Supreme Court of Canada Justices look on as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser delivers a speech during a ceremony at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa on Oct. 6, 2025.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Ottawa has rejected an additional salary increase for judges on top courts across the country, citing a weak fiscal outlook a day before the release of a federal budget.
Monday’s announcement was made the same day that new data show judicial vacancies are becoming a problem again.
Most federally appointed judges make $414,900 a year – roughly the same as a senior federal deputy minister. That’s up 4.6 per cent from $396,700 last year, a legislated annual increase based on a Statistics Canada gauge of wages across the economy.
In August, an independent commission that reviews judges’ salaries every four years recommended an extra boost of about 7 per cent, or $28,000 a year, after concluding pay was inadequate and had hurt the recruitment of top candidates to the bench.
Low salaries for federal judges hamper effort to recruit top talent, federal commission says
The deadline for a government decision was next week, but Ottawa chose instead to announce its rejection of the recommendation a day ahead of the federal budget.
The government said it “reflects a significant deterioration in the Canadian financial outlook,” as well as tens of billions of dollars of new military spending. It also noted that judges have robust pensions.
“This decision reflects today’s economic reality and current overall financial conditions,” said Lola Dandybaeva, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Sean Fraser.
There are 952 full-time and 236 part-time judges sitting on federally appointed benches as of Nov. 1, which include provincial superior and appeal courts, the Federal and Tax courts and the Supreme Court of Canada.
There are also 50 vacant full-time positions, about 5 per cent of the total, according to data released Monday by the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada.
Supreme Court of Canada justices swap iconic red robes for new ‘modern and simple’ look
In 2023, vacancies spiked to a record of more than 90. The government slowly reduced the number of vacancies to 13 in mid-March before the spring election, but it has steadily climbed since.
Federal judges make the same salary across the country, but in expensive cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, there is anecdotal talk that it can be challenging to attract elite lawyers to the bench. The August report on judges’ salaries cited an average salary among top lawyers of about $710,000.
During the review process, Ottawa had insisted that judges are well-paid and that the legislated annual increase is fair. The federal government had also said there was clearly continued interest in positions on the bench among applicants.
Previous federal data indicated this was true, but the latest data suggest a potential shift, with far fewer top candidates.
In new numbers released last week, there were 276 candidates assessed for judicial jobs in 2024-25. Of those, 48 were highly recommended and 42 were recommended. Sixty-eight judges were appointed and 10 promoted. (The data are for the year from October, 2024, through October, 2025, tallied by Federal Judicial Affairs.)
Editorial Board: The shortage of judges is now a political choice
A year earlier, double the number of candidates were assessed and highly recommended – but all assessments remain valid for a period of three years.
Had Ottawa said yes to the additional salary increase, it would have cost about $30-million a year. Spending on the federal judiciary is budgeted at $847-million for 2025-26, up from $790-million, according to Federal Judicial Affairs’ latest departmental plan.
Ottawa had also wanted to cap the automatic annual increase over the next four years at 14 per cent but backed down on that demand.
There are other potential spending pressures beyond pay. In September, Ontario Chief Justice Michael Tulloch called on Ottawa to hire more judges for the Ontario Court of Appeal, one of the leading benches in the country. Some other courts are also looking for more judges.
Since 2015, Ottawa has added 79 full-time judges to federally appointed benches. From 2006 to 2015, the previous, Conservative government added 25 full-time judges. The Ontario appellate court hasn’t added a full-time member in more than a decade.
Yet there are fewer judges today relative to population than two decades ago. The ratio is currently 2.3 full-time judges on federal benches per 100,000 people, down from 2.6 in early 2006.
On the question of judicial pay, previous governments have also grappled with the issue. In 2009, the Conservatives rejected an additional salary increase, citing the global fiscal crisis of the previous year.
The last pay raise for judges above their regular annual increase was in 2004. It was retroactively approved by Ottawa in 2006, when it backed a lower pay hike, 7.25 per cent, instead of a proposed 10.8-per-cent increase.