LA ROSE VS. HIS MAJESTY THE KING: CANADIAN YOUTH IN COURT
By Ross Thrasher
(A summary of Chris Hatch’s Zero Carbon feature story on November 1, 2026, in the National Observer.)
Fifteen young Canadians are finally having their day in court to challenge the government’s lack of action on climate change. Their case was launched in Federal Court in 2019, when the oldest of the “Fab Fifteen” was 19 years old and the youngest only 10. They claim that the feds have violated the guarantee in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to “life, liberty and security of the person” by enabling the escalation of dangerous climate change impacts.
On the stand the youthful litigants related their personal experiences facing wildfires, excessive heat and other perils caused by a warming climate. Expert witnesses from Harvard Medical School, Simon Fraser and Stanford University testified that current scientific data demonstrates that government is failing in its duty to protect its citizens from these well-documented threats. At the same time, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have become viable as cheaper alternatives to burning fossil fuels.
This is the first major case against a national government since last year’s finding by the International Court of Justice that all nations have a legal obligation to protect people from “the urgent and existential threat of climate change”. States must regulate and bring in measures to adapt. The ICJ further ruled that promoting, producing or subsidizing fossil fuels may constitute an “internationally wrongful act”.
As far back as 2021 Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that “the only way to address climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions”. Its ruling that all jurisdictions share this responsibility undermines the government’s defense argument in the current case that Canada’s contribution to the global problem is insignificant.
The feds have enacted a Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. But the auditor general’s recent assessment of this Act has found that the government has cancelled or weakened several measures, leading to a “growing emissions gap”.
Meanwhile, The Lancet medical journal has just released a report describing climate change as a “global health emergency”. Among other findings it attributes 4000 Canadian deaths per year to wildfire smoke.
The Fab Fifteen case will run for several more weeks, and a decision is not expected until later in 2027.
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