Ontario’s repeal of emissions target looms over landmark climate case

Protesters take part in a climate protest march in Ottawa, on Sept. 21, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

TORONTO — Ontario’s repeal of its own emissions targets is an 11th hour attempt to escape accountability on its toothless climate plan, young activists behind a landmark case alleged on Wednesday as they vowed to continue their years-long legal saga.

Lawyers for the seven young people were set to argue next week that the government’s weakened 2018 emissions target was without scientific basis and so out of step with the cuts required to limit severe climate impacts that it endangered their constitutional rights.

Instead, the Monday hearing has been cancelled and lawyers will discuss how the province’s recent move to scrap legislation underpinning its emissions targets and climate plans could reshape the case.

Shaelyn Wabegijig said that development has only strengthened her resolve to keep up the fight.

“We deserve a government that faces the truth of the climate crisis, not one that runs from it. We deserve a safe and livable future and we will continue this fight until we get it,” said the 28-year-old Wabegijig.

Premier Doug Ford’s government voted this week to repeal parts of a law requiring that it set an emissions target and regularly update its climate plan. The proposal came to light earlier this month when it was found buried at the end of the government’s fall economic statement.

In a statement, the premier’s office said the government was taking a “hard look at the unnecessary processes that have held us back” given recent economic uncertainty and U.S. tariffs.

Lawyers for the young people allege the government is gutting its own climate legislation in a bid to avoid scrutiny after suffering recent setbacks in the years-long case.

Ontario tried and failed to have the Supreme Court of Canada weigh in on the case earlier this year after the young people had their case revived at Ontario’s highest court.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario last year found a 2018 law brought in by the Ford government included a self-imposed obligation on the government to fight climate change, and said it must do so in a way that complies with the Charter.

Key sections of that law are now on the chopping block days before a fresh set of hearings in the case were to begin on Monday.

“We are confident that Ontarians and folks across this country will see through this government’s cynical tactics,” said Nader Hasan, a lawyer for the young people.

Shortly after taking power in 2018, Ford’s government scrapped the province’s cap-and-trade system and downwardly revised its emissions target. The Progressive Conservatives’ goal to reach emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 replaced the Liberal-era target of 37 per cent below 1990 levels.

The young people brought a constitutional challenge of Ontario’s plan along with evidence suggesting the revised target could allow for 30 additional megatonnes of CO2 emissions, or the equivalent of about seven million more gas-powered cars on the road, every year from 2018 to 2030.

It was the first case to be tried in Canada that considered whether a government’s climate-change approach has the potential to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Ontario Superior Court agreed that the gap between how much emissions needed to be cut globally and what the provincial plan called for was “large, unexplained and without an apparent scientific basis.” The justice nonetheless initially dismissed the challenge, but was directed to reconsider the case in light of last year’s appeal court ruling.

In the six years since the challenge was filed, Wabegijig said the impacts of climate change have only become more pronounced. From her home in North Bay, she spoke about how species of wood-eating beetles are expanding north into new ranges and threatening to destroy trees her Indigenous community use for basket weaving.

Intensifying floods and wildfires have also been especially hard-felt in Indigenous communities, which have made up an estimated 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations in recent decades despite making up five per cent of the population in Canada.

“It’s impacting everything. Our ability to exercise our rights and to live out our cultures and just our way of life,” said Wabegijig, who grew up in the Rama First Nation.

Madison Dyck said since she filed the challenge, she’s watched how climate change has altered winters around her home near Thunder Bay. Average Canadian winter temperatures are nearly four degrees warmer now than they were in the mid-20th century.

As her hockey equipment aired out behind her, she spoke about how warmer winters have threatened the future of outdoor hockey.

“There were a few winters where we just couldn’t play outside and that was really devastating to me,” she said.

“Playing on an outdoor rink on a lake is maybe something that I took for granted.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2025.

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press