To Premier Ford, Minister…

To Premier Ford, Minister Sarkaria, and any MPPs considering voting for Bill 212,

This bill is an aggressive attack on youth, and we will not stand for it.

Many of us want to continue living in the GTA and Bill 212 will further crush this already dwindling dream. By forcing people off of bikes and into cars, Bill 212 adds another burden to the cost of living. A $200 bike is the same cost as a month of TTC fares, and a little over 1% of the cost of a $15000 car. Building more bike lanes rather than tearing them out will secure affordable transportation for generations to come.

We are also in a housing crisis, making it very difficult for us youth to imagine finding an affordable home in the city. We need all the space we can get to build housing, and space for cars should not take priority over space for living. When we shift people from cars to bikes by building bike lanes, we can transform parking lots into housing. We can also plan denser streets, creating more space for homes.

Also pressing on our anxieties about the future is climate change. These bike lanes are key to reducing Toronto’s carbon emissions. It’s quite simple: cars pollute, bikes don’t. In 2021, we saw that 24% of all of Toronto’s carbon emissions came from cars[1]. Even electric cars involve upfront carbon, and require often destructive mining. We are already seeing the devastating impacts of climate change on affordability and wellbeing, which will continue to worsen if we continue to put more cars on the road through legislation like Bill 212.

This bill also threatens to expedite the destruction of parts of the Greenbelt for Highway 413, accelerating the expropriation of land, and bypassing proper environmental assessment. This would replace important ecosystems, air filtration, and food production with a huge source of emissions. Already, we are seeing around 600 deaths per year from air pollution, mostly from cars[2]. It is terrifying to imagine what this number will be like if we pave through the lungs of the city (the Greenbelt) for a continuous stream of cars. Induced demand will mean that this highway will not even help traffic, it will only line the pockets of Mr. Ford’s developer friends. This will leave us youth to struggle with poor air quality, food insecurity, and worsening climate chaos.

While cities around the world like Paris and Boston move forward in creating more bike lanes for more livable cities, Bill 212 would push Toronto backward to more emissions, higher cost of living, and more dangerous streets. Instead, we need to be looking to the future, and building bike lanes instead of highways.

Building more bike lanes is also incredibly important for our current needs. Most students don’t have a driver’s license or can’t afford a car. Public transportation like the TTC is expensive, and often very slow. Cycling is the most accessible form of transportation for youth, and it is better for our health, our environment, and our wallets. But many of us don’t bike because there is not enough infrastructure. It’s not enough to simply save the bike lanes we have right now. If the provincial government wants youth to have affordable transportation, you must work to support municipalities in constructing more bike lanes. The $48 million you plan to waste tearing out bike lanes, and the $10 billion[3] you plan to waste building Highway 413 should instead be invested in improving the province. Whether it’s building more bike lanes, constructing public housing with heat pumps, investing in green jobs, or fixing our healthcare system, that money is badly needed. When we do all of this, Toronto’s youth may have a hope of a future in this city.

For the youth of this city, you must stop Bill 212 and invest in Ontario’s future instead.

Fridays For Future TO

Sources:
[1]: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/water-environment/environmenta…
[2]:https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/report-cost-removal-bike-lanes-t…
[3]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ottawa-ontario-deal-highway-413-….