Federal Court Chief Justice Alan Diner has warned that a massive influx of immigration filings is overwhelming Canada's judicial system. The court expects roughly 33,000 cases this year, a volume that has left judges and staff working through weekends and vacations to keep pace.
The jump from 6,000 to 33,000 annual filings
The scale of the current caseload represents a staggering departure from historical norms. According to the report, the Federal Court typically handled between 5,000 and 6,000 immigration cases per year when Chief Justice Alan Diner joined the court in 2014.. While that number rose to 9,700 by 2021, the current trajectory toward 33,000 filings indicates a systemic shock to the court's capacity.
This surge is largely a byproduct of a post-pandemic spike in asylum claims and both temporary and permanent immigration. The pressure is evident in the raw data: between January 1 and June 30, more than 14,000 new immigration cases were filed, leaving a pending backlog of 28,000 matters. Immigration-related filings now account for approximately 86 per cent of all matters handled by the Federal Court in the first half of the year.
How Bill C-12 triggered 2,000 constitutional challenges
A significant portion of the current legal volatility stems from the passage of Bill C-12, a border security law passed in March . As reported, Bill C-12 mandates that the Immigration and Refugee Board only hear claims from individuals who apply for refugee status within their first year in Canada. This rule is retroactive for those who arrived after June 24 , 2020, and will apply to claims made on or after June 3, 2025.
Because the Federal Court is the only avenue for appealing negative assessments for those who miss this one-year window, the court has become a bottleneck for legal challenges. chief Justice Alan Diner noted that the court has already received over 2,000 applications challenging the constitutionality of Bill C-12. Furthermore, requests for stays of deportation have skyrocketed from a historical average of 300 to 400 per year to more than 1,100 since the law's enactment.
44 judges facing a 600 per cent workload increase
Despite the exponential growth in filings, the human resources of the Federal Court have remained static. chief Justice Alan Diner revealed that there are currently 44 Federal Court judges, a number that has not changed since 2020. This means the same number of judicial officers are now tasked with handling six times the volume of immigration work they faced four years ago.
The human cost of this imbalance is mounting. Chief Justice Alan Diner warned that working through holidays and vacations is an unsustainable long-term strategy, noting that judges and staff are feeling burned out and sensitive under the pressure. While Justice Minister Sean Fraser's office stated the minister is "mindful" of the caseload, Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner argued that the crisis is a direct result of the government's poor management of immigration files over the last decade.
AI tools and the 8-week processing delay
The administrative fallout of the surge has already impacted the public. The Federal Court registry recently notified the public that document processing times, which are ideally 48 hours, could now stretch to eight weeks for immigration matters. To combat this, the court is expanding digitization efforts and exploring the use of artificial intelligence and automation tools to assist in the administrative process.
However, several critical questions remain unanswered. It is unclear whether the federal government will actually commit to appointing more judges to the 44-person bench or if they will rely solely on technological efficiency. Additionally, while Chief Justice Alan Diner menttioned that AI will not be used to make decisions, the specific boundaries of how AI will "assist in the process" have not been defined. Finally, the report does not clarify if the government expects the 33,000-case peak to be a temporary spike or a permanent new baseline for the Canadian legal system.
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