincial officials have yet to commit to one.
Sarkaria has said the province will foot the bill for bike lane removal costs, but also that he doesn’t believe the City of Toronto’s estimated price tag of $48 million, as it is double the price tag of the initial installation.
He suggested, however, that the province did not come up with its own cost estimates before proposing to remove the existing bike lanes.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has denounced the province for the new legislation, calling it a “significant overreach” and an unwanted incursion into municipal jurisdiction.
In an overall bid to ease gridlock, Bill 212 also facilitates 24-hour-a-day construction and accelerates property acquisitions.