Courts warn of ‘critical’ budget pressures as immigration cases delayed in Canada’s 3 largest cities

2024/12/10 Leave a comment

Yet another example where high levels of immigration have contributed to pressures on government services, in this cases, the courts. IRCC has about 80 percent of cases against the federal government:

Federal Justice Minister Arif Virani is set to meet with the chief justices of Canada’s four federal courts on Friday, after they warned of a budgetary shortfall creating “critical” pressure on their operations, including efforts to clear a backlog of immigration filings in three major cities.

The Federal Court alone is estimating that it’s on track for an almost 50 per cent increase in the filings this year.

The four courts also said they have an estimated $35 million annual gap in funding impacting court operations. The National Post first reported about the budgetary issues faced by the courts on Thursday.

“At a minimum, cases will take longer to be heard, and modernization efforts will be slowed down or stopped, to the detriment of litigants and access to justice,” the Courts Administration Service (CAS) said in a statement to CBC News. The arm’s-length federal body serves the Federal Court and Canada’s three other federal courts, the Federal Court of Appeal, the Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada and the Tax Court of Canada.

“Immigration cases are already being delayed and are not being heard within the statutory time limit,” the CAS said.

It noted that the Federal Court expects to reach 24,000 immigration and refugee case filings this year, an increase of 44 per cent over 2023, and quadruple the average number of filings it had in the pre-COVID days….

Source: Courts warn of ‘critical’ budget pressures as immigration cases delayed in Canada’s 3 largest cities

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Court told to freeze citizenship revocations in terror cases

2015/11/18 Leave a comment

No surprise and consistent with campaign pledge and mandate letters:

The federal government is walking away from a legal battle over attempts to strip Canadian citizenship from dual-nationals convicted of terrorism offences.

Lawyers for the government recently asked the Federal Court to suspend proceedings in two cases brought by Canadians convicted of terrorism-related offences who had been told by the previous Conservative government they would lose their citizenship.

As a respondent in the cases, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship cannot abandon the litigation but, instead, asked for and was granted adjournments while it re-examines a policy that featured prominently in last month’s federal election.

“The Department will work with Minister (John) McCallum on the urgent review of the policy and legislation related to the new citizenship revocation provisions,” media relations adviser Nancy Caron said in an email.

She repeated the line used by then-Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau during a campaign leadership debate, when he argued that Stephen Harper, prime minister at the time, had breached a fundamental principle of citizenship with Bill C-24, which allows the government to rescind the Canadian citizenship of dual nationals convicted of certain serious offences.

“The prime minister has been clear that ‘a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,’ and he doesn’t support the revocation provisions that have a different impact on dual citizens than other Canadians,” said Caron.

In September, former Ottawa radiology technician Misbahuddin Ahmed took the government to court over a July 2015 decision to strip him citizenship.

Ahmed, 31, is currently serving a 12-year sentence in a medium-security federal prison for his role in the planned terrorist attacks foiled by the Project Samosa investigation. If he lost his citizenship, he would have been deported to Pakistan upon his release.

In a Charter challenge, he claimed the attempt to rescind his Canadian citizenship violated his right to safety of the person because he would be deported to a place where he would likely be at risk of mistreatment. He also argued the law offended the principles of justice because the sanction was introduced only after he was convicted.

Now, these issues will not likely be tested in court, as the government is expected to rescind the provisions in C-24 — even as France moves to expand its powers to revoke citizenship from dual nationals.

The Canadian government has also asked for a suspension in a similar case brought by Saad Gaya, a 27-year-old convicted in the “Toronto 18” bomb plot. He is serving an 18-year prison sentence.

Gaya was born in Montreal and had never visited Pakistan, but could be deported there after serving his sentence because, the government had argued, his parents had passed their dual nationality on to him.

Before C-24, Canadian citizenship could be revoked only in cases of fraudulent applications — when a subject had obtained citizenship based on false pretences. The Tories expanded the conditions to include those convicted of terrorism, treason or participation in military action against Canada.

Source: Court told to freeze citizenship revocations in terror cases | Ottawa Citizen

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As Trudeau takes power, judge adjourns citizenship court battle

2015/11/05 Leave a comment

No surprise as expected. New government under Minister McCallum committed to repeal revocation provisions:

As Justin Trudeau makes his way to Rideau Hall this morning, federal lawyers appear ready to act on one of his key campaign promises: scrapping the controversial Conservative law that gives Ottawa the power to strip convicted terrorists of their Canadian citizenship.

The Justice Department last week requested an indefinite adjournment in five high-profile court challenges targeting the Harper-era revocation law, saying federal lawyers assigned to the cases can’t move forward without direction from the incoming Trudeau Liberals. “Given the election outcome resulting in a new government, we are seeking instructions on next steps in this litigation,” says an Oct. 27 letter from senior counsel Angela Marinos, sent to the Federal Court office in Toronto. “Given that there will be a transition period after the Cabinet is sworn in, we cannot confirm, at this time, when those instructions will be conveyed.”

Lawyers for all sides consented to the adjournment request, and the order was rubber-stamped by Justice Russel Zinn on Monday—48 hours before Trudeau and his ministers were to be officially sworn in by Governor General David Johnston.

The adjournment essentially hits the pause button on a cluster of court cases that triggered intense debate during the election, giving the new PM and his advisors plenty of time to determine how best to repeal the Tory law, as promised. All parties to the court actions are scheduled to reconvene Dec. 9 for a case management conference in Toronto; by then, the Liberals’ specific intentions should be evident.

Source: As Trudeau takes power, judge adjourns citizenship court battle – Macleans.ca

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Will Justin Trudeau keep fighting Stephen Harper’s court battles?

2015/10/27 Leave a comment

Likely that a number of these kinds of cases will be dropped, presumably to the relief of Justice Canada lawyers (given that at least part of the Harper government’s motivation appeared to be more scoring of political points than enforcing the law):

Bahareh Esfand couldn’t vote for Justin Trudeau, but she sees the prime minister-designate’s victory reflected in her own Federal Court battle

For the past year, the Coquitlam, B.C., woman has locked horns with a Conservative government bent on winning the right to remove her permanent resident status.

It’s a complicated story: Esfand came to Canada from Iran in 2006 with her political refugee husband, but the minister of citizenship and immigration wants to strip her of refugee status for returning to see her ailing mother.

Regardless, the battle is almost pointless, because even if the government won, it’s unlikely they could deport a hard-working, non-criminal mother of a Canadian-born child and wife of a newly minted Canadian citizen.

As if to put a fine point on all of that, Federal Court Judge George Locke sided with Esfand this week in a scathing decision that suggests the outgoing government was “more concerned with removing refugee status than granting it.”

‘They’ve got a lot of decisions to make’

Esfand claims Stephen Harper’s government threw her life off balance in a bid to score an ideological point.

In that, she wouldn’t be alone. Canada’s courts are packed with claimants alleging their rights were violated by an agenda that purported to be tough on bogus refugees and tough on crime.

But her case also raises a question. What next? Even before Locke handed down his decision on Esfand, Ottawa announced plans to appeal if they lost.

But will Trudeau want to continue fighting Harper’s battles?

“They’ve got a lot of decisions to make,” said Josh Paterson, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

“They’re going to have to take a good, hard look at the whole suite of laws that have been passed by the current government and the legal challenges that are out there and figure out what to do.”

Broadly speaking, the cases in front of appeal or Federal Court judges involve either broad Charter of Rights challenges to legislation or specific cases where the application of policy allegedly undermines the intent of a law.

Issues range from mandatory minimum sentences, victim surcharges, the Fair Elections Act, refugee health care and Bill C-51 to the controversial niqab issue — just for a start.

Source: Will Justin Trudeau keep fighting Stephen Harper’s court battles? – British Columbia – CBC News

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