May 15, 2026

Ontario's New E-Bike Rules: Class 1, Class 2, and What Toronto Riders Should Do Before June 7

If you've ridden through downtown Toronto in the last year, you already know the problem the province is trying to solve. The Queen Street bike lane on a Friday afternoon is half commuters spinning along at a polite 25 km/h, and half throttle-only machines the size of a small motorcycle blasting past at speeds that would get a Vespa pulled over. They are all, somehow, called “e-bikes.”

That’s about to change.

On April 23, 2026, Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation posted proposal 026-0422, which would split the current catch-all e-bike category into two real classes and push the heavier, faster, moped-style machines into the licence-and-insurance bucket where most cyclists have been arguing they belong for years. The public comment window closes at 11:59 p.m. on June 7, 2026, so if you ride, sell, or are thinking about buying any kind of electric bike in Ontario, the next three weeks are when your voice actually counts.

Here is what the proposal says, what it doesn’t say, and how to figure out whether the bike in your garage is still going to be a bike a year from now.

The short version

• Ontario will create Class 1 (pedal-assist only, max 55 kg) and Class 2 (pedal-assist or throttle, max 120 kg) e-bikes.

• Both classes keep the existing 500 W and 32 km/h ceilings, and both must have functional pedals and an exposed bicycle frame.

• Anything heavier, faster, or shaped like a scooter or moped gets pushed into the limited-speed motorcycle (LSM) category, which means an M or M2-L licence, insurance, and registration.

• Enforcement won’t start the day the rule passes. The MTO is proposing a 12-month education period first.

• Public comments close June 7, 2026, on the Environmental Registry of Ontario.

If your bike fits the Class 1 or Class 2 description, almost nothing about your day-to-day riding changes. If your “e-bike” weighs 80 kg, has no real pedals, and tops out at 60 km/h on a flat road, the province is, finally, willing to call it what it is.

Why the rewrite, and why now

The current Ontario rule, in plain language, is: 500 W maximum motor, 32 km/h assisted speed cap, 16-and-up rider, helmet mandatory. That language was written when “e-bike” mostly meant a Pedego cruiser with a downtube battery. It now also means a Sur-Ron-style off-road machine, a delivery e-moped with a fake set of pedals welded onto the rear, and everything in between.

The pressure to clean this up has been building from every direction. Cycle Toronto has been pushing for stronger differentiation since at least 2023. The City of Toronto has been pleading with the province for clarity it can actually enforce. Insurance brokers don’t know how to underwrite a vehicle that legally isn’t one. Even the bike industry, which you might think would resist regulation, has been quietly lobbying for it. When a customer walks into a shop and asks for “a fast e-bike,” nobody benefits from selling them something that turns out to be illegal in a bike lane.

There is also the bike lane fight to consider. Toronto saw a dramatic drop in new protected bike-lane kilometres in 2025 after the provincial moratorium, and the Charter challenge that eventually preserved the Bloor, Yonge, and University lanes in July 2025 made it very clear that the public is paying attention to what counts as a bike and what doesn’t. The province needs the answer to that question to be defensible.

Class 1 vs Class 2: what’s actually different

If you’ve read American coverage, you may have seen Class 1, 2, and 3 used in a slightly different way. Ontario’s version is its own thing, so don’t assume the U.S. definitions carry over.

Class 1 — pedal-assist only. No throttle. The motor only helps when you’re pedalling, and it cuts out at 32 km/h. Maximum weight is 55 kg. These are your traditional commuter and mountain-style e-bikes: the Velotric Discover, the Trek Verve+, most cargo bikes designed in Europe.

Class 2 — pedal-assist or throttle. You can ride either by pedalling with assist or by twisting a throttle. The motor still cuts out at 32 km/h. Maximum weight jumps to 120 kg to accommodate sturdier cargo platforms and fatter-tire builds. This is where a lot of North American cargo bikes, fat-tire commuters, and step-throughs land.

Both classes share three hard requirements:

1. Functional, useable pedals.

2. An exposed bicycle frame. No fully shrouded scooter bodywork.

3. 500 W motor ceiling and 32 km/h assisted speed cap.

If your bike satisfies those three things, it is an e-bike under the new rules, full stop. You don’t need a licence. You don’t need plates. You don’t need insurance. You wear a helmet, you obey the rules of the road, and you ride.

What gets kicked out of the e-bike category

This is the part of the proposal that’s going to bite some current riders.

Anything that looks like a moped, scooter, or motorcycle, including a lot of the high-power throttle-only machines that have flooded online marketplaces in the last two years, will be reclassified as a limited-speed motorcycle if it can exceed 32 km/h, weighs more than the new limits, or lacks real pedals and an exposed frame.

Limited-speed motorcycle means:

• M or M2-L licence required.

• Vehicle insurance required.

• Provincial registration and plates required.

• No riding in bike lanes.

• No riding on multi-use paths or trails.

The province is not trying to ban these vehicles. It’s trying to stop them from being treated as bicycles. If you bought one in good faith from a retailer that called it an e-bike, you’ll have the 12-month education period to either get licensed and insured, sell it on, or take advantage of any transition program the MTO ends up offering. (The proposal hints at this. The final regulation will tell us what it actually looks like.)

A separate note for cargo bike owners

Ontario’s cargo e-bike pilot, which has run since March 1, 2021, was set to expire on March 1, 2026. The province has proposed extending it to March 1, 2031. That pilot has its own set of rules: 1000 W power allowance, 32 km/h cutoff, minimum vehicle weight, and so on. It sits alongside the new Class 1/Class 2 framework rather than being replaced by it.

If you ride a Tern GSD, an Urban Arrow, a Riese & Müller Load, or any other purpose-built cargo bike for school runs and grocery hauls, the cargo pilot is the regime to pay attention to. One important catch that hasn’t gone away: practitioners currently read the Highway Traffic Act as preventing under-16 passengers on cargo e-bikes on public roads in Ontario, even in factory passenger seats. The province has been asked to fix this directly. Whether the new proposal does, in practice, is one of the things worth pushing on in public comment.

How to figure out whether your bike is still legal

Pull your owner’s manual or your bike’s spec sheet and check four numbers:

• Motor power: Is it 500 W or less, continuous?

• Assisted top speed: Does the motor cut out at 32 km/h or lower?

• Curb weight: Is it under 55 kg (Class 1) or under 120 kg (Class 2)?

• Pedals and frame: Do you have real, useable pedals and an exposed bike frame?

If all four are yes, you’re in Class 1 or Class 2 and you can stop worrying.

If your motor is technically 750 W or 1000 W but factory-limited to 500 W output in Canada-spec firmware, you’re probably fine, but keep your documentation. The MTO has not yet specified exactly how enforcement will verify continuous wattage in the field, and that’s another thing worth flagging in your public comment.

If your bike has no pedals, or fake pedals, or it weighs more than 120 kg, or it can hit 50 km/h on flat ground without you, then under the proposed rules it stops being an e-bike. That’s not the end of the world. It just means you’ll need a licence and insurance, the same as you would for a 50cc scooter.

How to file a public comment that the MTO will actually read

The Environmental Registry of Ontario has the proposal posted under reference number 026-0422. You can comment online, by email, or by mail.

A few practical pointers if you want your comment to land:

• Be specific about which class you ride and how. “I commute 14 km a day on a 32 kg Class 1 pedal-assist bike along the Bloor and Davenport bike lanes” lands harder than “e-bikes are good.”

• If you support the proposal, say so plainly and explain why. Bureaucrats expect criticism by default and tend to assume silence means opposition.

• If you have a specific concern, like the cargo passenger restriction or the wattage verification problem, name it directly and suggest the fix you want.

• Keep it under a page. Long comments tend to get summarized into a single bullet by staff. Make the bullet they write the one you want them to write.

The deadline is 11:59 p.m. on June 7, 2026. After that, the proposal moves into drafting, and the conversation gets a lot harder to influence.

What this means for Toronto, in real terms

If the rule passes more or less as proposed, here’s the shape of riding in Toronto a year from now:

The bike lane gets quieter and slower. Throttle-only mopeds, the ones that have been the loudest complaint of every cyclist on College and Bloor, move into the roadway where they belong. Real e-bikes, the cargo bikes hauling kids to school, the commuters chugging up to Casa Loma, the foldables on the GO train, keep their place in the lane and gain some legal breathing room.

The bike shop’s job gets easier. “Is this legal in Ontario?” becomes a yes or no question with a clear answer instead of a thirty-minute conversation. Manufacturers stop trying to game the definitions. Customers stop being sold things they can’t legally ride home.

And the long argument about whether e-bikes belong in bike lanes finally has a real answer. Bikes belong in bike lanes. Mopeds don’t. The trick was always going to be writing a definition that says so without accidentally banning your neighbour’s cargo bike. The proposal isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest the province has come to getting that line right.

If you ride in Ontario, you have until June 7 to help make it better. Use it.

Have questions about whether your e-bike fits the new Class 1 or Class 2 framework? Drop into the Buzzify showroom in Toronto, or send us the make and model and we’ll tell you straight. We sell what’s legal, and we’d rather have the conversation now than after the rules take effect.