A Landmark Youth Climate Trial Against the Canadian Government Is About to Begin

In June 2013, torrential rain spurred one of the worst flooding events in Canada’s history. Sadie Vipond, who grew up in Calgary along the Bow River, was just a young child at the time when she and her family had to flee their home. “That was pretty scary with the evacuation,” she recalled. 

Her family was among thousands forced to evacuate as the city declared a local emergency. The disaster was the costliest Calgary had ever experienced, with $1.7 billion in insurable damage, and many residents—including Vipond—still carry that trauma to this day.

Vipond is now a 20-year-old university student studying environmental science at the University of British Columbia. Next week, she will be sitting inside a courtroom in Vancouver telling her story of how extreme weather and climate change have affected her health and quality of life.

She will not be alone. More than a dozen other young Canadians will also be in court testifying in a historic climate change trial against their federal government. It will be the first time in Canada, and one of the first times anywhere in the world, that a national government faces a full evidentiary trial over the adequacy of its climate policies in a case brought by youth activists.

The trial, which starts Monday, is happening against a backdrop of warnings that the climate crisis is accelerating and that in just a few short years warming will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit that countries agreed to strive to avoid surpassing. Current climate policies are off track to achieve the Paris Agreement objectives, and some countries like Canada and the United States are doubling down on fossil fuel production while at the same time rolling back measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and advance green technologies.

Activists around the world have turned to the courts in recent years in pursuit of accountability. Last year the International Court of Justice delivered a landmark advisory opinion affirming that governments have legal obligations under existing laws to do their utmost to act on climate change in accordance with the best available science. 

Now that guidance, and the strategy of pursuing climate accountability through the courts, faces a critical test in a case putting one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters and oil and gas producers on trial.

The case, La Rose v. His Majesty the King, challenges Canada’s climate policies, specifically the Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act and its 2030 climate plan. The 2021 Net-Zero act establishes a legislative framework for Canada to emit no greenhouse gases by 2050 beyond the amount removed from the atmosphere, requiring the government to set interim emissions reduction targets and develop plans to implement them. 

The lawsuit argues that this legislation, as well as Canada’s 2030 reduction plan, enable a “trajectory that is inconsistent with a safe climate system.” Youth plaintiffs say this violates their constitutional rights, namely the rights to life, liberty and security of the person under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They seek not only a court declaration that their rights have been violated, but also an order for the government to develop and implement a science-based plan for rapid decarbonization.

The young activists filed their case in 2019, launching it during a Fridays for Future climate rally in Vancouver attended by an estimated 10,000 people, including environmental activist Greta Thunberg. The suit had originally targeted a wide range of government conduct, inspired by a similar youth-led case in the U.S. that ultimately never made it to trial. 

After a federal court initially tossed out the Canadian case, an appeals court allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint by honing in on a specific action or piece of policy. The revised case was greenlit for trial, which is about to begin nearly seven years to the day since the suit was first filed.

Defendants include Canada’s federal government and attorney general. Government representatives did not respond to a request for comment on the case or the trial. 

Plaintiffs are 15 young Canadians, including several indigenous youths. Like Vipond, they have all personally experienced extreme weather and health impacts linked to climate change, from extreme heat and floods to increasingly severe wildfires and toxic wildfire smoke.

“Every summer is now defined by how bad the wildfires are, by the extreme heat, by either drought or extreme precipitation and flooding,” plaintiff Lauren Wright said during a recent webinar. Wright enjoys farming and working outside, but climate change is making that at times uncomfortable and harmful to her health. 

“When I’m out in the field, I can’t exactly take days off when the smoke is so bad that my lungs are burning and my eyes are blurring,” she said. “It’s a struggle to work in 30-plus degree [Celsius] temperatures outdoors in the sun without any availability to avoid the harms.”

“Carney Climate Carnage”

According to a scientific climate assessment report released by the Canadian government in early September, Canada has warmed twice as fast as the global average since 1970. Under current global climate policies, the country is expected to experience an average temperature increase of 5 degrees Celsius toward the end of the century. 

Climatic changes already occurring today—extreme heat, catastrophic fire seasons, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, more severe droughts, flash floods—will continue to intensify.

“Our government is resolute in our commitment to fighting climate change and reaching net-zero by 2050,” Julie Dabrusin, Canada’s minister of the environment, climate change and nature, said in a statement accompanying the new report. “This is why we are making durable, structural changes to strengthen Canada’s economy through building clean and renewable power, mass electrification, clean technology, and greater energy efficiency in homes and businesses. We just announced the largest clean energy investment in North American history, and we are just getting started.”

Climate policy analysts and experts, however, say that Canada is failing to take sufficient action. 

“Current government action is not keeping pace with the speed of climate change,” Ryan Ness, adaptation research director at the Canadian Climate Institute, a climate policy think tank, said in a statement. “And recent shifts in federal policy have put Canada’s net-zero commitment further out of reach, while undermining our credibility to press other countries for the emissions reductions we need to stave off 5°C of heating.”

Canada under Prime Minister Mark Carney has weakened or scrapped many of the climate policies from previous governments, such as repealing the electric vehicle standard, canceling a planned cap on oil and gas emissions and terminating the consumer-facing carbon tax. Meanwhile, the government is boosting the fossil fuel sector, supporting an expansion doubling production capacity at a liquified natural gas export facility in Kitimat, British Columbia. It is also pursuing  a new west coast oil pipeline—recently designated by Carney as a “project of national interest”—linking crude oil in the Alberta tar sands to British Columbian export facilities.  

Canada is now joining its neighbor the United States in going in the wrong direction on climate action, according to updated analyses of the two countries from Climate Action Tracker—a project that assesses governments’ alignment with the Paris Agreement objectives for limiting global warming.

“What is shocking to us is the true extent to which Prime Minister Carney has rolled back climate policies, largely in favor of the fossil fuel industry,” Bill Hare, a climate scientist and CEO of Climate Analytics, which supports the Climate Action Tracker project, said in a statement. “This Carney climate carnage, while not quite as bad as Trump’s, is rapidly heading in the same direction, despite the country being hit by record wildfires and other devastating climate impacts.”

Two years ago, planned policies in Canada were projected to reduce emissions 30 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. But with the recent rollbacks, Climate Action Tracker projects that Canada will reduce its emissions by only around 14 percent by 2030. Carney has acknowledged that Canada will not meet its 2030 or 2035 targets under his plan.  

If the targets were to be officially abandoned, Climate Action Tracker notes that Canada would be the first country since the U.S. to back away from its climate commitments.

“A Matter of Considerable Public Importance”

The trial will happen in two phases. The evidentiary phase starts on Monday and is expected to run for four weeks. The second phase, scheduled for February 2027, will consist of legal arguments and closing statements from both sides. Youth plaintiffs and their eight expert witnesses are scheduled to testify during the first two weeks of the trial. Among these experts are two Canadian climate scientists, both Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead authors; a pediatrician and psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School; a strategic advisor to the Assembly of First Nations; and experts in policy, renewable energy and international law.

Vipond, who was 13 years old when the case was filed, said it is “super exciting” to see all the pieces finally come together at trial. “I’m looking forward to sharing my story and hearing my fellow plaintiffs’ stories,” she said.

The Canadian government is expected to present its side of the case starting the third week of trial and will have four experts testifying, including two economists, a climate scientist and an international law expert.

In a June filing granting plaintiffs’ request to call upon eight expert witnesses, Justice Simon Fothergill highlighted the lawsuit’s significance and its potential impact. 

“This case is a matter of considerable public importance, not only because of the factual context but also because of its constitutional implications,” he wrote, noting that if the plaintiffs ultimately triumph, “the impact of this case may be profound.”  

A Potential “Game Changer?”

Plaintiffs and legal experts supporting them say that a ruling in their favor could help catalyze real accountability at the national policy level in Canada.

“One of my hopes for the outcome in this case is for the court to make it very clear that Canada’s emissions are globally significant, that each additional ton we put into the atmosphere, or that we play a role in enabling to be emitted, is worsening human rights violations on a national scale,” said Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, one of the groups supporting the youth plaintiffs. “We can’t be a responsible, law-abiding nation and at the same time always be passing the buck to somebody else.”

A win for the youth plaintiffs could also have significance internationally, according to Kelly Matheson, deputy director of global strategy at Our Children’s Trust, an organization that spearheads and supports youth-led climate litigation. The trial will be the first court proceeding of its kind to take place anywhere in the world following the International Court of Justice’s historic July 2025 climate change advisory opinion. 

A favorable ruling for plaintiffs could present an opportunity for Canada to start implementing that opinion and other climate advisory opinions from some of the world’s top courts, Matheson explained.

“We’ve had these international advisory opinions on climate change come out from the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. And this case, La Rose v. His Majesty the King, is going to be one of the first cases that actually looks at implementing those decisions at a national level,” Matheson said.

Additionally, she noted that the case’s outcome may have implications for the fossil fuel sector. Canada is among the world’s top producers of oil and gas. There is scientific consensus that fossil fuels must be phased out to avert the worst climate change consequences. And while the court will not explicitly require Canada to take a specific policy pathway or action, it could order the government to develop a plan guided by climate science, which would seemingly demand a wind down of oil and gas extraction.

“If one of the major emitters of the world has to fast-track their phaseout of fossil fuels, that resets the playing field,” Matheson said. “It would be a game changer.”