A procedural ruling by the Court of Appeal of Ontario has brought the Doug Ford government one step closer to a final judgement on its moves to gut the province’s emissions reduction target after it took office in 2018.

The appeal court sent the landmark Charter case, Mathur et. al. v. Ontario, back to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for a hearing that was previously scheduled for December, 2025, Ecojustice said in a release Wednesday.

Previously, “the Ford government repealed Ontario’s climate law and emissions target framework at the eleventh hour, in what appeared to be a move to skirt accountability and avoid facing the youth in court,” the legal charity wrote. Now, the youth applicants and their legal team “are actively working to have their case heard as soon as possible.”

“The Ford government has shown a clear pattern of avoiding accountability for its climate failures,” Ecojustice Director of Litigation Practice Julia Croome said in the release. “If the government truly believes in its climate record, it should not be afraid to defend it in court.”

The case has been going on for so long that one of the seven youth now has another powerful reason to keep fighting.

“As a new mom, I would do anything to protect my baby,” said applicant Alex Neufeldt. “She, and all children, deserve a safe and livable future. My fellow applicants and I should not have had to spend our teens and twenties fighting our own government over a worsening climate crisis. But after more than six years, we’re still here—because this government’s failures will shape the rest of our lives, and our children’s lives, too.”

The youth lost their first round before the Superior Court when Justice Marie-Andrée Vermette ruled that the Ford government’s 2018 Cap and Trade Cancellation Act (CTCA) did not fully violate the Charter rights of Ontario youth and Indigenous peoples. The law replaced the previous government’s emissions reduction target of 37% below 1990 levels with a less stringent goal.

Vermette did find that the province’s watered-down climate goal engaged Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms dealing with life and security of the person, but did not violate principles of fundamental justice since the target itself was not arbitrary. She did affirm the scientific consensus on the need to rapidly cut emissions, an urgency missing from the CTCA.

“While the decision was a setback, it still broke new ground in Charter climate litigation in Canada—and included a damning indictment of Ontario’s weak and dangerous climate target,” Ecojustice said at the time. “The court found that the case is justiciable, which means it is an appropriate question for courts to weigh in on. This has been a significant obstacle for other Charter-based climate cases in Canada.”

The court “also found that it was ‘indisputable’ that because of climate change, Ontarians are experiencing increased risk of death and serious bodily harm and that the Government of Ontario—by enacting a target to reduce GHG emissions that falls well below what the global scientific consensus says is required—is contributing to that risk of harm,” the Vancouver-based environmental law charity added.

After a successful appeal and a couple of more rounds of procedure, adding up to 2½ years of delay, the case was headed back to Superior Court in early December, 2025 when Ontario moved to repeal key sections of the Cap and Trade Cancellation Act. That move stalled the case again and opened the possibility that government lawyers would try to have it thrown out.

“When someone has to change the rules mid-game, it’s usually because they’re losing,” the youth applicants’ lead counsel, Stockwoods LLP partner Nader Hasan, said at the time. “The timing of these ‘amendments’ is not coincidental. These changes are yet another attempt by the Ford government to sidestep its responsibility to protect young people and future generations from the harms of climate change.”

The Court of Appeal resolved that question Wednesday by sending the case back to Vermette. ““Really, we were looking for clarity on the next step, and that’s been provided,” Croome told The Energy Mix Wednesday afternoon.

But “the courts take time,” and “we’ve lost, arguably, at least a year. It takes a long time to resolve these things through the courts. So when your government acts in these ways, choosing to repeal the legislation when it did, frankly it fits into this bigger picture of government delay on climate action.”

Croome said she’s optimistic about the next Superior Court hearing.

“We have always felt strongly about the strength of the case,” she said. In the previous round, Vermette made “incredibly strong factual findings about the harms,” concluding “that the Ontario government’s weak climate target was causing those harms. That a weak target and any additional greenhouse gas emissions drive warming, which drives more harm. That is a huge piece.”

In a season of raging wildfires and extreme heat, “it is so increasingly clear that our security of the person, our lives, are not worth very much if we don’t fix this problem,” she added. “We are really harming Canadians and Ontarians, we are being harmed, by the climate crisis. That connects so clearly to our Charter rights.”

While the youth wait for their next day in court, Croome said Mathur is already having an impact. Vermette’s findings so far “have driven other litigation. They’ve created other opportunities for youth litigants and other litigants to pursue these issues in the courts.” So in spite of a grindingly slow process, “this case has created hope, it has created action, and that’s something the clients and the legal teams take heart in.”

Late last month, Grist reported that U.S. fossil companies are entering “panic mode” as various climate lawsuits advance through the courts. Croome said a case like Mathur could carry the same weight in Canada.

“Charter litigation is traditionally a place where people go to get action. And this is the power of these rights, to say that once court decides, you then must act,” she told The Mix.

So “yes, absolutely, as we get closer to a final decision on whether a weak climate target is a breach of Section 7 and Section 15 Charter rights, then indisputably it will have huge impact”—not only on governments, but on “the entities that are benefiting on the backs of those regressive policies to the detriment of Ontarians and their future.”