The Federal Court of Canada can provide interlocutory stays, including staying removal.
There is a three-stage test to be applied when considering an application for an interlocutory injunction.
A court must determine that there is a serious issue or question to be tried, that the applicant would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction were to be refused, and that the balance of convenience (assessed by examining which of the parties will suffer the greater harm from granting or refusing the injunction) rests with the applicant.
As well, it is important to note that a stay of removal is an equitable remedy that is typically only available to an individual who has not committed an inequity.
Overall Guidance
In Slepcsik v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FCA 137, the Federal Court of Appeal wrote:
[1] For the vast and overwhelming majority of those who are returned to their country of citizenship, removal from Canada is immensely stressful, anxiety-provoking, deeply sad, and heartbreaking. One loses their job or abandons their studies, and all health and social benefits cease. It involves enforced separation from loved ones and friends, along with being torn from the stability and comfort one may have known while in Canada. To think otherwise would be either unfeeling or naïve. As noted recently by my colleague Justice Heckman, judges do not have hearts of stone (Universal Ostrich Farms Inc. v. Canada (Food Inspection Agency), 2025 FCA 164 at para. 80 [Ostrich Farms]). We are alive to the intensely difficult circumstances deportees face and how heart-wrenching these situations can be for all involved.
[2] Nevertheless, these are the inherent consequences of removal from Canada. A judge hearing a motion for a stay of removal has a limited and defined role, circumscribed by decades of established higher court jurisprudence. Our role is not to alleviate sadness, tragedy, and difficult circumstances. Nor is our role to stand in the way of a federal agency exercising its statutory duty or to unduly interfere with the normal administrative process prescribed by Parliament in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c. 27 [IRPA].
[3] Rather, our role is only to step in and issue a short time-limited stay where we have been satisfied that the strict requirements of the applicable test have been met. If the test for a stay of removal is to retain any meaning at all, it must be applied only in those extraordinary circumstances that go beyond what was envisioned by Parliament when they enacted this regime. Although each case is context-specific, fairness to those receiving removal orders dictates that the judges hearing stays do their utmost to apply the test as uniformly as possible and in strict compliance with the teachings of the higher courts. To do otherwise would be to give in to the emotion of the moment – and that is not our role
Irreparable Harm
The Supreme Court of Canada describes ‘irreparable harm’ as follow:
“Irreparable” refers to the nature of the harm suffered rather than its magnitude. It is harm which either cannot be quantified in monetary terms or which cannot be cured, usually because one party cannot collect damages from the other.
In other words, harm which can be avoided, or if unavoidable can be cured, is not irreparable harm.
Irreparable harm is often the deciding factor in an interlocutory motion. In British Columbia Civil Liberties Association v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), for example, the Federal Court found that there was no irreparable harm for Canadian citizens facing loss of their citizenship. The reason for this was because there was (and as of writing is) currently a consolidated Federal Court proceeding through which anyone who files an Application for Leave to Commence Judicial Review will receive an automatic stay. As Justice Zinn noted:
Here, as the Moving Parties admit, the harm to anyone in receipt of a Notice of Intent to Revoke Citizenship is avoidable. They need merely file an application to this Court for leave and judicial review of that revocation notice and they are granted an automatic stay. To date, many have done so.
If now or in the future there are persons in receipt of a Notice of Intent to Revoke Citizenship who through ignorance or lack of resources fail to challenge that decision in this Court, does that change the harm from an avoidable one to an unavoidable one? I think not.