The children’s carbon Charter challenge rolls on

In Mathur v. Ontario, a group of youth are asking the court to find that the Ontario government is violating the Charter rights of present and future generations by accelerating the climate crisis. Photo by David LeBlanc

In 2018 the new Ontario government of Doug Ford cancelled the province’s cap-and-trade program and legislated a less ambitious target for carbon emissions than the previous government of Kathleen Wynne government had. The following year, 12-year-old Sophia Mathur and six other young people applied to the court to challenge that action. They claimed the less ambitious target would result in a dangerous level of climate change in Ontario, thus violating their Charter rights to life, liberty and security of the person. They asked the judge to require the province to raise