Federal Court swamped by immigration cases as new law adds pressure

Federal Court Chief Justice Alan Diner says a surge in immigration cases has created unmanageable workloads, with filings on track to exceed 33,000 this year and staff 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 steep. When Diner joined the Federal Court in 2014, it typically handled 5,000 to 6,000 immigration cases a year. Filings climbed to 9,700 in 2021. In the first six months of this year alone, more than 14,000 were filed, with 28,000 now pending. Nearly 1,000 have been granted hearings for judicial review — the process by which a judge examines whether a federal decision was made lawfully. The court's 44 judges, including Diner, have absorbed a roughly 600 per cent increase in immigration caseloads since 2020 with no change to the number of judges on the bench (The Globe and Mail).

Diner was sworn in as Chief Justice on July 6. He practised immigration and administrative law before his judicial appointment (Prime Minister's Office). His assessment of the court's capacity comes as a new law redirects significant litigation to the Federal Court docket.

Bill C-12, the federal border security legislation passed in March, restricts Immigration and Refugee Board hearings to claimants who make a refugee claim within their first year of arriving in Canada. The law is retroactive to arrivals after June 24, 2020, and applies to all claims made on or after June 3, 2025. Claimants who apply more than a year after arrival are now eligible only for a pre-removal risk assessment — a separate process that evaluates whether someone faces danger if deported. The sole avenue to appeal a negative PRRA determination is through the Federal Court.

That change has produced a secondary wave of litigation. Since C-12 became law, the Federal Court has received more than 2,000 applications challenging the statute's constitutionality. The court has also recorded a sharp increase in requests for stays of deportation: where it typically saw 300 to 400 such applications annually, it is now processing upward of 1,100.

The volume prompted a formal acknowledgment in the 2024-2025 Global Review of the Federal Courts Rules, which states that the courts are confronting unprecedented challenges from increased caseloads and strained resources. Separately, the Federal Court's official guidance on artificial intelligence, published in December 2023, notes that AI tools can save time and reduce workload for judges and court staff, including in the area of Citizenship, Immigration, and Refugee Protection (Federal Court of Canada).

The broader context here is one of legislative design interacting with institutional capacity. C-12 was, in part, an attempt to tighten access to the refugee determination system and discourage late claims made after a claimant has already established roots in Canada. But by eliminating IRB jurisdiction over out-of-time claims and routing appeals exclusively through the Federal Court, Parliament concentrated downstream judicial review on a bench that has not seen a corresponding expansion. The 600 per cent caseload increase since 2020 predates C-12, meaning the court was already under sustained pressure before the new law began generating constitutional challenges and stay applications.

The dynamic also points to a structural feature of Canada's immigration litigation system. The Federal Court serves as the central judicial review body for federal immigration decisions, but its complement of 44 judges is set by statute and has not been adjusted to reflect shifting volume. The court's own AI guidance and the global review of its rules suggest institutional responses, whether technological or procedural, are being explored. But constitutional challenges to C-12 will require adjudication on the merits, and stay-of-deportation applications carry their own urgency given the removal consequences for individual claimants.

The scale of the challenge is not unique to Canada, though the jurisdictional mechanics differ. U.S. immigration courts faced a backlog of approximately 3.2 million cases as of December 31, 2025 (Reuters). The Canadian figures are smaller in absolute terms, but the rate of growth, roughly sixfold in five years on an unchanged judicial complement, is the figure Diner is now asking policy-makers to weigh.