Immigration lawyers say automation is partly driving a massive Federal Court backlog

Nearly 400 new Canadians from 65 countries gather at a ceremony in Toronto to take an oath of citizenship on Friday, July 19, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

OTTAWA — The number of immigration cases being brought to Federal Court has more than quadrupled since 2020 — and some immigration lawyers are linking the surge in part to the federal government’s use of artificial intelligence and automation to clear visa application backlogs.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada insists that technology is not to blame and that multiple factors are driving the boom in legal challenges of the department’s decisions.

About 6,400 immigration cases were brought to Federal Court in 2020, a figure in line with the trend over the previous decade. The caseload spiked sharply in 2021, when 9,700 cases were sent to the court.

More than 28,000 cases were filed with the court last year and more than 6,600 were filed in the first quarter of 2026. The vast majority of these cases are not refugee matters.

‘No sign of engagement with the evidence’

Jacqueline Bonisteel, an Ottawa-based immigration lawyer, said the department is leaning more on technology to speed up decisions on immigration files — and the quality of those decisions is slipping as a result.

“The use of new technology and automation tools, it just means that a human officer isn’t spending as much time with the files as they once did,” she said.

Five years ago, Bonisteel said, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada would offer a detailed explanation of each decision to reject a visa application.

“It might be brief, but you’d have some sense that an officer engaged with the evidence that was filed,” she said.

“And now with these automated decision making tools, you usually don’t get much at all. There’s these canned lines that we see in almost every refusal decision.

“There’s no sign of engagement with the evidence. And that really seems to be a result of the technology and officers being under pressure to just turn decisions through, without going into depth and taking a close look at what was actually filed.”

‘AI plays no role in decision-making’

Taous Ait, Immigration Minister Lena Diab’s press secretary, told The Canadian Press that IRCC’s AI and advanced analytics tools work under human oversight at all times. She said the AI tools assist with tasks like “triaging applications, identifying routine cases, generating summaries for officers” and answering client questions with chatbots.

“AI plays no role in decision-making on immigration applications. As a matter of fact, all refusal decisions are made by trained officers following a full human review. When an application is refused, applicants receive correspondence explaining the reasons for the decision,” she said in an emailed response.

The department’s first AI strategy, released earlier this year, says IRCC is using the technology to reduce application backlogs and wait times.

The strategy says that AI can be used to make assessments, recommend options and flag “straightforward, low-risk files” for an expedited human decision. While the document says AI tools can recommend options, it maintains these tools do not “refuse or recommend refusing any applications.”

Despite this, immigration lawyers who spoke to The Canadian Press said they have tracked a decline in the quality of decision-making at IRCC.

‘Simplify the visual representation’

Nalini Reddy, an immigration lawyer in Winnipeg, said one of her clients saw her visitor visa application rejected on the grounds that her Canadian family ties suggested she would overstay her visa.

Reddy said this tells her the application materials weren’t properly reviewed because while the woman’s partner is Canadian, her children, family and friends are all in the Philippines. She said someone who examined the evidence wouldn’t have denied the visa.

“That kind of thing has happened so many times in files that I’ve seen in the past … three, four years, whereas that was really an unusual occurrence in the past. But now it’s commonplace,” she said.

Reddy and other immigration lawyers point to a program IRCC uses called Chinook. Government documents describe it as a Microsoft Excel-based program designed to “simplify the visual representation” of client information.

The same documents say this specific program does not use AI or make recommendations about application decisions.

Current system simply shifting backlog

Andrew Koltun, a St. Catharines, Ont., immigration lawyer, said software can fail to spot nuances in a visa application, resulting in more decisions that can lead to court challenges.

Koltun argued the current system is simply shifting IRCC’s backlog to the Federal Court.

He said that he had an Afghan refugee client who was initially refused after an officer didn’t look at all the evidence.

“We succeeded in judicial review, it was sent back. The second decision just copy-and-pasted the first reasons and then made the same error. So we’re back at Federal Court,” Koltun said.

“But now, 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.”

Ait disputes the lawyers’ claim that artificial intelligence and automation is driving the spike in immigration litigation.

“The increase in litigation before the Federal Court cannot be attributed to a single factor. In recent years, IRCC has received application volumes that exceed the number of admissions spaces available under the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan,” she said in an email.

“At the same time, the department has processed and finalized record numbers of applications across multiple lines of business. Higher application volumes, larger inventories and an increase in the number of decisions rendered overall may contribute to a corresponding increase in litigation.”

‘Short-sighted’

Retired Federal Court chief justice Paul Crampton told CBC News in September 2025 that the Federal Court is dealing with a systemic resource shortfall that is contributing to problems with processing an “extraordinary” surge in immigration cases.

He said that many of the cases in the court backlog are related to decisions on visa applications from outside of Canada and the overall rise in the number of people looking to come here is leading to a rise in refusals and legal challenges.

Crampton retired in October and his replacement has not yet been named.

Reddy argued that the growing pressure on the Federal Court is wiping out any efficiency gains from the use of technology at IRCC.

“I think it’s short-sighted because it’s not causing any savings of resources anywhere. It’s just shifting them around and at the end of the day, my perception is that it is creating a far, far worse situation in terms of utilization of resources,” she said.

Bonisteel agreed that the rise in the number of people looking to come to Canada and tighter immigration levels could in part explain the caseload surge at the Federal Court.

Immigration cases account for the vast majority of matters heard at Federal Court — 86 per cent of cases last year. Koltun said that having just 44 Federal Court judges is not sustainable.

“I think the only actual durable solution is to significantly increase court resources, to be honest,” Koltun said. “I would say double the number of judges.”

The government lists one Federal Court judge vacancy as of May 1.

Bonisteel said she thinks a new law that requires refugee claimants to make their claims within a year of their arrival in Canada will drive up the Federal Court backlog even further.

After Bill C-12 became law, the government issued about 30,000 letters to refugee claimants telling them their claims might be deemed invalid under the new rules.

“A whole population has just become ineligible to make a refugee claim and they’re going to diverted to the pre-removal risk assessment process, and those decisions we know are challenged in high numbers,” Bonisteel said.

“That’s another side of this too that’s going to continue to make this a problem.”

The only venue to challenge a pre-removal risk assessment decision is the Federal Court.

David Baxter, The Canadian Press