It is the first case tried in Canada to consider whether a government’s climate plan may violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
TORONTO – Ontario has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on a historic youth-led challenge to the province’s climate plan, moving the case one step closer to a possible hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada.
While the court only hears a fraction of the cases it is asked to review, lawyers for Ontario say this case involves an unresolved issue of national interest.
“This proposed appeal would ask the court to determine for the first time whether and to what extent the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes obligations on Canadian governments to combat climate change,” Ontario’s application for leave to appeal read.
The case was brought by seven young people who claim Ontario’s weakened emissions targets violated the charter.
They argue the case violated their right to life in part by committing Ontario to dangerously high levels of global warming emissions and discriminated against them as youth who will bear the brunt of the consequences.
While their case was initially dismissed at trial, the youths secured a victory on appeal in October when Ontario’s Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court for a new hearing, leaving open the possibility that the constitutional challenge could prevail.
Fraser Thomson, a lawyer representing the youth, says Ontario’s application “opens the door to a generation-defining hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada.”
“The climate crisis is not going away, and neither are we,” Thomson, climate director of environmental rights group Ecojustice, said in a written statement.
The case dates back to when Premier Doug Ford’s then-newly elected Progressive Conservative government repealed the law underpinning Ontario’s cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions.
The government scrapped the system in 2018, replacing the emissions target in that law – 37 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – with a new target of 30 percent below 2005 levels.
The young people propose that the revised target allows additional annual emissions equivalent to approximately seven million passenger cars.
They successfully defended attempts by Ontario to have the case thrown out, making it the first to be tried in Canada to consider whether a government’s climate plan can violate the statute.
In a decision last year, an Ontario court agreed that the gap between how much emissions must be reduced globally and what the provincial plan calls for is “large, unexplained and without any apparent scientific basis.”
But the judge disagreed that the province’s emissions targets amounted to a breach of the charter. It wasn’t that the province’s targets increased emissions, but that it allegedly didn’t do enough to reduce them.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the case was not about whether the youths were trying to impose a duty on the government to fight climate change, as the lower court judge suggested. Ontario had voluntarily chosen to fight climate change and the question was whether the goal it chose was consistent with the statute, the appeals court ruling said.
The case was sent back to the lower court for a new hearing. Ontario instead wants the Supreme Court to take it on.
“This case presents an excellent opportunity for the Supreme Court of Canada to weigh the constitutional obligations of state actors in the fight against climate change – a recognized matter of national concern in Canada,” Ontario’s lawyers wrote in the application to the Supreme Court.
The case is being closely watched by lawyers in other climate cases across Canada.
An eight-week trial has been scheduled for October 2026 in a case where a group of young people are challenging the federal government’s climate plan.
The Supreme Court receives as many as 600 applications for leave to appeal each year and grants about 80, according to its website.
Canadian Press
