VANCOUVER—A group of young Canadian activists are suing the federal government over climate change — they’re at the forefront of a new legal strategy that could hold governments around the world to account, after decades of attempts to sue companies for the effects of climate change have failed.

In a joint media release, Our Children’s Trust and the David Suzuki Foundation said that 15 young people from across Canada will file a lawsuit Friday claiming that the government has violated their rights to life, liberty and security of the person — which are guaranteed under Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — by contributing to high greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

They also claim that the government violated their equality rights under Section 15 of the charter, because youth are affected by climate change more than any other group.

The 15 young people are said to be from across Canada and include B.C.-based climate activist and spokesperson Sierra Robinson.

They will be joined by their families and other environmental activists at a news conference ahead of a climate march in Vancouver, also planned for Friday. International climate activist Greta Thunberg is expected to make an appearance at the march.

The 15 youth are represented by the law firms of Arvay Finlay LLP and Tollefson Law Corp., and are partnered with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, the David Suzuki Foundation, and Our Children’s Trust.

Our Children’s Trust is already behind more than 50 cases in the United States, including the landmark case Juliana v. U.S. It is spearheaded by 23-year-old Kelsey Juliana from Oregon and 20 other youth plaintiffs, who allege that the U.S. government violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by making decisions that have lead to climate change.

Andrea Rodgers, a senior attorney at Our Children’s Trust who was involved in many of these cases, said that these attempts to fight the government in court is a strategy that came out of years of unsuccessful court battles against individual companies and projects.

“It’s important we don’t forget our history,” she told Star Vancouver. “Climate change cases have been filed in court for over 40 years ... but the vast majority were unsuccessful.

Rodgers said that most of the cases fought individual projects, such as coal plants or refineries, over harmful effects to the health of individuals. But she said that due to the way the way courts evaluate the impact of a specific project, it was difficult to prove direct causation coming from emissions from a particular project.

She said environmental lawyers realized that they had to target what they saw as the real source of the problem.

“We learned it’s not these individual permits that are the problem — the problem is the overall system, and the pattern of government issuing these permits over decades.”

Rodgers added that alongside the shift in legal strategy is a larger social shift toward viewing climate change as a fundamental human rights issue.

“I think climate change started out as environmental issue, but it is a societal problem and there are environmental effects that are happening,” she said. “We are starting to see climate change as a human rights problem as opposed to an environmental one.”

Other legal experts who have been watching these cases evolve, say that the move to constitutional challenges in Canada have been expected for some time.

“We’ve seen this coming for a while,” said Maureen Killoran, a partner at Osler law firm.

She noted that the Urgenda case in the Netherlands, which was first filed in 2012, has helped set the scene for the American and Canadian constitutional cases. It was the first international decision to succeed in holding governments to account.

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In the Urgenda case, a judge found that the Netherlands was not doing enough to prevent climate change and must take action to prevent harm. The state has applied to appeal the ruling for the second time in 2019.

Killoran noted that this case was a benchmark because “no court had ever held their government accountable,” for the effects of climate change.

She also said that legal experts have learned from the 2018 ENVironnement JEUnesse lawsuit in Québec, in which an environmental non-profit attempted to file a class action lawsuit against the federal government, claiming young people’s rights under section 7 and 15 of the Charter were being violated due to climate change. However, that case was not successful on the basis of the proposed class.

Killoran said that while the court noted a class action lawsuit was not the right vehicle for the case, it set the stage for other constitutional challenges because “they recognized the issue that was raised, and they said it was in the scope of executive branch.”

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