Canada's Federal Court is drowning in immigration cases — and a new law is making it worse

Federal Court Chief Justice Alan Diner says a flood of immigration cases has made the court's workload unmanageable. Filings are on track to pass 33,000 this year, and staff are working weekends and through vacations to keep up. Immigration matters now account for 86 per cent of the court's files, Diner told CityNews Vancouver, and processing delays have stretched to eight weeks.

The growth has been dramatic. When Diner joined the court in 2014, it typically saw 5,000 to 6,000 immigration cases a year. Filings climbed to 9,700 in 2021. In just the first six months of this year, more than 14,000 were filed, with 28,000 now pending. Nearly 1,000 have been granted hearings for judicial review, which is when a judge checks whether a government decision was made fairly and legally. The court has 44 judges, including Diner, and that number has not changed despite a roughly 600 per cent increase in immigration cases since 2020 (The Globe and Mail).

Diner was sworn in as Chief Justice on July 6. Before becoming a judge, he worked as a lawyer in immigration and administrative law (Prime Minister's Office). His warning about the court's capacity comes as a new law sends even more cases its way.

Bill C-12, a border security law passed in March, changes who gets a hearing at the Immigration and Refugee Board, the tribunal that decides refugee claims. Now, only people who make a refugee claim within their first year of arriving in Canada can go before the IRB. The law applies retroactively to arrivals after June 24, 2020, and to all claims made on or after June 3, 2025. People who claim refugee status more than a year after arriving are now only eligible for a pre-removal risk assessment, a separate process that checks whether someone would face danger if sent back to their home country. The only way to appeal a negative PRRA decision is through the Federal Court.

That change has triggered a second wave of lawsuits. Since C-12 became law, the Federal Court has received more than 2,000 applications challenging whether the law is constitutional. The court has also seen a sharp jump in requests for stays of deportation, which are emergency applications asking a judge to temporarily stop someone from being removed from Canada. The court used to see 300 to 400 of these a year. It is now processing upward of 1,100.

A formal review of the court's rules, published in 2024-2025, acknowledges that the courts face unprecedented challenges from rising caseloads and strained resources. Separately, the Federal Court's guidance on artificial intelligence, published in December 2023, notes that AI tools could save time and reduce workload for judges and staff, including on immigration matters (Federal Court of Canada).

The broader context here is about how laws and institutions interact. C-12 was partly designed to tighten the refugee system and discourage people from making late claims after they have already settled in Canada. But by taking those cases away from the IRB and sending all appeals to the Federal Court, Parliament concentrated the workload on a group of judges that has not grown to match. The 600 per cent increase since 2020 started before C-12 existed, meaning the court was already under heavy pressure before the new law added constitutional challenges and stay applications.

The situation also reveals a structural issue. The Federal Court is the main place where federal immigration decisions get reviewed, but its number of judges is set by law and has not been updated to reflect the rising volume. The court's AI guidance and the review of its rules suggest it is looking at technological and procedural fixes. But constitutional challenges to C-12 still need to be decided on their merits, and stay-of-deportation applications are urgent because they involve real consequences for the people involved.

Other countries face similar pressures, though their systems work differently. U.S. immigration courts had a backlog of about 3.2 million cases as of December 31, 2025 (Reuters). Canada's numbers are smaller in absolute terms, but the rate of growth, roughly sixfold in five years on the same number of judges, is what Diner is now asking policy-makers to address.