Dave Shellnutt
800.725.0754
dave@thebikinglawyer.ca
www.thebikinglawyer.ca
March 19, 2024
Councillor Stephen Holyday
Toronto City Hall
100 Queen Street West, Suite B26
Toronto, ON M5H 2N2
Re: Service Excellence Committee Remarks Silenced
In decidedly undemocratic fashion you silenced my remarks relevant to the Service Excellence Committee. They were relevant to the Committee meeting but you have stifled my participation and ignored, again, my complaints and requests.
Remarks:
I’m here today to address a failure in service and an unanswered request.
Councillor Holyday not only have you failed to answer our letter raising serious community concerns dated March 1, 2024, but you have failed to address multiple emails and inquiries by members of your ward. My comments today are related to the topic of current discussion, many sections of the March 5 ED report, and the overall purpose of this Service Excellence Committee
On February 28, 2024, you organized and presided over a terrifying display of anti-cyclist rhetoric. The event met its ghastly pinnacle when a member of the crowd speaking at a microphone in front of you said that he would run over cyclists with his motor vehicle if they got in his way.
Instead of an urgent and loud rebuke from you, this man was met with cheers from the crowd. He was permitted to continue speaking and concluded his remarks unimpeded.
Without any condemnation from anyone, but particularly you Councillor.
We can disagree on the appropriate placement of bike lanes. You can ignore that they are good for business, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, reduce congestion and keep people safe. We can have those debates and a public discourse around them.
However, when that debate turns into veiled and open threats of violence against members of the public, your constituents, the time for discussion ends.
Action must be taken. Clear denunciation of violence against any member of the public must come forthwith. Violence as a solution to disagreement is unacceptable, though especially so in the case of vulnerable road users who are disproportionately affected by road violence.
Councillor, you may wish to brush aside this threat as an outlandish fringe comment said in passing (though of course you haven’t even done that), but to do so would be to callously ignore the real threat to people here.
To ignore is to acquiesce, without clear condemnation, more and more people may feel emboldened to just nudge that pesky cyclist with their bumper – as has happened to me, or swerve dangerously close to just scare em, and the list goes on.
Councillor, we represent several people who have been targeted directly for riding a bicycle, sometimes for no apparent reason, sometimes because of some perceived transgression they imparted upon a passing driver.
Mr. C was chased up over the bike lane and sidewalk on Adelaide by a driver who smashed him into the wall of the Bay, he suffered spinal fractures.
A motorist waited at a bike lane crossing for Mr. A, who had given him a shake of the head for blocking a bike lane moments earlier. The driver hit the gas as Mr. A passed, hitting him off his bike and into the bushes. The driver fled the scene.
Mr. T was chased and assaulted by a motorist he suggested shouldn’t have cut him off at a traffic light, after a brief fist fight on Marlie Ave, the driver raced after Mr. T and hit him off his bike with his minivan.
Mr. E gave a middle finger to a driver who was trying to rush a pregnant pedestrian across a crosswalk, the driver got out of his vehicle and punched Mr. E in the face.
I could go on. I could share with you my experiences of threats and violence on the roads. I’ve been swerved at, pushed from behind into Spadina intersection, threatened to smash me off their hood and on and on.
Violence is prolific in our society, and manifests on our roads too. It affects all road users, not just cyclists. Motorist and pedestrians certainly face incredible amounts of injury and death on our streets.
It’s critically important that those we elect to keep us safe and look after our interests, don’t then paint targets on our backs. I fear for the safety of cyclists in this City and in your ward.
It’s critical Councillor that you apologize to your constituents who we negatively impacted by these threats, and the city staff who witnessed this debacle.
Kind Regards,
Dave Shellnutt
Lawyer & Advocate
Cc: Service Excellence Committee, City Officials, community stakeholders, and news media.