Youth go to court to make Canada legally accountable for its role climate crisis

VANCOUVER — The first youth-led climate trial in Canadian history has begun at the federal courthouse in Vancouver, where 15 plaintiffs argue that federal legislation violates their constitutional rights by continuing the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.

Catherine Boies Parker, who is representing the youth plaintiffs, said in her opening statement Monday that the case is not about the existence of climate change but rather whether the government is “constitutionally required to stop making it worse.”

“The plaintiffs are asking this court to hold Canada legally accountable for its role in continuing and worsening the climate crisis that is causing harm,” she said.

She said the Charter must provide youth a “degree of protection from their own government’s actions” that she says are contributing to the “greatest threat to personal security that humans have ever faced.”

Boies Parker told the court that her clients are not asking it to develop or implement policies or decide what steps the government should make to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Those decisions should be left to the legislative and executive branches of government, she said.

The role of the court, she said, is to determine if the plaintiffs have a constitutional right to protections.

“When the government acts in a manner that interferes with the physical and emotional integrity of its people, especially its most vulnerable people, the rule of law requires the court to assess whether that interference is consistent with the constitution,” she said.

“That responsibility doesn’t disappear just because the issues are complex,” she said, adding that “unsupervised action may contribute to irreversible harm to children and future generations that have no access to a ballot box.”

She said Canada has been aware of the impacts of climate change as far back as 1988, and has “repeatedly recognized” the dangers of greenhouse gases and made commitments to reduce its emissions.

But despite decades of international commitments and legislative promises, Canada has “repeatedly failed to set sufficient targets (and) repeatedly failed to meet those insufficient targets,” Boies Parker said.

BJ Wray, counsel for Canada’s Department of Justice, told the court in opening arguments that the Charter was “never intended to solve existential crises.”

Canada is in compliance with its international obligations and it has been reducing greenhouse gas emissions since 2005, Wray told the court.

“That is the trajectory that we are on.”

Wray told the court that the outcome the plaintiffs are seeking “can’t be achieved through legal orders” and “can only be achieved through complex international statecraft, over many years.”

Wray said the evidence Canada will present will show that eliminating the impacts of global climate change or “providing the plaintiffs with a safe climate system” is not something the country can do on its own.

“Canada’s evidence will show that global climate change requires a global solution,” and the remedy sought by the plaintiffs is “an outcome that cannot be achieved as there is no way for Canada on its own to ensure a safe climate system,” Wray said.

“The charter ought not to be used to impose on Canada an obligation it cannot fulfil on its own, and we say that this claim should be dismissed,” Wray concluded.

Boies Parker earlier said she was anticipating the government would say it can’t fix climate change on its own, but she argued it can make it better or worse.

The trial comes about seven years after the case was first filed in 2019.

Boies Parker told the court the impacts of climate change have intensified since then, citing the 2021 heat dome in B.C., Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season, flooding and other extreme weather events that she said “have caused physical and psychological harm.”

She said the court will hear directly from the youth as well as expert witnesses on issues such as climate science, children’s health, renewable energy, economics and Indigenous knowledge.

Canada will also present its own evidence from climate-change experts, Wray told the court Monday.

The trial is expected to continue into late November, with closing arguments scheduled for February.

The 15 youth are from seven provinces and two territories and are expected to testify about how they have suffered what their lawyers say are “specific harms connected directly to the government’s conduct.”

Boies Parker said those harms include respiratory illness worsened by wildfire smoke, displacement due to extreme weather, mental health impacts, such as climate anxiety and loss of cultural connections to the land that has been lost due to climate disasters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2026.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press