Canadian court revives youth climate lawsuit

By Lesley Clark | 10/18/2024 06:14 AM EDT

A lower bench must now consider whether Ontario’s scaled back emissions reductions goals violate national law.

Young activists rally for climate action on Sept. 27, 2019, in Montreal.

Young activists rally for climate action on Sept. 27, 2019, in Montreal. An Ontario court this week revived a youth climate lawsuit against the province. Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

A Canadian court has delivered a major win to young climate activists, breathing new life into their lawsuit that accuses the Ontario government of failing to curb planet-warming emissions.

In a ruling issued Thursday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario found that a lower bench got it wrong when it found last year that Canadian law did not require the province to take any specific steps to fight climate change.

Three judges of the appeals court wrote that by enacting a 2018 climate law, the Ontario government had “voluntarily assumed a positive statutory obligation to combat climate change.” The judges did not take up the merits of the case, but ordered a court hearing to consider constitutional issues, as well as whether Ontario’s rollback of climate targets violated the rights of Indigenous people.

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Ontario — Canada’s most populous province — had argued that its climate actions were not subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the nation’s constitutionally embedded bill of rights.

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