Undercover cameras found Canada’s best-known retailers selling e-bikes and e-scooters that easily beat Ontario’s speed limits, with sales staff at half the stores visited explaining how to bypass the caps, CBC’s Marketplace reported on Friday.
Journalists visited 12 stores in the Greater Toronto Area: Amego, Emmo, EZbike, Best Buy, Canadian Tire and Costco. Ten sold e-bikes or e-scooters with maximum speeds above provincial limits, six told or showed the undercover team how to defeat built-in limiters, and seven sold scooters with manufacturer-recommended ages under 16, Ontario’s minimum riding age. Provincial law caps e-scooters at 24 km/h on a flat surface and e-bikes at 32 km/h.
The speeds on offer ran well past that. At an EZbike in Richmond Hill, a salesperson said the store sells e-scooters that can reach 120 km/h. At an Emmo in Toronto, a salesperson said staff could modify a bike to run 150 km/h for off-road use; at an Emmo in Vaughan, an employee described defeating the limiter as “just like a toggle switch.” At an Amego in North York, a salesperson unlocked the 32 km/h limit in front of the journalists, revved the motor past the cap and said the bike could hit about 50 km/h.
Selling the machines at any speed is legal; the limits apply to riding them. That gap is what makes it “heartbreaking,” said Michael Pasquali, founder of the Canadian Electric Bicycle Association. “Shops that are selling products that are way beyond the legal limit, they’re putting a lot of people in danger.” Coaching customers on disabling the cap, he said, is “extremely unethical.”
The companies offered their defenses. Emmo said a product’s technical capabilities should not be confused with what is allowed on the road. Amego said it does not offer or perform modifications and that its salesperson likely exaggerated the top speed. Best Buy said the rules are evolving and it tries to keep product information updated; Best Buy, Canadian Tire and Emmo all said customers should follow local laws. Costco and EZbike did not comment on the findings.
The lowest age recommendation Marketplace found was at Canadian Tire: a Razor e-scooter that tops out at 16 km/h and is marketed for children 8 and older. “That just boggles my mind. Kids at this age don’t necessarily have the developmental ability to maneuver these motorized vehicles,” said Dr. April Kam, an emergency physician at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton and president of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s emergency medicine section. “It’s very concerning that there’s this huge market for selling children these motorized vehicles, essentially, and deceiving the parents and family, marketing them as toys.” Razor said in a statement that the scooter meets U.S. safety guidelines under which 8-year-olds can operate slow-moving motorized vehicles, that it is safe when properly used, is not meant for public roads and that riders should follow local laws.
The injuries behind the alarm keep climbing. “It’s not just a toy; it’s a motorized vehicle,” Dr. Kam said. “We’re seeing kids who are presenting with brain bleeds, with abdominal injuries, solid organ injuries.” Newly released Canadian Institute for Health Information data show 150 patients 15 and under were hospitalized after falls involving e-scooters in the 2025-26 fiscal year, up from 54 the year before, a rise of about 178 percent. Head injuries tied to e-scooters rose from 50 in 2022-23 to 157 in 2025-26, and fractures, dislocations and muscle and tendon injuries more than doubled over that span, to 544 last fiscal year. An August survey from the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program found 10 children died using such devices in 2025. Sales, meanwhile, have more than quadrupled in Canada since 2019, with roughly 372,000 e-bikes and 76,000 e-scooters sold so far this year, according to Statista.
Amy Richards of St. John’s needed no statistics. Her son, Jayden King, 14, hit a speed bump on a quiet street in May and lost control of his e-scooter. He was wearing a helmet, she said, but suffered a traumatic brain injury, spent 21 days in a coma and had part of his skull surgically removed because of brain swelling; another operation will put it back once he is healthier. Over 102 days in the hospital, he relearned to walk, talk and eat. Memory loss remains. “I can’t remember nothing in my whole life,” Jayden said. He will not ride an e-scooter again.
Newfoundland and Labrador has no rules at all governing e-bikes or e-scooters. A spokeswoman for Government Services said in a statement that the province has consulted the public and is weighing changes to the Highway Traffic Act to cover micro-mobility devices. Too late, in Ms. Richards’s view; no one under 16 should ride one, she said. “We need to protect our children. That should come first and foremost.”
Mr. Pasquali wants Ottawa to stop the sale and importation of machines that can be modified with the flick of a switch. Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon told Marketplace in a late-September interview that he had heard stories of people being injured and wanted to discuss a response with his provincial counterparts, though he noted most of the legislation is provincial and said there is “impetus” for provinces and municipalities to act.
The full Marketplace investigation aired on Friday on CBC-TV and YouTube.