End Saskatchewan coal

On November 10, a Saskatchewan court held a justiciability hearing with big implications on the future of coal burning in the province. Five months earlier, on June 18, Saskatchewan’s Minister for Crown Corporations Jeremy Harrison had informed SaskPower staff that the province would ignore the federal Clean Electricity Regulations and keep coal “a pillar” of the electricity grid. Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) subsequently launched a legal challenge to stop the province from burning coal for the next several decades. CPJ’s co-applicants include the Saskatchewan Environmental Society and three neighbours from the Prairies: 12-year-old Kiké Dueck, Sherry Olson, and Manitoba farmer Matthew Wiens – everyday people who shouldn’t have to go to court just to insist governments follow the law and protect children’s futures. The judge’s decision on the November 10 hearing is expected before the end of 2025.

To add insult to injury, Saskatchewan’s decision contravenes two federal laws: the Coal-fired Electricity Regulations and the Clean Electricity Regulations. Saskatchewan has said that they “do not recognize the legitimacy of the federal Clean Electricity Regulations,” and the federal government has essentially given them a pass on doing so by signing an equivalency agreement that ostensibly lets them keep burning coal. This situation is unfair to those that have already done their part – like Ontario, which completed its coal phase-out by 2014, and Alberta, which ended coal power in 2024, five years ahead of schedule.

Saskatchewan also entirely bypassed public consultation. The coal announcement was not made to the public but delivered internally to SaskPower employees. On top of that, the province is setting aside $900 million to refurbish coal plants – investments at high risk of becoming stranded assets if Canada meets its climate goals.

Living liturgies

It’s hard to imagine Jesus being litigious, but worship can take all kinds of unlikely forms. For instance, he was rather forceful in his worship when he went into the temple to dramatically remind people that it was a place of worship, and not a marketplace.

In my own experience, I’ve seen worship happen in surprising forms, too. Growing up in Egypt, where I was baptized in an Orthodox church, I found that people didn’t necessarily need to understand words of worship to take part in it, as much of the liturgy was in Coptic, a language most congregants didn’t understand. Later, at a Catholic parish, I learned that one heartfelt hymn could be as valuable as five prayers. These experiences prompted me to ask the question: what makes something amount to an act of worship?

Decades later, as a law student and Climate Justice Policy Analyst at CPJ, I find myself returning to that question: Can a legal challenge qualify as worship? What frame of mind would we need to take on for it to be so?

As I realized after joining CPJ, worship isn’t only what we sing on Sunday; it’s the public love of our neighbours that we practice every day. Coal-fired power generation is among the most harmful ways to produce electricity, contributing disproportionately to the climate crisis and local air pollution that worsens heart and lung disease and drives hundreds, if not thousands, of premature deaths. Renewable energy, on the other hand, creates sustainable jobs, affordable electricity rates, and avoids preventable suffering.

Climate risk & reality

The facts are stark. Saskatchewan has some of the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, despite Southern Saskatchewan having huge solar and wind potential. And Canada itself ranks among the world’s heaviest per-capita emitters. If this sounds like abstract policy talk, remember: it shows up in hospital wards and on farm fields. It shows up in the air a child breathes on the way to school and in the bills families pay when governments chase yesterday’s fuel instead of tomorrow’s solutions. It also shows up in the witness of the church.

CPJ’s own story is shaped by Christians who believed public justice is a form of worship: Gerald Vandezande, our co-founder and Member of the Order of Canada; and John Olthuis, a CPJ co-founder appointed to the Order of Canada in 2023 for decades of Indigenous rights advocacy, including work around the Berger Inquiry and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline moratorium era. That lineage reminds us that faithful public engagement can change the trajectory of a country.

Fast forward to today. Youth litigants in Mathur v. Ontario, a case in which CPJ is acting as an intervenor, won a pivotal Court of Appeal ruling that sent their Charter case back for a new hearing on the merits. And just last month, Ecojustice helped launch a case alleging Canada Pension Plan Investments is mismanaging climate risk – because fiduciary duty, too, must reckon with reality.

So, yes: being an applicant in a lawsuit against the government is an act of worship, even if it isn’t a typical form of worship, and even if it doesn’t take place in a typical worship venue. It is not meant to antagonize the province but to tell the truth in public, to protect vulnerable neighbours, and to call those in authority to keep the promises they’ve made. If that resonates with your understanding of discipleship, I invite you to keep this case in prayer and learn more about clean-energy options in your own community. In a season when it’s tempting to settle for performative leadership, let’s worship through the collective hymn of public justice instead.