The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - August 01, 2025


Insane Judge rules bike lanes are a human right - CANNOT BE REMOVED!


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

179.09639

Word count

2,315

Sentence count

107

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Ontario Court of Appeal rules that bike lanes are a human right. Does this mean we can have them in cities across the province? Is this a good or bad thing? Is it safe to ride a bike in the city of Toronto without getting hit by cars?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys Wyatt Claypool here. So apparently we are learning in the Sean Foyt situation
00:00:06.360 that free speech is not actually human right in Canada because apparently municipal governments
00:00:14.020 all over Canada including Parks Canada is just denying permits based on whether they like a
00:00:19.760 performer or not. But know what I do know is a human right because a court in Ontario has now
00:00:26.880 told us bike lanes. Bike lanes are apparently a human right. I know the ruling doesn't say that
00:00:33.640 bike lanes are a human right but they're effectively saying so because apparently if
00:00:38.220 Ontario gets rid of bike lanes in the city of Toronto it is putting people at risk so you can't
00:00:44.160 get rid of them which means that they are permanent which means that effectively a bike lane is a human
00:00:49.960 right because if you don't have bike lanes people could die. It's literally a parody that I've seen
00:00:56.860 people do before where they have just people getting up and just saying well we need whatever
00:01:02.080 ridiculous nebulous thing because people will die if we don't have it. Blood will be on your hands.
00:01:09.020 I don't even like Doug Ford. He is a terrible premier in Ontario but I 100% agree with him that the city
00:01:17.920 of Toronto cannot congest the streets with bike lanes that slow traffic down because there are a few people
00:01:25.200 who want to be able to ride a bike easier because I guess they need to get some cardio in on the way
00:01:30.540 to and from work. I'm sorry it's not a human right and you can have bike lanes in cities. Have them in
00:01:37.440 the center downtown core area. You don't have a right to ride a bike from one side of the city to the other
00:01:44.080 without actually running into normal traffic because guess what every time we have a new bike lane we have
00:01:50.520 us. We don't have a lane for traffic to be in which means that if we go from three lanes to two lanes
00:01:56.780 or sometimes two lanes to one lane we are increasing commute times not just by half but more than half
00:02:03.920 because it causes a lot more traffic jams to have all of the traffic in one lane. So it's not like you
00:02:10.700 have two lanes and you go down to one lane so it's only 50% the speed. It's more like 30% the speed now
00:02:16.620 because of all the cars having to stop for more lights and whatnot. I need to talk about as well
00:02:22.960 just some of the dumb reactions I've seen in the aftermath of this Ontario court decision.
00:02:29.860 Ford's PC government is appealing it. If anything I actually think that's kind of weak. This is why I
00:02:34.660 like the new blue party in Ontario. What you should be doing is using the notwithstanding laws. Say yes we
00:02:41.280 can get rid of bike lanes. Enforce your ruling against us. We're just going to do it. The judge can get
00:02:47.220 in front of you guys to try and block it if they want but this is not a human right. There is no safety
00:02:53.360 massive safety concern with getting rid of bike lanes. Well someone riding a bike may be more likely
00:02:59.500 to get hit by a car. Okay. We could also have like overhead bridges and underground walkways
00:03:07.760 under all the roads in order to have pedestrians not have to walk in front of vehicles along like along
00:03:13.840 the crosswalks. It doesn't mean it's like now a human right just because it's maybe the better option
00:03:18.700 if you can do it. Bike lanes may be nice if you have already two full lanes and then you can build the
00:03:24.680 bike lane like close to the sidewalk and it's not actually impeding on anything. It's not realistic though
00:03:30.680 because we have to live in reality. Anyways before I talk about this more I just want to quickly mention
00:03:34.840 to you guys. Remember if you like this channel like the video subscribe if you're not yet a subscriber
00:03:39.600 and leave a comment on what you think about the situation. It helps me in the algorithm as well as
00:03:45.140 I like to read through people's thoughts on these different topics. So I think Jason Kenney has a good
00:03:50.960 take on this the former premier of Alberta. He says this is just nuts a charter protected right to bike
00:03:57.640 lanes. If judges like this think the charter empowers them to regulate road traffic why even bother with
00:04:03.920 the pretense of elected responsible government. If someone had suggested during the partition debates
00:04:09.220 in 1980 to 82 that judges would use the charter to quash legislation on roadways they would have been
00:04:15.520 laughed out of the room. Thank goodness for the leadership of the NDP premier Alan Blakeney at that
00:04:22.320 time with his insistence on of a democratic check on the abuse of judicial powers through the inclusion of
00:04:28.440 the notwithstanding clause which sadly the Ontario government isn't using. They are going to appeal
00:04:34.300 this which means it could literally take years to actually decide whether or not bike lanes are truly
00:04:40.600 a human right and the government must guarantee them everywhere. How did we how did we all survive
00:04:47.220 with no bike lanes at one time of our lives? Apparently we were taking our lives into our own hands going
00:04:55.200 out there riding bicycles without bike lanes. We we all need purple hearts for what we've been through
00:05:01.820 medals of honor. I need to comment on a response to this post by somebody I typically have a low opinion
00:05:10.560 of but somehow it's just gotten lower and that is Andrew Coyne. Jason Kenney said that and Andrew
00:05:17.360 Coyne quote tweeted it and responded saying or you know they could just appeal the decision. Okay it's it's not
00:05:25.180 oh okay it doesn't matter that's a bad decision because you can appeal bad decisions. Okay well
00:05:31.560 how much money is this going to cost taxpayers in legal fees in order to appeal the dumbest decision
00:05:38.000 that a judge has ever handed down in Canadian history? Oh we know that you can just use the
00:05:43.020 institutional process. This is the problem with Andrew Coyne. Every time a conservative has a good
00:05:50.560 objection to something dumb the government is doing Andrew will come by and say oh well you know
00:05:54.960 there's an institutional process to dealing with that. Did you know that? Oh well you know we have
00:06:00.540 institutions for a reason. Andrew have come up with a different joke. Is this all you do is pop up to
00:06:09.480 tell people that things are the way they are. Okay yeah and they think things suck and they should get
00:06:15.300 public scrutiny. Apparently we're not supposed to complain about stupid things because you know there's
00:06:19.860 a process for dealing with it. I can't stand that crap. Anyways I need to now comment. I need to
00:06:26.340 there was another person was bringing this up earlier in the day and I need to highlight it as
00:06:30.640 well because this was probably one of this was even dumber than what Andrew Coyne said because people
00:06:35.960 are apparently defending the judge's decision or acting like we're all a bunch of like
00:06:41.140 Neanderthals. We're a bunch of non-sophisticates because we don't understand the judge's logic here.
00:06:47.040 Okay I'm almost at it.
00:06:53.680 Dude I tweeted so much yesterday. I apologize if you find my feed because I'm having to scroll down
00:06:58.120 a while to get to this thing. I think I found it.
00:07:05.120 Ah yes here it is. So this is actually a good take of course from my friend Brian Breguet and then I
00:07:11.960 need to get to the leftist who is responding to him. I've highlighted this person before because they
00:07:16.440 have a very long string of bad takes over this last week but Brian Breguet has a good take here saying
00:07:23.180 just abolish elected governments and have judges rule. It would be quicker. Absolutely insane that 0.97
00:07:28.400 an elected government can't remove some bike lanes. Whether you support the removal or not surely you
00:07:33.260 can agree that government should be able to do it. Absolutely. But this man here Robert Glasgow says
00:07:40.240 notice the complete lack of engagement with any of the analysis done by the court regarding why
00:07:45.980 S7 is engaged or why it's not saved by S1. The court found removal of the lanes was arbitrary
00:07:53.000 and would result in significant physical harm and death for cyclists. No that's not just because
00:08:00.180 something can happen does not mean then you can't remove the bike lanes. It's not like we're removing
00:08:05.700 the bike lanes and pulling the plug on somebody's life. No there's slight increased risk if you ride
00:08:12.640 your bike around traffic rather than in a bike lane. Okay but based on that logic a judge could
00:08:18.880 stop the government or coerce the government into doing literally anything because there could always
00:08:24.840 be an argument that someone could cut their finger on a piece of paper. In fact I actually if I become a
00:08:29.720 judge apparently I can rule that we need to slash the amount of paperwork that Canadians have to do 0.99
00:08:34.620 every year when they're dealing with the government because you could get a paper cut could get
00:08:38.700 infected and you could die. And then this argument continues below. Brian rightfully says he doesn't
00:08:46.920 give a crap about what the judge's reasoning is. It's clearly stupid. And Robert Glasgow follows that up
00:08:54.480 that what Brian was saying and says the government passed a law that would oppose a significant and
00:08:59.180 material bodily bodily harm or death to persons in Canada. They provided no rational basis for this law
00:09:06.560 and the law itself was implemented entirely arbitrarily per the finding. Why should this engage S7?
00:09:15.720 And at one point I then followed up and said not at all the government was getting rid of something
00:09:20.340 that somehow Ontario has survived without for multiple decades without fatalities all over the place.
00:09:25.480 The idea that that this is posing a serious threat to bodily harm to people could justify blocking any
00:09:30.940 government decision because in theory someone could get hurt. They could stop the police from enforcing
00:09:35.480 law because chasing down criminals could cause harm. And obviously I agree with myself here but I I find
00:09:42.980 this is the kind of liberal attitude I hate. It's not anyone who votes liberal it's a very specific
00:09:48.360 wonkish liberal attitude saying did you read the analysis? Did you not read what the judge said?
00:09:55.880 Are you just not going to engage in the argument that the judge put forward? No because it's a stupid
00:10:02.600 argument and we should be able to use common sense. In fact common sense is something that judges are
00:10:08.120 supposed to use in order to determine whether or not a law is good or it's violating the charter.
00:10:14.340 What's the charter right to being slightly safer within a bike lane rather than having to ride it in
00:10:19.960 the streets? Do you think that in 1867 that they were concerned with whether or not a new policy
00:10:26.680 would result in people being slightly more at risk of something? No it's 1867 and people weren't
00:10:32.900 exactly even living past the age of 60 most of the time. And so the idea that you now have a right
00:10:38.460 to be able to drive your bike to work every day not many people really do that in order
00:10:43.920 because like because apparently there'd be harm if you couldn't do it is stupid. And there is actually
00:10:50.480 even more harm in having bike lanes slowing down traffic meaning that fire engines ambulances and
00:10:56.360 police cars are far less likely to get to an emergency on time. What do I know? What do I know? I didn't read the
00:11:04.740 judge's analysis. Apparently it's a great literary work this decision by the judge to say that a bike
00:11:13.480 lane is effectively a human right because if you can never get rid of it because that apparently will
00:11:18.200 do too much harm to that person it is effectively now a human right. It is something that you are
00:11:22.660 unable to get rid of. It is something that with no justification can allow you to get rid of it
00:11:28.440 unless you built like some underground Toronto bike-like network. That's the only way you could
00:11:34.800 get rid of bike lanes on the street. And even then they'd say oh well if you have you move them to
00:11:39.360 the basement there could be asbestos down there and that means there might be too much bodily harm. No
00:11:43.880 you need both the riding network down in the basement as well as you need the network up on the streets.
00:11:50.820 This is why the judiciary is just in need of better appointments. Federal and provincial
00:11:56.260 conservatives need to bite the bullet and openly appoint conservatives as judges. Stop doing this
00:12:02.660 non-partisan nonsense because the left isn't doing this non-partisan stuff when it comes to judges.
00:12:07.480 You need conservative judges who can reset the balance on the court and make sure things like
00:12:13.120 this aren't happening all the time and make sure that if this decision gets appealed that the appeal is
00:12:18.280 going to succeed to reverse this decision. Anyways so that should be it for me on this incredibly stupid
00:12:26.740 topic. Again like the video if you like my coverage. Subscribe if you're not yet a subscriber. Leave a comment on
00:12:33.200 what you think about this. Do you agree with the judge? I think you probably don't but maybe there's
00:12:41.020 someone there who can make a good argument for us. Well while that person types their wrong opinion
00:12:46.720 for us in the comments below the rest of us can move along with our days and ignore that person's
00:12:53.420 opinion. Anyways so see you guys later.