The Federal Court’s decision in Leclerc v. Canada is one of hundreds of small-dollar pandemic benefit cases still winding through the justice system more than 5 years after the pandemic began.
Like many others, it deals with a modest sum — a few thousand dollars in CERB or CRB payments — but by the time the government and the courts are finished, the public will have spent more on the litigation than the benefit was ever worth.
This is not justice. It’s arithmetic gone wrong.
The arithmetic of negative returns
When the Department of Justice and the Canada Revenue Agency pursue a case all the way to judgment, the public cost is substantial.
Once you add counsel time, CRA and ESDC preparation, court staff, registrars, translation, and expert work, each case costs between $75,000 and $200,000 to take to a decision.
The Treasury Board’s own estimates put Federal Court operations at about $8,000–$12,000 per decision; Department of Justice averages another $60,000–$180,000 per file in internal cost.
Most pandemic-benefit disputes involve overpayments of $2,000 to $14,000 — and the people owing them generally have no capacity to repay.
That means the government routinely spends ten dollars to recover one, and often collects none at all.
This isn’t just a question of compassion versus accountability. It’s also a question of fiscal sense.
Budget 2025’s quiet message
Budget 2025, the first under Mark Carney, makes a point of promising a more efficient government: fewer low-value court cases, lower litigation costs, more proportional justice.
Departments are expected to triage files — focusing on cases that have real precedential or fiscal value.
Yet pandemic benefit files continue to flow into the Federal Court, disproportionately involving the poorest Canadians — single renters, single parents, and low-wage workers — while high-value corporate and commercial files are often settled or diverted to faster administrative channels.
If the federal government is serious about efficiency, the obvious starting point is to stop spending $100,000 of public money to chase $4,000 from someone living below the poverty line.
The pattern in the case law
The courts themselves have been signalling discomfort. In case after case, judges have found that CRA or ESDC decisions were “unreasonable” — citing poor record-keeping, inconsistent eligibility interpretations, or failures to apply fairness rules developed during the pandemic’s administrative chaos. Many have won judicial reviews.
The Leclerc decision is typical: an ordinary citizen caught in an opaque, shifting web of rules, with little procedural guidance.
Every such case becomes a kind of policy echo — a reminder that Ottawa is paying twice: once for the administrative error, and again for the litigation to correct it.
The fairness gap
When larger corporate disputes are triaged away from costly litigation, and small claimants are left to face it, the result is a regressive justice pattern. The system ends up enforcing accountability most aggressively on those least able to pay.
A “smart government” approach would invert that hierarchy — prioritizing proportionality, deterrence, and public value.
If you can’t get blood from a stone, it’s time to stop swinging the hammer.
A simple test for when to litigate
Ottawa could apply a short, transparent checklist before sending any income-support file to court:
- Amount at stake — Is the potential recovery meaningful?
- Probability of collection — Is the person solvent or receiving benefits already exempt from seizure?
- Decision quality — Was the initial administrative decision sound, or is there a high risk the Court will find it unreasonable?
- Public cost to litigate — Estimated at $75k–$200k.
- Precedent value — Will this case clarify law or policy for others?
If the answer to (4) exceeds the product of (1 × 2), and there is no strong precedent value, the file should be resolved — not litigated.
Policy options that align fairness with efficiency
- Set a litigation floor — no Federal Court action on CERB/CRB files under a defined threshold (e.g., $25,000) without senior approval showing a positive expected return.
- Quality screen — withdraw or settle cases involving known “unreasonable” decision types identified by prior Federal Court rulings.
- Hardship gate — require an assessment of income and collectability; where recovery would create hardship or is impossible, use administrative resolution or write-off.
- Transparency — publish quarterly data on pandemic-benefit cases taken to court, the amounts at stake, and the outcomes (won, lost, settled, written off).
Such steps would not weaken accountability. They would restore proportion, consistency, and fiscal prudence.
From punishment to principle
CERB and CRB were created in crisis conditions. Millions of Canadians applied in good faith. Where errors occurred, they should be corrected, but not through punitive and inefficient processes that cost more than they recover.
The government’s moral and fiscal duty is the same: to spend public money wisely and treat citizens fairly. Continuing to litigate low-value pandemic cases against low-income Canadians does neither.
A final reflection
Justice isn’t only about being right; it’s about being proportionate. The test for a compassionate, modern state is not how fiercely it enforces its claims, but how intelligently it does so.
When we spend six figures to chase four, the problem isn’t with the debtor — it’s with the system that has lost sight of value, both fiscal and human.