Courts of Canada Directory

How Canadian Courts Are Organized

Canada runs parallel court systems. Federal courts — the Supreme Court of Canada, the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Tax Court — handle constitutional appeals, federal-law disputes, immigration reviews, and tax cases. Everything else happens in provincial courts: each province runs a trial court, a superior court, and a court of appeal (Nunavut uniquely combines its trial courts into one).

For records, the rule of thumb: written decisions from every one of these courts are free on CanLII; the underlying case files live with the registry of the court that heard the matter, and each province runs its own file-search service. The directory below links every federal court and each province's court system.