Ontario’s top court has ordered a new hearing for a youth-led constitutional challenge of the provincial government’s emissions target, saying the case raised important issues that should be considered afresh.
The unanimous decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal was immediately heralded as a win by the group of seven young people who brought the case.
The case is the first in Canada to consider whether governments’ approach to climate change has the potential to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
At stake was an emissions target that dates back to when Premier Doug Ford’s then-newly elected Progressive Conservative government repealed the law underpinning Ontario’s cap-and-trade system for lowering emissions.
The young people argued the weakened target committed Ontario to dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases, knowing it would cause harm to the province’s youth and future generations, in violation of the Charter.
The young people brought evidence suggesting the government’s revised plan would allow for 30 megatonnes more in annual emissions by 2030, equivalent to the annual emissions of about seven million passenger vehicles, or nearly 200 megatonnes from 2018 to 2030.
Superior court judge Marie-Andrée Vermette dismissed the landmark lawsuit in April 2023, although in her ruling stated she agreed with the youth applicants on several key points.
In Thursday’s decision, the Court of Appeal said it was “not well placed” to determine whether the province had violated constitutional rights, and would “therefore remit the application for a new hearing before the same or another justice of the Superior Court.”