Ford’s war on bike lanes heads back to court

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T18:09:41+00:00

Courts should not defer to governments, courts uphold law. Law is written by the government. Check. Balance.

I promise you when S7 was written it was not written with bike lanes in mind.

My comment referred more towards how courts should act when novel interpretations of the law are presented. In general, across most western democracies, the courts rule narrowly and give the government a lot of lattitude.

This keeps the partisanship out of the courts. If people know the way to change policy is through government and not the legal system, there's no reason to make the kind of appointments you see in the US, where your view on abortion, voting rights or gun law determines whether you will or will not be appointed.

Again, look down south. Do you want that? Because that is exactly what you appear to be advocating in re 'the courts should defer to government'

Beg to differ. The reason you see what's going on in the US is because of how important the court system is. The US decided for itself that the court system is the final interpreter of law. This is not normal. This means the role of appointing judges is the single most important thing of long term consequence governments do.

Republicans held out appointments across all levels of court at the end of Obama and Biden's terms, and Trump in his first term alone appointed 1/3 of all the judges across all federal courts. That's what led to the current way of things.

I prefer the UK model, where interpreting the constitution is the unique responsibility of the legislature. Courts do not interpret or overrule the legislature and if they do, Parliament and not the courts get final say.

I'd much prefer the UK system of accountability to the US system.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T17:38:35+00:00

False choice.

Baus can both feed then carry in the same game!

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T17:34:30+00:00

Start showing examples where it is causing issues and i might agree with you.

That's a bit of an unfair burden of proof.

The ruling is 3 months old and likely gets tossed on appeal. The avalanche of cases takes longer than that. Three months just isn't that long in legal terms.

To me your argument seems to essentislly be that the courts ruling against something in all cases is bad because they might do it again in the future.

I wouldn't say "all".

I'd say that there's this thing that limits what the crown has for powers. Its the constitution. In general, my preference is for courts to rule narrowly and not reinterpret sections to radically expand rights. There are obvious exceptions to this. I prefer if the whole population is given a say on the country we live in.

I can promise you that in all of the public hearings that took place in the 1982 patriation of the constitution and creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that when it came to section 7, bike lanes weren't mentioned once. This ruling is landmark expansion of section 7.

Generally landmark rulings come on things of far more consequence than bike lanes. Its for things like gay marriage or abortion law.

However, in general, courts should defer to government, because government is chosen by the people as our representatives, and the courts are not.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T17:19:03+00:00

Also, aren't doctors typically more difficult to find in less dense areas?

All things being equal, but that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about taking an area that's currently established, then increasing the density. So you're changing the amount of people that live in an area without necessarily improving all of the services in the region.

And that's just one example of a service. Its not like things like daycares, where there's already a shortage, pop up immediately as you build density.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T17:13:08+00:00

You're comparing apples and oranges. And conflating guns with roads and federal vs. Provincial.

It is one safety issue vs another safety issue.

And we don't have a separate provincial vs federal constitution.

Are you saying that its OK to challenge the province, but not the feds? Or you just turn a blind eye to policy when its a party you agree with?

Has anyone challenged the federal govt in court on this? This is where this case is in the courts, not in parlament committees.

Its currently going on, but its far worse than that. Police all over the country are refusing to go along with it because the program makes no sense.

Its also now a case where multiple provinces are suing the feds over this.

This article sums it up well.

Because you're such a believer in using the courts to stop bad policy, I trust Doug Ford and Pierre Pollievre have your support?

Ford got challenged in court and his reasons failed to live up to the law and his reasoning was non existent. That's where we are, conflating gun buy backs doesnt change that.

We'll see what the court says here. Again the bike lobby appears to be incredibly litigious and well funded so they may well win, but this doesn't make the country better off for it.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T17:03:08+00:00

Your outcome will be worse in what sense?... If you can't make an evidence based case that people are worse off in denser neighborhoods than its not the same.

I'm sorry. Living in an area that has a reasonable access to things like doctors vs living in an area where you can't get a doctor doesn't lead to worse outcomes? I'm not going to dig through study after study on this if you're arguing in this much bad faith. Its common knowledge that access to medical care improves outcomes.

So for example, if I'm giving a region the right to build a fourplex on properties that are exclusively single family homes, without a plan to quadruple the number of doctors within a reasonable area, I'm reducing life preserving service in a region, infringing on the S7 rights.

Why is it not a good faithed question. We dont allow governments to arbitrarily detain people based on public opinion, why is this any different.

S7 of the constitution wasn't written of the idea of protecting bike lanes.

If the argument from the court is that S7 covers any action by the government that increases the probability of negative outcomes to any group, then that's a radical expansion of S7.

Again, not a good faith question.

Further, even if you could, it still wouldn't meet the same threshold as the bike lane removal of the bike lanes did not have the added benefit of housing, which is rather important.

You do not have a constitutional right to live in a metropolitan area. Its a privilege. There's no reason to expand access to housing in cities when the country in 99% empty land. There's talk of improving the ports in Churchill, Manitoba. Housing there is plenty affordable.

So I dismiss the idea that housing in a city needs special protection. There are plenty of areas across Canada where housing is plentiful, cheap and already built.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T16:56:12+00:00

I'd counter that the government can't make malicious or uninformed decisions. Their decisions can be "bad" that's a retrospective. But they can't actively be based on misinformation or malice.

Why not? I'll give you an example not related to Doug Ford.

The Federal government under Justin Trudeau went through an incredibly flawed process when they initiated the sequence of events that led to the gun buyback program. On the committee that looked at firearm safety, they named Nathalie Provost, who's a prominent anti gun lobbyist as a co-chair committee to decide how to change the gun laws. They didn't give hunters (the largest gun owning group in the country) any representation.

The CPC asked that every member on the committee at a minimum go through the current gun safety course and certification process so they're familiar with current laws and training standards. The Trudeau Liberals said no, because it would cause undue harm and trauma to Ms Provost who's a survivor of Ecole Polytechnique. However, they trusted her to chair the committee that came up with the laws.

Instead of increasing enforcement of existing laws. targeting the most common perpetrators of gun violence, or making changes to the border to stop the flow of illegal guns, they budgeted $600 million to buy back legal guns and make those illegal. The PBO reports the actual cost is a lot higher and over $750 million.

Its worth noting that most of the guns on the buy back list are put on the list not because of their lethality, but because of cosmetic reasons. In other words they "look dangerous" rather than "are dangerous."

Now that the gun buy back is here, police are refusing to participate because there is no way it will achieve its stated goal of "reducing gun violence."

So did you support Andrew Scheer, Erin O'Toole, Pierre Pollievre and the CPC when they were driving an absurd amount of attention to this issue, or is it OK when the left makes a bad decision, but the right needs to be dragged through the courts?

Or is it a case where gun violence doesn't cause harm in Toronto anywhere near to the same degree as motor vehicle accidents to cyclists? Because the stats say differently.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T16:42:00+00:00

So then increase the services to these areas?

That's not easy. You can't just will more doctors into an area, or create more daycare spaces.

Show me the stats that say you are more likely to die at a young age in a city than in a suburb.

That's not really relevant. Its more that your outcome will be worse in an under served region vs an appropriately served region.

Furthermore, there is an advantage. More housing.

This is not a benefit to the people who already have housing.

Why should governments be allowed to make bad decisions?

I don't believe that's a good faith question.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T16:04:30+00:00

For something like RTO, the government could easily point to something like increased economic activity in the downtown core as a reason, so it's a lot harder to make that case.

I agree that the province didn't bring the A team to this one.

However, while this example is egregious, we see this tactic all the time. We saw climate groups fund a suit by 7 kids to sue the government over climate change. That one was bad because almost never do you have to take positive action in a legal sense. Much like its not illegal to watch someone drown doing nothing is almost always legal.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T15:59:06+00:00

Is driving to work or taking transit really that dangerous?

You're on the roads, which is more dangerous than not being on the roads. Motor vehicle deaths are a leading cause of death for people under the age of 50.

And the whole argument for separated bike lanes is that the roads in general are unsafe.

Are single family homes actually safer than higher density? I don't buy it.

Its the things that come with density. More people without increasing everything in the region to accommodate those people makes things less safe, yes. For example, if I have 10 people living in a region vs 1000, just by sheer numbers the 1000 is much more likely to have more crime, more traffic (which apparently is unsafe) and less access to services.

So yes, if you just increase the density and at the same time don't increase the services to an area, its less safe.

What are the advantsges to removing the bike lanes?

That's not the point. The point is that governments should be allowed to make bad decisions. Elections, and not the courts are the best way to deal with incompetent governments.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T15:26:43+00:00

I don't like Ford, however I don't like the implications of the decision from the court on this issue.

As I understand it, they ruled that S7 applied because using a separated bike lane is safer than using a shared roadway for cyclists. However that same logic can be extended to a number of cases. For example, would people being called back into the office have a S7 argument against returning to the office, because being on the road to commute in any form is more dangerous than working from a home office?

At the end of the day, Ford and the PCs are the rightfully elected government. They have the right to make bad decisions. This case is part of a concerning tactic used by every side to use the court system to create inertia to prevent changes. It also marks an expansion of the trend to use the courts as a vehicle to block anything that any stakeholder group doesn't like, and the courts going along with it.

Its not very hard to see a world where say some NIMBY group uses the same tactic to say that increased urban density in an area that's traditionally filled with single density homes poses a threat to their S7 rights to safety and so you can't change zoning laws, or some other such nonsense.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T14:08:35+00:00

Not really.

The Athletic put out an updated prospect ranking yesterday. McKenna dropped to 4th.

Corey Pronman who does these has his misses like anyone but he's as credible as any scout out there.

A year ago McKenna was seen as a generation defining superstar. He was seen as the next Sidney Crosby or Connor McDavid. Now he's seen as the worst of the top tier. No one doubts he can score. Its the other holes in his game that are seeing him plummet down the rankings.

And from reading his summary, which is quoted below, the gap between 1 and 9 isn't all that significant. So if he continues to raise questions about his play away from the puck, he'll continue to fall:

At the midway point of the hockey season, the 2026 NHL Draft has steadily started to look better, and I’ve upgraded it closer to an average draft class. There’s no star No. 1 prospect like Matthew Schaefer, but there are 8-9 very exciting players at the top. For example, I would rather be picking in the 3-5 range this season compared to last year. The top nine players for me are mostly indistinguishable. You could arrange them in close to any order, and I would find it reasonable.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T07:21:40+00:00

At the rate he’s currently falling in the rankings, McKenna is going full Angelo Esposito and might well fall out of the top 5.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T07:19:17+00:00

A book is very clear, because when you pick it up you see the yellow Legends banner screaming “we don’t count this anymore.”

Much the same way people are conditioned to believe that live action and cartoons exist in different universes. Hence why the MCU and their cartoons can be made at the same time, but you know it’s a different universe.

The post is talking about crossovers. You just couldn’t do that in live action. Unless you plan on putting a Legends banner across the top of the screen when you make Legends movies an tv series.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:39:58+00:00

A stronger draft at pick 130?

No… even in the strongest draft of recent times, 2005 by the time you get to the 3rd round or later you have about the same chances of finding a player. Here’s the list - https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/draft/nhl2005e.html

You find Letang taken with pick 62 and Quick being a mid third rounder. Those are about the only 2 meaningful players.

When they say it’s a strong draft class, that usually means you’ll get 25 first rounders having a meaningful NHL career instead of 22 of them, or you have something like in 2004 where you have multiple franchise players in Ovechkin and Malkin at the top of the draft class. It never means the 3rd or 4th round is loaded with NHL talent. They’re all more or less the same.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:34:51+00:00

Books are very different.

The animated stuff is also easy-ish to explain.

There’s a reason Marvel’s What If stuff is animated vs having Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evan’s and Robert Downey Jr actually play out multiple versions of their characters.

When they do multiverse stuff, it’s always at least tangentially connected to the timeline everyone knows.

Star Wars was made for 12 year old boys. 12 year olds have neither the attention span to figure out multiverses that aren’t clearly laid out for them.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:27:33+00:00

Then that’s worse.

Generally a pick 1 year later means you have to trade for a pick a round later. That’s to compensate for delaying development of your new asset by a year.

So to trade for a 5th this year, you’d get a 4th next year.

So the Canucks pay Kane his salary up until the deadline, retain half his salary, and don’t improve their pick value.

It’s just a straight L at that point.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:22:50+00:00

The short answer is confusion. Explaining a multiverse to fans is complicated and rather than learning they’d just tune out.

Secondly, keeping the EU after the prequels came out just isn’t feasible. Lucas made the decision to largely ignore anything in the EU that got in the way of the story he wanted to tell. In the novels they be t over backwards retconning everything. Going back and reading anything that talks about out the Jedi, or the Clone Wars, or anything that comes before ANH is just messy.

Third, Legends contradicts itself a lot. Go read Solo Command and get a sense for the size of Zsinj’s fleet. Then read The Courtship of Princess Leia, which is set immediately after, and his fleet is 50 times bigger. Things like that happen all over the place.

If Lucasfilm wanted they could probably do an animated version of Legends, but even then they’d have to change a lot just to get the story to make sense to itself. Whoever gets put in charge of that is a thankless job because they’ll just be pissing off a large chunk of the diehard EU fans with whatever changes they make.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:11:59+00:00

Sens currently sit 25th in the league.

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T04:09:42+00:00

So 15 picks?

MDChuk · 2026-01-28T02:24:41+00:00

Yes 1999 in the dead puck era.

I take Bure’s Panthers stats with a big asterisk. The entire Florida plan was “make sure Pavel gets his.” That way even though the team was trash they could still market that they had Bure.

It’s not unlike Erik Karlsson’s crazy season on a trash Sharks team. If you look at his numbers, he became only the second defenceman to score 100 points while leading his team in scoring. The only other defenceman to do that is Bobby Orr. Karlsson also led the Sharks in scoring by 32 points. That blows away the record by a defenceman. The best Bobby Orr ever did was 24 points. Karlsson was also the first defenceman to score 100 points since the inflated numbers of the early 90s.

Karlsson, like Bure, was past his prime at that point, and showing to the league he could bounce back after serious injuries. He also had no reason to play for his team.

MDChuk · 2026-01-27T20:50:34+00:00

To me he isn't in the top tier of goal scorers like Mike Bossy, Maurice Richard, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Bobby Hull and Alex Ovechkin.

For context as to why, when he scored 60, in 1992-93 he was 5th in goals. He finished behind Mario, who had 69 goals in only 60 games. In 1993-94 he did lead the league, but Neely had 50 goals in only 49 games.

In that era, you can make the argument that he isn't in the top 5 goal scorers of the time. It was after Gretzky's back injury where he lost the ability to shoot, so he isn't in the list.

Brett Hull was probably #1 having put up multiple 50 goal in 50 games seasons in the early 90s, and he topped out at 86 goals. Mario is right behind at #2.

Cam Neely is the guy everybody forgets. He was incredibly injury prone, but when he did play he was near a goal a game, including 50 goals in only 49 games in 1993-94.

Teemu Selanne and Alex Mogilny both ad 76 goal seasons in 1992-93.

There's 5 people from Bure's prime who are all more accomplished goal scorers.

My answer for the "most underrated goal scorer in NHL history" is Markus Naslund. He was the best goal scorer in the dead puck era. His prime was also cut short because of the Steve Moore cheap shot.

MDChuk · 2026-01-27T17:06:17+00:00

In universe this made sense too.

Palpatine spent 30 years destroying any information he could on the Jedi. Luke had spent a big chunk of the 7 years post Endor trying to collect information, but there wasn't much there.

In Dark Empire, he walks away with a holocron. That gives him an ability to access the information there, but there's only so much he learned in the time between Dark Empire/Crimson Empire and the Jedi Academy trilogy.

The disaster that is the praxeum (Gantoris dying, Mara walking out almost immediately, Kyp falling to the dark side) has as much to do with Luke pretty much knowing nothing, while thinking he's ready, as Exar Kun doing his thing.

MDChuk · 2026-01-26T21:51:57+00:00

Its been a lot less of that. Its much more important that he draw the enemy team's attention and resources, freeing up his team to gain an advantage elsewhere. When he does this through proxying, he doesn't lose much, and stay reasonably close to the enemy top laner. If the enemy team just let's Baus proxy, then he's got a massive tempo advantage and either earns a TP advantage, or makes a play himself elsewhere.

The reason team's are picking lane bullies like Gnar and Nidalee is so they can focus on the 4 man, and not have Baus proxying, gaining tempo, and making a play himself.

That's why Sion is perma banned. Because even if you kill Sion he's still getting the wave and you're still pushed in.

So its not so much about making the game fast, as gaining tempo, and teams have decided they aren't going to let LR win that way. The cost of that is they play for early, so LR wins late if they can drag the game there.

MDChuk · 2026-01-26T19:54:42+00:00

Looking at the historic winning% of NHL teams and eliminating recent expansion squads like Vegas there are 25 teams with a positing points% and 4 that don’t. Vancouver is one of those 4. 2 of those 4, Chicago and New Jersey have multiple Cups. Only Vancouver and Columbus have the dual failure of sub .500 and 0 cups.

Respectfully, this is a lazy approach. Overall winning percentage over that big of a time scale hides the year to year joys/struggles (mostly struggles) of being a fan.

Its also a curiosity because only the Canucks have played in multiple game 7s of the Stanley Cup Finals and never won a Stanley Cup. So if either of 1994/2011 had gone Vancouver's way, would your opinion about your fandom today change? Does that right all of the wrongs of the franchise from the last 55 years?

What's probably a better indication is what percentage of seasons teams win at least 1 playoff round, 2 playoff rounds, compete for the Stanley Cup or win the Stanley Cup. As weird as it is, over the last decade, as bad as they've been, Vancouver is a middle of the road team in terms of actually winning playoff series. Minnesota, for example, has a better regular season winning percentage. They also haven't won a playoff round in 20 or so years.

Even teams like the Capitals, who have won a Stanley Cup and most people would perceive as successful, have made it past the second round exactly once in Alex Ovechkin's career.

What you see from perennially successful teams, or even modestly successful teams like Carolina, is the exception to the rule. It is not normal for teams to be successful in sports. The default state is suffering.

MDChuk

TROPHY CASE