‘Ontario government must face the music for gutting its climate targets’ after Supreme Court rejects appeal

On May 1, Ecojustice lawyer Fraser Thomson and his team waited anxiously for the clock to strike 9:45 a.m., the moment when Canada’s Supreme Court posts its decisions. And then it came: the highest legal authority in the land refused Ontario’s appeal, sending the team’s case back to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

“That’s what yesterday’s Supreme Court decision addressed—and Ontario’s efforts were rejected. By refusing to hear the appeal, the Supreme Court has effectively confirmed that the Court of Appeal’s ruling stands as the law of the land, marking a significant victory for climate litigation in Canada, as it affirms that climate targets must comply with the Charter,” Thomson told The Pointer.

Seven young climate activists had won another major round in their fight for a livable future after the Supreme Court shut down Premier Doug Ford’s attempt to overturn their previous legal victory. The PC government will now have to return to Ontario’s Superior Court to defend its weak climate policies which are arguably making the climate crisis worse.

“It's fantastic to have one more of these obstacles out of our way. It feels really good that the Supreme Court agreed that this actually is a charter issue,” one of the youth activists, Madi Van Dyck, told The Pointer.

“To me, it seems obvious that the environment, the health of the planet, and the well-being of future generations should be top priorities for any government. From a human standpoint, it’s critical. It’s frustrating that this isn’t the case, but I’m hopeful that with the courts on our side, we can hold governments accountable and remind them that it is their legal duty to ensure a safe environment for young people and future generations.”

In October, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision that had dismissed the case, siding with the youth applicants. 

Their demand has always been simple: stronger climate action in Ontario, with climate targets that are accountable to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

In response, Ford escalated the case to Canada’s highest court in December.

Launched in November 2019, the youth-led case has already overcome numerous legal challenges and government efforts to shut it down.

It is history in the making.

But the journey has been long—not only for the activists, many of whom are now in their twenties and thirties, but also for the lawyers who have fought alongside them.

In June 2015, a Dutch court issued a groundbreaking ruling in the Urgenda case, brought by 886 Dutch citizens, ordering the Netherlands government to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets based on international scientific consensus. 

The court ordered the government to cut emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020—its fair share in fighting the climate crisis—ruling that while governments could choose how to meet targets, falling below the scientific minimum violated citizens' rights; the Netherlands met the goal in 2020 due to the COVID-19 economic slowdown.

The Urgenda ruling motivated legal creativity around the world, including here in Canada; Ecojustice lawyers began researching, strategizing and asking: how could such a precedent apply here?

In 2018, when Ford took power, he immediately repealed the Climate Change Mitigation and Low-carbon Economy Act of 2016, slashing the carbon emissions target to 30 percent below 2005 levels—significantly weaker than the previous goal of 37 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 (it was a cornerstone of his mandate to tear up climate change mitigation policies—he also scrapped EV subsidies, stripped conservations authorities of their power and killed alternative energy projects).

At the same time, the global youth-led climate strike movement was gaining momentum. In Canada, 11-year-old Sophia Mathur from Sudbury, made history as the first student to walk out of class in protest, sparking a wave of youth activism demanding a safer, healthier future for Canadians.

In May 2019, an avid sailor and Thunder Bay-based activist, Madison Van Dyck, spent the summer sailing to communities around Lake Superior, giving presentations on climate change. Having grown up near the Great Lake, which is "one of the fastest-warming lakes in the world," she has advocated tirelessly for the environment.

Madison Van Dyck began her climate journey in her early twenties, working with Ocean Bridge, a program focused on ocean education and advocacy.

(Ecojustice)

It was the perfect opportunity for Ecojustice lawyers to join forces with Sophia Mathur, Madi Van Dyck along with five other youth activists—Beze Gray, Zoe Keary-Matzner, Shelby Gagnon, Shaelyn Wabegijig and Alex Neufeldt.

“From the very first phone call with Ecojustice, I was immediately excited. I knew I wanted to be part of this," Van Dyck recalled. "At the time, I didn’t fully understand the challenges and emotional toll this journey would take. But despite everything, I’m still just as excited. Each decision like this fuels my optimism and hope for the future.”

Together, they launched a legal challenge in November 2019, arguing that the reduced emissions target violates Ontarians' constitutional rights to life, liberty and security.

Part of the team behind the ongoing legal challenge against the Doug Ford PC government.

(Ecojustice)

Using sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the activists contend that children are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts, including poor air quality and mental health challenges, and they will bear the most severe consequences as environmental degradation worsens throughout their lives without strong intervention.

As their first move, the youth filed the most extensive evidentiary record in Canadian court history, presenting testimony from seventeen expert witnesses detailing the physical and mental health impacts of climate change on Ontario's youth. 

The evidence highlighted that “it is indisputable that, as a result of climate change, the Applicants and Ontarians in general are experiencing an increased risk of death and an increased risk to the security of the person.”  

It also demonstrated that Ontario’s new target would allow an additional 30 megatonnes of carbon emissions per year by 2030—jeopardizing both national and global climate goals.

Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 45 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels as part of its pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050. As of December 19, Canada’s national emissions are only nine percent below 2005 levels—a substantial gap between the current reality and the targets the federal government has committed to.

Achieving these goals will be particularly challenging with the policies of Doug Ford who leads the country’s largest province. In 2022, Ontario was the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada, with the province emitting an alarming 157 megatonnes of carbon, according to Canada’s annual national inventory report.

Rather than defending its targets on scientific or constitutional grounds, Ontario’s first response was to have the case thrown out altogether. Instead, in 2020 the court denied the government’s motion to dismiss and, in a historic first for Canada, recognized that climate change could potentially violate Charter rights—paving the way for the country’s first citizen-led climate case.

The full hearing finally took place in September 2022, but the case suffered a setback in April 2023 when Ontario Superior Court Justice Marie-Andrée Vermette agreed with the youth applicants on many fronts but ultimately sided with the province's argument that the case was based on provincial obligations not yet recognized under the Charter.

But Justice Vermette harshly criticized the province’s emissions plan, calling the gap between Ontario’s targets and global reduction needs “large, unexplained and without any apparent scientific basis.”

Ford had resorted to using a known climate change denier, William Van Wijngaarden, to help argue the PC government’s case. The York University professor, who has published non-peer reviewed claims about the benefits of carbon dioxide emissions and has worked closely with a climate change denier who was part of Donald Trump’s first administration, stated in a sworn affidavit that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Nobel Prize winning climate models “systematically overestimate global warming”.

The provincial government’s lawyers used Van Wijngaarden’s models to argue it would take thousands of years before provincial emissions reductions would result in large-scale changes to the climate.

Justice Vermette, who eventually sided with the government, drew some support from advocates for simultaneously criticizing the Ford administration in her ruling, leaving the door open for an appeal.

“Ontario’s decision to limit its efforts to an objective that falls severely short of the scientific consensus as to what is required is sufficiently connected to the prejudice that will be suffered by the Applicants and Ontarians should global warming exceed 1.5 degree celsius,” the judge wrote in her 2023 ruling. “By not taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas in the province further, Ontario is contributing to an increase in the risk of death and in the risks faced by the Applicants and others with respect to the security of the person.”

The youth appealed, and in October 2024, the Ontario Court of Appeal rejected the province’s “positive rights” defence and ordered a new hearing before the trial court.

The Ford government refused to back down. Instead of addressing the deficiencies in its climate policies—deficiencies also highlighted in an Ontario Auditor General’s report, which cited failures to educate citizens on the Environmental Bill of Rights and a lack of transparency around project-related environmental impacts—it relied on many of the same arguments made earlier in the case.

On December 16, the Ontario government filed for leave at the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal the Court of Appeal’s ruling that climate targets are subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As Ecojustice lawyer Richard Thompson explained in an interview with The Pointer, this process requires a party to convince the Supreme Court that their case is of national importance—something only a small fraction of applicants achieve.

Last week’s ruling by Canada’s Supreme Court marked the second major setback for Ford’s PC government in nine days, after the Ontario Superior Court issued an injunction blocking its attempt to remove key Toronto bike lanes under Bill 212. The court decision, handed down on April 22, halted plans to dismantle bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue until a judge can determine whether the move is constitutional.

On January 25, Brampton residents and cycling advocates rallied outside Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria’s office, chaining a ghost bike to symbolize the potential lives lost due to Doug Ford’s efforts to ban bike lanes.

(David Laing)

Ford then held a news conference on April 30, criticizing “bleeding-heart judges” for “overruling the government.” His comments drew widespread condemnation for simultaneously criticizing “ideologically” motivated judges while Ford demanded they follow his own narrow ideology, raising concerns that the Premier sees himself as a king who rules over the courts. 

With the Mathur case also returning to the Superior Court—potentially for a shorter hearing—Ford’s strategy does not appear to have affected judges.

“We're not back to zero,” Thomson said “We're not starting again. We're going back to the lower court to make findings in light of this clarified law from the Court of Appeal…“We’ve requested a Case Management Conference, and what’s needed now is a shorter, more focused hearing on that specific issue.” 

He remains optimistic.

“The delay is over, the legal complications around whether the Charter can apply have been resolved, and with the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling now unquestionably the law of the land, we go back to the lower court, where the Ontario government must face the music for gutting its climate targets.”

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