Something has broken in the machinery of Canadian immigration. What was once a steady stream of court filings has become a flood and Canada’s Federal Court is struggling to keep up.
In 2020, about 6,400 immigration cases were brought before the Federal Court, a figure consistent with the trends of the previous decade. By 2021, the number had jumped to 9,700. Last year, it surpassed 28,000. In just the first three months of 2026, over 6,600 new cases were filed. The vast majority involve rejected visa applications, not refugee matters.
The question now dividing immigration lawyers and the federal government: who or what is responsible?
Jacqueline Bonisteel, an Ottawa-based immigration lawyer, says she’s watched the quality of immigration decisions erode in step with the department’s increased reliance on automated tools. “A human officer isn’t spending as much time with the files as they once did,” she said.
Five years ago, Bonisteel says, a refusal letter would at least signal that someone had read the file. “You’d have some sense that an officer engaged with the evidence,” she said. Today, she sees what she calls “canned lines” replicated across almost every rejection notice boilerplate language with little trace of the individual case.
Nalini Reddy, a Winnipeg-based immigration lawyer, described a case that she says captures the problem precisely. One of her clients a Filipino woman with a Canadian partner had her visitor visa rejected on the grounds that family ties to Canada meant she might overstay. The problem: the woman’s children, close friends, and broader family were all in the Philippines. A careful review of her file would have made that plain.
“That kind of thing has happened so many times in the past three, four years, whereas before it was really an unusual occurrence,” Reddy said. “Now it’s commonplace.”
Andrew Koltun, an immigration lawyer in St. Catharines, Ont., says the failures compound. He represented an Afghan refugee whose initial rejection was reversed at judicial review only for the second decision to copy the first, errors and all. The case is now back before the Federal Court. “Whereas before his decision got heard in a year, now we’re past a year and a half and we haven’t even been scheduled for a court hearing,” Koltun said.
Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s press secretary, Taous Ait, pushed back firmly on the lawyers’ characterisation. She said that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s AI and analytics tools operate under human oversight at all times assisting with tasks like triaging applications, identifying routine cases, generating officer summaries, and running client-facing chatbots.
“AI plays no role in decision-making on immigration applications,” Ait said in an emailed statement. “All refusal decisions are made by trained officers following a full human review.”
IRCC’s first AI strategy, released earlier this year, confirms that the department uses AI to reduce backlogs and wait times. The document says the tools can flag “straightforward, low-risk files” for expedited human decisions and recommend options but explicitly states that they do not refuse applications or recommend refusing them.
Lawyers also cite a widely-used program called Chinook a Microsoft Excel-based tool that simplifies how officer-facing client information is displayed. Government documents describe it as a presentation aid, not a decision-making system, and say it does not use AI or issue recommendations.
Ait pointed instead to structural pressures: record-high application volumes, limited admission spaces under the 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, and a department that has processed more applications than ever before.
Retired Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton told CBC News last September that the court faces a “systemic resource shortfall” — one that predates any debate over AI and reflects a fundamental mismatch between the volume of immigration litigation and the court’s capacity to hear it. He noted the surge is partly driven by a rise in overseas visa applications and an overall increase in the number of people seeking entry to Canada.
Crampton stepped down in October. His replacement has not yet been appointed. As of May 1, one Federal Court judgeship remained vacant.
Koltun argues that with just 44 Federal Court judges, the system is structurally unsustainable. “I think the only actual durable solution is to significantly increase court resources,” he said. “I would say double the number of judges.”
Reddy frames the broader inefficiency bluntly: IRCC may be clearing its backlog faster, but the rejected cases are simply piling up at the courthouse door. “It’s not causing any savings of resources anywhere. It’s just shifting them around and creating a far, far worse situation in terms of utilization of resources,” she said.
The backlog is unlikely to shrink soon. Bonisteel warned that Bill C-12 which now requires refugee claimants to file within one year of arriving in Canada will push a new wave of cases toward the Federal Court. Following the law’s passage, the government sent roughly 30,000 letters to claimants indicating their applications might be deemed invalid under the new rules.
Those claimants will be diverted to the pre-removal risk assessment process and that process, Bonisteel notes, is “challenged in high numbers.” The only avenue to contest a pre-removal risk assessment decision is the Federal Court.
“That’s another side of this too that’s going to continue to make this a problem,” she said.
