Is your province or country miles away from hitting its climate targets? Sick of getting grief from independent auditors and annoying kids insisting on a future? Doug Ford’s government has just the trick for you: if you’re failing to measure up, get rid of the measuring stick.

The Ford government has now repealed all requirements to set climate targets, make a plan, and issue accountability reports along the way. The way things are going nationally, Ontario might merely be the early adopter.

The irony is painful: the legislation that needed repealing was part of the Ford government’s 2018 act to cancel industrial carbon pricing and weaken the previous climate targets. Not enough cancelling was done at that time, apparently.

And the timing is suspect. The government scrapped its own climate laws just days before a scheduled court hearing. Seven young Ontarians were finally about to get their day in court on Dec. 1, arguing that the Ford government’s rollback of climate targets and the province’s feeble climate plan violate their Charter rights. “Haha,” the Ford government has effectively responded. “What climate plan? Nothing to see here.”

“Less than a week before our day in court, the Ford government blindsided us by stripping away its own climate obligations,” said Zoe Keary-Matzner, a youth applicant in the landmark Mathur et al. v. Ontario case. “It’s deeply disappointing that the government would rather rewrite the rules at the eleventh hour … to let itself off the hook for tracking its climate progress.”

Legal experts also think the timing smells fishy. “They're about to be potentially held to account for not doing enough on climate change,” Nathalie Chalifour, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s faculty of law, 

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