Pre-budget consultation

Via email: yourbudget-votrebudget@fin.gc.ca

Department of Finance Canada
90 Elgin Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0G5

Re: Pre-budget consultation 2025 - Ensuring Canada’s Courts can fulfill their constitutional mandate

We are writing on behalf of the Federal Courts Bench and Bar Liaison Committee, the Tax Court Bench and Bar Committee, with the support of the Immigration Law Section (the “CBA Liaison Committees and Section”) in response to the Government of Canada’s 2025 Pre-budget consultations.

The Canadian Bar Association represents over 40,000 legal professionals, including lawyers, notaries, law professors, and students across Canada. Our mandate includes promoting the rule of law, improving access to justice, advocating for effective law reform, and providing expertise on how legislation impacts Canadians’ daily lives.

We recognize the significant fiscal pressures facing Canada and acknowledge the government’s commitment to responsible spending. At the same time, courts occupy a unique role within our constitutional framework. Unlike other areas of government, their mandate is not discretionary: the judiciary must be adequately resourced to apply and interpret the laws enacted by Parliament. Ensuring strong, independent, and effective courts is essential to maintaining public confidence in our institutions and to safeguarding the Rule of Law in Canada.

The purpose of this letter is to highlight critical funding pressures facing Canada's federal courts and to propose collaborative solutions, which are summarized at the end of this letter.

Systemic pressures on Federal Court capacity

The Courts Administration Service (CAS) has for many years operated under structural funding shortfalls¹. The resources available to CAS have not kept pace with the growing volume and complexity of the work before the federal courts. CAS manages a structural deficit/funding gap of approximately $35 million, despite numerous requests for relief.

This underfunding strains core operations and, if left unaddressed, risks undermining the ability of the courts to discharge their mandate effectively and independently.

These pressures are not isolated to the federal level. Similar patterns exist in provincial and territorial court systems, where fiscal constraints and infrastructure challenges jeopardize justice delivery.

As Parliament continues to legislate in complex and evolving areas, such as immigration, national security and major project development, it must ensure that the courts are adequately resourced to fulfill their mandate.

We stand ready to support this effort, having advanced numerous policy and procedural reforms to improve court efficiency, including recommendations to decrease Federal Court backlogs.²

Addressing structural funding and operational pressures

While recent reallocations have addressed some of the CAS’ immediate deficits, they have also introduced long-term risks to program integrity and service delivery, including in the following areas:

• Cyber security risks:Unlike other federal departments, CAS lacks centralized cybersecurity support and bears full responsibility for securing digital infrastructure. Courts must protect sensitive information and ensure uninterrupted operations, requiring sustained support for robust cybersecurity strategies, reliable IT systems, and strong data protection measures (Mandate Priority 5).
• Immigration caseloads and sunset funding: Since 2020, immigration-related cases commenced at the Federal Court have quadrupled (from 6424 to 24,667). However, operational funding to support increased judicial capacity expired in 2023 and was not renewed. Without renewal, the Court is expected to hear approximately 400 fewer immigration cases annually—significantly increasing backlogs and undermining the integrity of Canada’s immigration and border systems. As documented in the CBA Immigration Law Section's May 2025 submission "Law, Technology, and Accountability: Reimagining Canadian Immigration for the 21st Century,"³ persistent backlogs and delays continue to affect nearly every immigration stream, with applicants facing months or years of waiting that can result in lost employment, family separation, and restricted access to basic services. Reduced Federal Court capacity compounds these systemic delays, creating an additional judicial bottleneck. Sustained investment would advance the Government’s Mandate Priorities 2, 3, 5 and 6 by ensuring timely court decisions that are essential for border integrity, the credibility of Canada’s immigration system, and the country’s broader security and sovereignty objectives.
• Translation: The temporary nature of funding required under the Official Languages Act also poses a risk with only two years of funding remaining. Without sustained funding, adjusted to evolving demands placed on the courts, the backlog of 2,400 decisions awaiting translation (as of June 2025) will continue growing unless measures are taken to address the translation delays.

Recommendation:

1. Finance Canada should carefully consider CAS's critical capacity investment needs in these areas.

A significant proportion of court backlogs can be traced to departmental policies that have unintended consequences for the justice system. For example, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s practice of withholding reasons for certain decisions has resulted in thousands of applicants turning to the Federal Court simply to understand why their applications were denied. This inefficiency strains the Court’s limited capacity and undermines access to justice.⁴

Recommendation:

2. For the 2025 or next budget cycle, the CBA Liaison Committees and Section offer to engage in discussion regarding the commissioning of an independent review that would identify departmental policies, not necessarily limited to but particularly in immigration, that risk creating unintended pressures on the federal courts and quantifies their cumulative impact on judicial capacity. This review would deliver evidence-based recommendations for targeted policy reforms to reduce avoidable demands on the judiciary while establishing the foundation for sustainable, multi-year funding frameworks for Canada's federal courts in future budget cycles.

Summary of recommendations

Court infrastructure investment directly supports government priorities including economic transformation, digital government, and national sovereignty and security. Courts are foundational to functioning government and an economically prosperous, rules-based society.

We invite the government to:

1. Consider the federal courts’ critical capacity needs regarding:
   1. Cybersecurity infrastructure and support (Mandate Priority 5)
   2. Immigration caseload operations (Mandate Priorities 2,3, 5 and 6)
   3. Sustained translation services funding under the Official Languages Act (Mandate Priority 7)
2. Work with the CBA to:
   1. Commission an independent review that would identify and quantify how departmental policies, particularly in immigration, create unintended pressures on federal courts, with evidence-based recommendations for policy reforms (Mandate Priority 7).
   2. Establish a politically independent process for implementing stable, multi-year funding for CAS that recognizes courts' constitutional mandate and keeps pace with growing caseload complexity (Mandate Priorities 2 and 7).

We look forward to collaborating with you and your department to support the strength and effectiveness of Canada's federal court system.

Yours truly,

(original letter signed by Yves Faguy for Jordana Sanft, Marie-France Dompierre and Kamaljit Kaur Lehal)

Endnotes