Election cycle: How Ontario's parties are wooing voters with e-bike subsidies

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Election cycle: How Ontario's parties are wooing voters with e-bike subsidies TVO

Shahnaz Stri loves her e-trike.

The electrically assisted recumbent Tricycle carries her all over Toronto and farther afield, even on days when chronic kidney disease would make “acoustic” cycling exhausting. She tries to ride an average of 30 kilometres a day by travelling to social events or simply cruising on Toronto’s trails. But her e-trike is not a toy.

“It literally is my mobility device,” she says. “It enables me to go outside my neighbourhood, outside my city and just enjoy myself without worrying about how I am going to get home or how exhausted I will be.” In order to afford her ride, Stri had to arrange a GoFundMe to pay for the recumbent trike, as well as the battery and hub motor she added to it.

E-bikes aren’t cheap. A good-quality ride that won’t wear out quickly can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000, and the price tag for an e-cargo bike – or e-trike – can be higher. While EVs have gotten a fair bit of attention in election platforms put forward by Ontario’s major political parties, e-bikes play second fiddle to electric cars. The Greens are promising up to $1,000 off the purchase of an e-bike, while the Liberals are pledging a 30 per cent rebate up to a maximum of $500. Nowhere in the NDP’s 192-page, bilingual platform (or the Progressive Conservatives’ 268-page unilingual 2022 provincial budget) is the word ‘e-bike’ mentioned.

E-bikes may not seem practical to many Ontarians who live in car-centric suburbs, small towns, or rural areas, but climate bodies such as the International Panel on Climate Change have found that switching to walking and cycling (along with using electrified transport) is among the biggest contribution any individual can make to fighting climate change.

“E-bikes are not bike replacements,” says Robin Richardson, the founder and owner of Happy Fiets Canada (“fiets” is the Dutch word for bicycle), a small company that offers electric cargo and family bike rentals in Toronto. “E-bikes are car replacements.” With a regulated top speed in Ontario of 32 kilometres per hour and a carrying capacity that can include multiple passengers or hundreds of pounds of cargo (on heftier e-cargo bike models like the Bullitt), e-bikes could allow some riders to give up driving altogether.

Yet some Ontario cyclists say that ...

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