Unfortunate But Ordinary: A Study of Federal Court Approaches to Stays of Removal

Interlocutory decisions issued on stay of removal motions by the Federal Court of Canada remain under-studied. A leading reason for the limited research is that stay orders were not published or publicly accessible five years ago. Since then, changes to the Court’s policies regarding publication have increased the number of accessible stay orders. The outcome of a denied stay motion may result in the immediate deportation of a foreign national from Canada. Given the high-stakes nature of these decisions, it is imperative to critically examine stay motion procedures, laws, and trends against established human rights norms. This study presents an overview of this final legal frontier followed by a multi-method inquiry to investigate Federal Court stays. The inquiry exposes an area of law that remains extremely limited and procedurally lacking, resulting in a legal process that stands in tension with human rights protections.