Opinion: Canada’s climate-change child soldiers – by Andrew Roman (Financial Post – November 25, 2020)

https://financialpost.com/

“Canada produces just 1.6 per cent of global CO2 emissions, with
Ontario responsible for less than half of that. China, by contrast,
is at 30 per cent and rising.”

On Nov. 12 an Ontario judge refused to strike out a lawsuit by a group of two minor children and five youths alleging that the Ontario government’s 2018 reduction in its climate-change target by 15 per cent violates their constitutional rights to life, liberty and security of the person.

This judgment conflicts with a judgment of the Federal Court two weeks earlier, striking out an almost identical claim. The Ontario court should have followed the Federal Court precedent.

Most adults have an instinctive desire to protect innocent, vulnerable children. In the climate-change wars, however, we are seeing child litigants being used as climate-change soldiers in lawsuits brought by adult lawyers and their financial supporters.

If adults cannot win the battle on the merits of their own positions, they hide behind our sympathy for innocent children. The exploitation of children to front a lawsuit in this way is ethically troubling.

If this case goes to trial and sets this dangerous precedent, why not have children in Calgary sue to set aside the carbon tax or the Clean Fuel Standard or Ottawa’s hyper-regulatory Bill C-69 because they kill any prospect of their employment in the oil industry and thereby infringe their constitutional rights?

For the rest of this article: https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-canadas-climate-change-child-soldiers