Author ORCID Identifier
Hassan Ahmad: 0000-0001-6114-5885
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-19-2024
Keywords
corporate purpose, climate change, litigation, Nevsun
Abstract
This chapter queries the absence of corporate-related climate cases in Canadian courts. It first retells the recent history of corporate accountability in Canadian courts for human rights-related harms. While initial cases faltered on jurisdictional and justiciability grounds, the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2020 decision in Araya v. Nevsun Resources Ltd. was arguably a watershed moment in Canadian corporate accountability law that, in conjunction with climate litigation commenced against government actors, should have bolstered the prospect of corporate climate litigation. On the contrary though, post-Nevsun corporate accountability claims have been minimal and, to date at least, have not pursued allegations that concern climate-related harms, which arguably fall within the scope of international law and tort law principles that were endorsed by the Court’s majority in Nevsun. The chapter then looks more broadly at one potential reason why corporate climate litigation has yet to take off in Canadian jurisdictions. Like other jurisdictions in the Western world that have some form of the Anglo-American corporation, there has been both a judicial and academic debate about a corporation’s underlying purpose. This debate is largely characterized by shareholder-centric versus stakeholder-centric divide. With climate impacts accelerating and a renewed focus around the law’s place to mitigate or reverse those impacts, Canada continues to suffer from a vacuum in robust corporate purpose law that could oblige corporations to make decisions in a way that protects rather than harms the environment. With sweeping legislative reform being unrealized in the past and potentially unlikely in the future, Canadian courts may have to incrementally advance the law of corporate purpose through ad hoc judicial decisions that have the prospect of long-term ripple effects on corporate behaviour toward the environment.
Repository Citation
Ahmad, Hassan M., "A Crosswinds of Corporate Accountability: Corporate Climate Liability in the Canadian Legal Abyss" (2024). All Papers. 393.
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/all_papers/393
