A group of Saskatchewan citizens and an environmental non-profit are waiting to hear whether their climate change court case will continue or not. They believe the provincial government and SaskPower are violating their Charter of rights to life, security of person and equality. However, the government has applied to have the case dismissed.

USask professor in the College of Law, Benjamin Ralston, says this is one of a “dizzying” number of climate change cases worldwide and one of four in Canada. Two are against the federal government and the other is against the Government of Ontario. All are still in the process of going through the court system.

Ralston explains that after making it to the federal Court of Appeal, the decision in the two federal cases was that you can’t shut down a case just because it is a complicated and political. He summarizes the decisions, saying, “It was Charter rights alleged to be breached based on complex public policy questions, but you can’t escape from the complexity of those public policy questions simply by pointing to their complexity.” The climate action advocates in these cases are now narrowing their focus to more specific events from the government, for example, like opening a new power plant, to frame their court cases, rather than being more general in nature. Ralston adds that the Ontario case has had similar results, and the advocate group is reframing its arguments.

In Saskatchewan, the judge is weighing the decision about whether the case should continue or not. If it does go forward, Ralston says, the argument won’t be about climate change itself because there has never been a case in court that accepted climate change skeptic science. “It’ll be questions of not whether climate science is correct or accurate or that sort of thing, but what obligations might it impose on the Government of Saskatchewan or SaskPower with respect to mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions.”

Whether or not climate change activists win their cases, Ralston notes that they also bring more awareness about the issue. “It’s no longer a question of whether any of these cases will proceed, because we’ve already seen some succeed, but there’s the separate piece, the theory that putting these cases before the courts will help better communicate climate science and the level of action that is required.”

A couple of examples where the activists have won are the European Court of Human Rights ruling that Switzerland has the responsibility to combat climate change and a Dutch court ordering the oil and gas company Shell to comply with the Paris Agreement and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030.