Ontario passes bill that allows major Toronto bike lanes to be ripped out

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.

Similarly, Bill 212 has 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."

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.

"The fact that the government decided to protect themselves from lawsuits tells you everything you need to know about this government," she said. "They're more worried about protecting their own behinds than they are about protecting the lives of road users."

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.