Overview of the Federal Courts Reports

The Federal Courts Reports were created in 1971 when the Federal Court Act (now the Federal Courts Act) was passed. They are the official reports of the decisions of the Federal Court of Appeal and of the Federal Court. They are published pursuant to section 58 of the Act, which provides that only the decisions or the parts of them that, in the editor's opinion, are of sufficient significance or importance to warrant publication in the Reports shall be included therein.

Selected decisions are published in both official languages (in a side-by-side format) and undergo a thorough editorial process. This process includes copy editing and citation verification, the preparation of headnotes and captions, and translation accuracy confirmation.

The Federal Courts Reports consist of four volumes per year, each volume containing three Parts (one Part being published each month). Decisions published in the Reports, in full text or as digests, are available free of charge on Federal Judicial Affairs Canada's Web site. The entire collection of Federal Courts Reports going back to 1971, including full volumes, is available here. The decisions of the predecessor to the Federal Court, the Exchequer Court of Canada, are also available on FJA’s Web site. Decisions published in those Reports are available in the language that they were rendered and go back to 1875.