Climate Justice Saskatoon is one of the 8 applicants taking the Saskatchewan government and SaskPower to court. Our court case was filed in April of 2023 and after several months of delays by the respondent government and SaskPower, we now have a hearing date for the first stage of the action. On April 5, 2024, there will be a special hearing to consider the applications to strike our action that have been filed separately by the government and SaskPower. We anticipate that they will be serving our lawyers with their materials on or before February 5, 2024, and we will have to file a response brief by March 5, 2024.
Our action is asking the court to consider if our Charter rights to life, security of person, and equality rights for young people are being violated when SaskPower builds new gas generation plants that will exacerbate dangerous climate change. CJS, along with many reputable energy analysts, knows building new fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with a net zero future. Furthermore, as countries around the world move to price pollution, gas generation is also anticipated to be more expensive than clean renewable energy.
You can help. SaskPower’s ongoing consultation process is cast as a “conversation about Saskatchewan’s power future.” Please visit their website and offer your thoughts about our future supply to 2030 and beyond:
One of the most important things we need to do to stop dangerous climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels. That is why we need to decarbonize our electricity as soon as possible, so that there is a clean alternative energy source to replace our addiction to polluting fossil fuels.