Background
This case involves a representative proceeding brought by two Wet’suwet’en Indigenous leaders—Dini Ze’ Lho’Imggin and Dini Ze’ Smogilhgim—on behalf of their clans. The Plaintiffs assert that their obligations under Wet’suwet’en law to protect their people and the spirit in the land obligate them to challenge Canada’s legislative approach to climate change. The original Statement of Claim was filed in February 2020. After an initial motion to strike succeeded, the Plaintiffs appealed. The Federal Court of Appeal allowed them to amend to plead a section 7 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms claim, and the Plaintiffs filed successive amendments in August 2024 and December 2024. Each was struck. The Plaintiffs filed the Second Further Amended Statement of Claim on November 24, 2025, impugning approximately 1,800 provisions across 34 statutory instruments, including acts governing energy development, environmental assessment, and export financing.
The Plaintiffs’ core allegation is that Canada has infringed their section 7 rights (life, liberty, security of the person) by failing to enact legislative measures sufficient to meet its Temperature Commitment under the Paris Agreement—keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The Plaintiffs invoke Canada’s domestically incorporated commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (CNZEAA). Schedule A to the pleading organizes the impugned provisions by color: yellow for laws supporting the Temperature Commitment, grey for laws undermining it, and unshaded for those of ambiguous effect.
The Court’s Holding
Justice McVeigh granted Canada’s motion to strike the Second Further Amended Claim without leave to amend. The Court found that the Plaintiffs have still failed to disclose a reasonable section 7 Charter cause of action. Although the Plaintiffs made incremental changes—adding statutory objectives to each provision and implementing color-coding—these amendments did not cure the fundamental defects. The Court reaffirmed that a section 7 claim requires two steps: (1) showing how an impugned law deprives the claimant of life, liberty, or security of the person with a real causal connection; and (2) demonstrating that the deprivation violates principles of fundamental justice (i.e., the law is arbitrary, overbroad, or grossly disproportionate to its objective).
The Court rejected the Plaintiffs’ argument that the extreme nature of climate harm justifies departing from the standard section 7 framework. The Plaintiffs had argued that because climate change is an existential threat, the harm “overwhelms” the analysis and renders all impugned provisions either arbitrary or per se grossly disproportionate—citing dicta from United States v. Burns and Suresh v. Canada for the proposition that extreme harm can outweigh government objectives. Justice McVeigh held that context informs but does not alter the necessary structure of section 7 analysis. Each provision’s objective must be weighed against the harm caused by that specific provision; there is no “high-level weighing of overwhelming harm” at the principles of fundamental justice stage. Comparing a law that is individually compliant with section 7 against other laws, or against a quasi-constitutional aspiration like the CNZEAA, does not render it unconstitutional. The breadth of the pleading—1,800+ provisions across multiple departments—remained unworkable for trial preparation and discovery.
Key Takeaways
- A section 7 Charter claim challenging multiple laws must show how each specific provision, assessed against its own objective, breaches constitutional principles—not rely on aggregate harm across a legislative scheme.
- The principles of fundamental justice in section 7 analysis have a fixed structure; context is relevant but does not permit departure from the requirement to compare each law’s effect to its objective.
- Extreme or existential harm does not trigger a “coarser” balancing test at the section 7 stage; arguments about public benefits belong at the section 1 justification stage, not the deprivation stage.
- Pleadings must set clear goalposts for the issues in dispute; a giant basket of provisions unified only by subject matter does not suffice without material facts tying them together causally to the alleged deprivation.
- An international commitment or statutory framework (like the CNZEAA), even if domestically incorporated, cannot be used as a quasi-constitutional metric against which all other laws are measured for constitutional validity.
Why It Matters
This decision significantly constrains the scope of section 7 Charter challenges to climate policy. While the Supreme Court has recognized climate change as a grave threat to humanity and to Indigenous communities’ ability to maintain their traditional ways of life (References re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2021 SCC 11), Justice McVeigh’s ruling makes clear that acknowledging climate urgency does not exempt plaintiffs from the rigorous pleading and legal analysis required by established Charter doctrine. The decision rejects a systemic or holistic approach to constitutional review of climate legislation, requiring instead individual scrutiny of each provision against its purpose.
For climate justice advocates and Indigenous communities, the decision presents a formidable barrier: climate harm is inherently systemic and cumulative, arising from the interaction of many policies, yet Canadian constitutional law—at least at the pleading stage—demands that harm and objective be compared provision by provision. The ruling also clarifies that international commitments, no matter how explicitly incorporated into domestic law, do not create a free-floating constitutional standard that supersedes the ordinary section 7 framework. Future litigants in this area will need to either narrow their claims dramatically (as the parallel La Rose plaintiffs did by focusing on the GGPPA alone) or fundamentally reconceive their pleadings to satisfy the Court’s structural requirements for a justiciable Charter claim.