The judge’s decision hasn’t come down yet on whether a case against the Province, Sask Power and the Crown Investments Corporation should continue or not.
In March of 2023, a group of concerned citizens filed a court application saying the plan to build new gas-fired power plants, in light of climate change, violates their Charter rights to life, liberty and personal security.
There is no set date for when the Regina King’s Bench judge will announce her decision.
Peter Prebble with the Saskatchewan Environmental Society says this is not the first court case of its kind.
Recent cases in Denmark and Switzerland have ruled that lack of climate action can violate human rights and there is a court case in Ontario right now.
“And at first it was dismissed, but now the Ontario Court of Appeal has basically said, no we don’t agree with this ruling, and we are sending it back to a lower court to reconsider it again.”
If the judge dismisses the Saskatchewan case, the Citizens against SaskPower group could appeal.
The Environmental Society isn’t in this citizens’ group but applied and was denied intervenor status for the argument against dismissing the case.
Prebble says they will apply again to be an intervenor if the court case itself goes forward.
He believes climate change issue has become a climate emergency. “We saw that in Canada last year when we lost 18-and-a-half million hectares of forest in a single year, burned, and that was because of the warming climate, and we saw in Saskatchewan last year, an area five times the size of Prince Albert National Park that burned.”
Prebble adds that the rate of sea level rise has doubled in the last 30 years.
He suggests we will be the last generation that has the ability to stop catastrophic impacts from climate change, but it requires winding down on our reliance in fossil fuels.
He says the province’s greenhouse gas emissions are more than three times the national average and eight times the global average. “I think one of the biggest risks in the long term will be the risk of intensified heat waves and large numbers of people dying as a result of that. We saw this year ten countries exceed 50 degrees Celsius. That’s a temperature that threatens human life if you don’t have air conditioning.”