Turning Up The Heat: Ontario's Climate Case Reignites

In a significant step in the development on the frontier of climate-related litigation in Canada, Mathur v. Ontario¹ ("Mathur Appeal"), the Court of Appeal for Ontario has clarified the analytical approach on which the sufficiency of a government's voluntarily-imposed statutory obligation to combat climate change can be challenged on the bases of sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.² The Ontario Superior Court of Justice had previously dismissed the case, though it held that government responsibility for climate change is an issue that could be legitimately litigated, as we discussed in a previous post.

The Court of Appeal allowed the applicants' appeal, but remitted the case back to the Superior Court for a rehearing, and did not make a conclusion on the merits of the matter. Importantly, the Court clarified the analytical approach that should have been taken, namely that the underlying Charter challenge was not an assertion of