Not everyone has AC, but do you have a legal ‘right to cooling’ in Canada?
Global News
Advocates for tenants, seniors and the environment are rallying across Canada to ensure vulnerable people can access their right to cooling. What is this legal right?
As many parts of Canada reeled under hot weather, a group representing migrant farm workers wrote a letter to Ontario premier Doug Ford on Monday, urging him to put protections in place for those toiling in the fields.
“Farmworkers are 35 times more likely than the general public to die of heat exposure. The province should not wait for a tragedy to happen before it passes legislation to protect the foundation of Canada’s food system: farm workers,” Chris Ramsaroop, organizer with the group Justice for Migrant Workers, wrote in his letter to Ford.
The group referenced a 2022 statement by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which established access to cooling as a human right.
“Access to cooling during extreme heat waves is a human rights issue. As temperatures rise due to climate change, extreme heat waves have and will continue to disproportionately impact groups protected under Ontario’s Human Rights Code,” the commission said.
Andrew Gage, lawyer at the West Coast Environmental Law Association, said, “It’s (the right to cooling) a proactive right that someone needs to act on.”
Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre for Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo, said, “It makes perfect sense that we treat access to cooling as a fundamental human right, the same way we think of access to warmth in winter as a fundamental human right to keep people from freezing to death or suffering unduly.”
Feltmate said certain groups are especially vulnerable. These include the elderly, people with pre-existing health issues or those with limited financial means. These groups are likely to not have access to air conditioning or experience social isolation.
He said the B.C. heat dome of 2021, in which 619 people were killed due to extreme heat, is an example of just how destructive heat waves can be. Feltmate also cited the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which lays out “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being.”