Despite a record caseload, Paul Crampton says the court is considering cutting hearings because of chronic and worsening underfunding by the federal government
OTTAWA — The chief justice of the Federal Court says the court is in “crisis” and considering cutting hearings due to a worsening budget shortfall that is leaving many refugee claimants waiting months longer for life-changing rulings.
Longtime Federal Court (FC) Chief Justice Paul Crampton in an interview with National Post painted a dire picture of the government’s funding of the Courts Administration Service (CAS).
“It wouldn’t be an understatement to call this situation a crisis,” Crampton said. He said CAS’s roughly $100-million annual budget is short $35 million.
“I think we’ve reached a point where we’re going to have to reduce the level of services that we’re providing to Canadians, and that would therefore adversely, potentially significantly adversely, impact access to justice.”
CAS is an arm’s length federal body that provides crucial administrative supports like registry, IT, facility and security services for the Federal Court, Federal Court of Appeal, Court Martial Appeal Court and Tax Court of Canada (communally knows as the federal courts).
In addition to immigration and refugee appeals, the federal courts hear thousands of cases annually on issues like patented medicine prices, military discipline, tax bill appeals, national security, competition cases, Indigenous law and administrative law.
In two recent internal memos obtained by National Post, CAS chief administrator and CEO Darlene Carreau said “significant gaps” in funding from the federal government meant the organization is forecasting its first ever deficit this fiscal year and “potentially for several years to come”.
“We face a great deal of uncertainty halfway through the fiscal year,” Carreau wrote to staff on Nov. 21. “As a result, I have decided to freeze staffing and discretionary spending, including travel, training and professional services, for the time being.”
In the interview, Crampton said his court is considering “drastic measures” to deal with CAS’s budget shortfall, including reducing the number of hearings at a time when the court is facing an unprecedented caseload.
“Is it going to make sense to sit on fewer days, or just to send fewer judges out into the regions, because we’re a national itinerant court? These are some of the things we’re looking at,” Crampton said.
He also says CAS has pushed back major IT modernization projects, meaning the court is “very vulnerable” to cyber attacks or its computer systems “crashing” at any moment.
CAS’s funding shortfall is so dire that the chief justices of all four federal courts are expected to meet Justice Minister Arif Virani on Friday to discuss the issue.
In a statement, Virani’s spokesperson Chantalle Aubertin said, “Courts are key to making sure everyone gets fair and timely justice. Minister Virani is aware of the financial situation of the Courts Administration Service (CAS) and on Friday he will meet with the four Chief Justices of the federal courts… to discuss their needs and try to identify sustainable solutions.”
One of the key services CAS offers the federal courts are registries, which namely manage all case documents.
Crampton says his court’s registry is floundering in the face of a massive surge of immigration cases over the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, 6,000 immigration cases were filed to the Federal Court. This year, that number is expected to hit 24,000 as immigrants appeal recent decisions by the Liberal government to cut down on a host of asylum and temporary and permanent residence streams, namely for international students.
“We are seeing this increasing, significantly increasing, volume coming at us. We’re doing everything that can be reasonably expected of us, and we’re not getting even a fraction of the resources required to do our job,” Crampton said.
We can’t get their attention because there’s no votes in the courts
He says the average additional delay in those cases is currently 10 weeks in Toronto and Vancouver and 12 to 14 weeks in Montreal.
“I think a lot of refugees would say they want to get on with their lives,” he noted.
In her statement, Aubertin said the government earmarked $3.19 million in the latest supplemental estimates to “respond to rising immigration caseloads”.
Another ongoing issue for the federal courts has been the costs related to a new legal obligation as of June to publish all “precedential” rulings in both French and English simultaneously.
The measure imposed “very significant” new translation costs on CAS, which asked the government for roughly $15 million in additional annual funding in this year’s budget.
In budget 2024, the Liberals gave CAS $9.6 million over three years for additional translation, or $3.2 million annually.
This affects “decisions that really should be going out ASAP, including drug patent decisions where a generic may be waiting to launch,” he said. “This is an issue of lower drug prices for Canadians.”
“It’s unseemly, the way the judicial branch is going to the executive branch cap in hand,” he said. He suggested funding levels be tied to a legislative anchor, “as opposed to this ad hoc, willy nilly process that they have now, together with perhaps the involvement of Parliament.”
Until that happens, the chief justice says access to justice will continue to suffer.
“We have no reason for optimism. We’ve made requests in the budget that were refused. We’ve made off-cycle requests that were we haven’t heard back on,” Crampton said.
“It’s unbelievable because this is like a barnacle on the bottom of a whale,” he added. “We’re talking a very, very small amount of money here, and yet, we can’t get their attention because there’s no votes in the courts.”
National Post
Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.