Taking stock of climate litigation in Canada


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A new report is taking stock of climate litigation in Canada and highlighting its increasing use in the fight against climate change.

Published by the Canadian Climate Litigation Observatory, it is the first comprehensive account of climate litigation brought before courts, administrative bodies or certain regulators in this country, directed at the state, businesses and individuals.

The report captures the sharp acceleration of climate litigation in Canada. Since 2023, 36 cases have been filed. That’s more than double the number filed over the entire period before 2015, when there were only 17. Patricia Turcotte, one of the report’s co-authors, says the growth reflects a significant shift in which citizens, environmental organizations, young people, Indigenous communities, and, at times, businesses are increasingly turning to the law to advance their interests on climate issues.

“That makes the database a map of a broader social conflict around climate policy, rather than simply a tally of environmental lawsuits,” she says.

“My colleague describes law as having become a kind of Swiss army knife. It’s being used in every direction — to hold governments, companies and individuals to account, but also to push back against climate action.”

In all, between 2004 and September 11, 2026, 103 cases were filed, most of which sought to advance climate action. Nearly 30 per cent of cases, however, sought to slow or challenge climate action.

Outcomes only part of the story

The results have been mixed, as early cases have often been dominated by threshold questions such as justiciability, separation of powers and standing. Turcotte says increasingly, the question is not whether courts can hear climate cases, but rather which legal obligations they can review and what remedies they can grant. She also stresses that the formal outcome of a case doesn’t tell the whole story, as even a case that’s ultimately dismissed can establish that an issue is justiciable, strengthen the scientific record, make certain harms more visible, and shape public debate. 

“Litigation can also influence government decision-making outside the courtroom, including by leading policymakers to anticipate the risk of future legal challenges when designing climate measures,” she says.

The report drives home that the way a claim is framed matters enormously. Turcotte says courts are more receptive when a case targets a specific measure, whether that’s a legislative provision, a climate target, or a plan, and ties it to an identifiable legal obligation. 

“They are much more reluctant when asked to assess the adequacy of government climate action as a whole.”

Courts have repeatedly recognized the seriousness of climate risk, and no Canadian decision has rejected the underlying climate science on the merits. That includes the Supreme Court of Canada. In its 2021 ruling, which found the federal government's carbon pricing regime constitutional, the Court said climate change poses “an existential challenge” and “a threat of the highest order to the country, and indeed to the world.”

Increasingly engaging with the idea that climate change may affect fundamental rights, particularly those of young people and vulnerable groups, Turcotte says.

“Indigenous plaintiffs in ten cases in our database also raise a distinct set of issues that go beyond unequal exposure to climate impacts, including collective relationships to territory, cultural continuity and the ability of communities to maintain their own forms of governance.”

Youth leading the charge 

The report’s release comes the same week the Federal Court rejected the federal government’s attempt to quash a climate accountability case brought by a group of youth, Environmental Defence, and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, from moving ahead. 

The case, filed earlier this year, alleges that the federal government’s comprehensive rollbacks of key measures in the federal climate plan violate the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The groups claim this means the feds no longer have a credible plan to meet legally binding 2030 climate targets.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that climate action is a moral duty and an economic imperative, and we agree it is both of those things,” Charlie Hatt, Ecojustice’s climate program director, told reporters in June.

“But it's also something more. It is a legal obligation.”

Meanwhile, in Ontario, the Mathur case is headed to the Ontario Superior Court this fall. The youth-led litigation was launched in 2019 to hold the Ford government to account for its climate record. The plaintiffs argue that the province’s weakened greenhouse gas emissions target and its climate policies violate their constitutional rights to life, security, and equality under sections 7 and 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

The provincial government has tried several times to quash the case, including by repealing its climate accountability framework, which included the legal requirement to set 2030 emissions-reduction targets, just ahead of a hearing. The case, however, continues to move forward.

Similarly, the La Rose case is headed into a historic, eight-week trial in Vancouver in late October. The lawsuit was filed by 15 young Canadians in 2019, who argue that the federal government's inadequate action on greenhouse gas emissions violates their sections 7 and 15 Charter rights. 

With the world in the throes of a climate crisis, courts around the globe have increasingly been asked to examine governments’ legal obligations in fighting it. 

In the landmark Urgenda case in the Netherlands, an environmental group, alongside more than 800 Dutch citizens, argued that because the government was failing to meet science-based carbon reduction targets, it was breaching its duty of care and endangering citizens’ right to life and right to private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The 2019 decision marked the first time a court held a national government legally accountable for failing to meet specific, science-based carbon-reduction targets to protect its population from climate change.

In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights agreed with a group of Swiss women that their government “had failed to comply with its duties” to set and implement climate targets consistent with what is necessary to avert catastrophic climate change.

In another landmark ruling, the court found that it was a violation of the women’s rights as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees people “effective protection by the state authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life.”

“No Canadian court has said anything like that yet,” Turcotte says.

Some say it’s just a matter of time, however. If and when it happens, the Observatory will be watching. It was founded this year by a team of Canadian legal practitioners and academics, with the goal of making it easier to understand how climate litigation is evolving across the country. 

This report is just a first step to map existing cases and identify trends to date. Turcotte says the plan is to continue producing research on developments in Canadian climate litigation and how they compare with what’s happening internationally.

The Observatory is financially supported by the Canadian Bar Association’s Law for the Future Fund and the Regroupement pour la responsabilité sociale des entreprises. The project was carried out in partnership with the Faculty of Law at the Université de Sherbrooke and the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. 

The full case database will also be available online, free and open to the public, which is set to launch in the coming weeks.