Supreme Court won’t hear province’s appeal in youth-led Ontario climate case [Video]

Canada’s top court has dismissed Ontario’s request to weigh in on a major challenge to its climate plan brought by a group of young activists.

The decision released on Thursday means the case will be revived with a new hearing in the lower courts.

In 2019, at the height of a youth-led wave of climate activism, 12-year-old Sophia Mathur and six other young people joined together to challenge Ontario’s watered-down emissions target.

Lawyers for the group argued the province’s 2018 decision to replace its climate target with a weaker one committed the province to dangerously high levels of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

They argued the revised target jeopardized their right to life and discriminates against them as young people who will bear the brunt of future climate impacts.

Ontario had brought the new emissions target in 2018 after scrapping the law underpinning its cap-and-trade system. It replaced the target in that …