Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Federal Court (Gagné J.) dismissed Sahtu Divisional Education Council’s (SDEC) appeals from Associate Judge Coughlan’s orders striking eight judicial review applications as premature because SDEC had not exhausted ISC’s internal appeal mechanism.

• The Court endorsed the Associate Judge’s analysis on SDEC’s alleged errors regarding the adequacy of ISC’s Jordan’s Principle appeal process, use of prior Federal Court cases (Cully and Isaac), and the existence of exceptional circumstances.

• It was held that the Associate Judge did not exceed her jurisdiction under Rule 50(1)(e) of the Federal Courts Rules, as she did not hear or decide any injunction motion but only found the judicial review applications premature.

• Justice Gagné observed that the Associate Judge did not address SDEC’s express request for leave to amend its Notices of Application, then herself considered and dismissed SDEC’s motion to add an alternative remedy in mandamus.

• The reasons explain that the facts pleaded support a certiorari-type judicial review of ISC’s Denial Decision, while a mandamus remedy requires additional elements under the Apotex test that were not sufficiently pleaded in SDEC’s materials.

• Costs were awarded to the Attorney General of Canada at the midpoint of Column III of Tariff B on the lead file motion only, and a copy of the Judgment and Reasons is to be placed in the seven related court files.

Factual background and procedural context
Sahtu Divisional Education Council (SDEC), the Applicant, brought eight separate applications for judicial review in relation to eight Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) decisions denying Jordan’s Principle funding for First Nations children in the remote Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories (the “Denial Decision”). These judicial reviews concerned “eight separate Indigenous Services Canada [ISC] decisions denying Jordan’s Principle funding for First Nations children in the remote Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories.”
The Attorney General of Canada (AGC), as Respondent, moved before Associate Judge Catherine A. Coughlan to strike all eight applications. On October 21, 2025, the Associate Judge granted the AGC’s motions to strike the applications without leave to amend, on the basis that they were premature. She concluded that ISC has an internal appeal mechanism that should be exhausted before recourse can be had in the Federal Court. She issued eight identical Judgments and Reasons, with differences only in paragraphs 6 to 9 of each, which addressed the specific funding refused or not renewed in each file.
On October 28, 2025, the Court ordered the consolidation of the eight matters in Court File Nos. T-2165-25, T-2269-25, T-2271-25, T-2295-25, T-2297-25, T-2298-25, T-2382-25 and T-2539-25 into the present lead file, T-2269-25. The appeal was heard by videoconference on January 13, 2026. Judgment and Reasons were issued by Madam Justice Jocelyne Gagné on February 3, 2026, under citation 2026 FC 153.

Grounds of appeal advanced by SDEC
SDEC appealed Associate Judge Coughlan’s orders and identified five alleged errors.
First, SDEC argued that the Associate Judge erred in law by failing to apply the appropriate legal test for determining whether ISC’s Jordan’s Principle appeals process was an adequate and effective alternative to judicial review. In that context, SDEC said she further erred in fact and law by failing to consider, misapprehending, or failing to give sufficient weight to evidence of “significant and systemic delay” in ISC’s adjudication of Jordan’s Principle appeals, which SDEC viewed as directly relevant to whether the process was adequate and effective.
Second, SDEC asserted that the Associate Judge erred in finding there was effective recourse elsewhere. It alleged errors in law in two respects: drawing an inference adverse to SDEC based on SDEC’s participation in ISC’s appeal process (which SDEC said was undertaken to preserve its legal rights), and in her consideration of two prior Federal Court matters, Cully v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 1132 and Isaac v Canada (Attorney General), T-2872-24.
Third, SDEC claimed that the Associate Judge erred in fact and law by concluding there were no exceptional circumstances justifying judicial review at this time. SDEC said the Associate Judge failed to consider, misapprehended, or failed to give sufficient weight to what SDEC characterized as the “urgent circumstances of First Nations children in the Sahtu.”
Fourth, SDEC argued that the Associate Judge erred in law by failing to consider whether any deficiencies in the Notices of Application could be resolved by amendment, despite SDEC expressly proposing such amendments and filing a draft amended Notice of Application.
Fifth, SDEC alleged that the Associate Judge exceeded her jurisdiction under Rule 50(1)(e) of the Federal Courts Rules. It argued that she did so when she stated that concerns about delay should be addressed at the merits stage of judicial review rather than through interlocutory intervention, and that judicial review only offers remedies of last resort, which SDEC said effectively barred it from seeking interlocutory relief such as an injunction.

Findings on prematurity, alleged errors (a)–(c), and jurisdiction
Justice Gagné addressed SDEC’s alleged errors in a structured way. On the first three categories of alleged error—those related to the alternative remedy, use of prior case law, and exceptional circumstances (errors (a), (b) and (c))—she concluded that the Associate Judge had fully considered all the issues. Justice Gagné stated that the Associate Judge referred to the appropriate case law and made no error in applying the guiding principles. She therefore expressly endorsed the Associate Judge’s reasons on those issues.
As a result, the Court accepted the Associate Judge’s conclusion that the judicial review applications were premature. The Associate Judge had determined that ISC has an internal appeal mechanism that should be exhausted before turning to the Federal Court, and Justice Gagné did not disturb that conclusion. The Denial Decisions had been appealed within ISC, and SDEC’s judicial review was filed shortly thereafter.
On the jurisdictional allegation (error (e)), Justice Gagné rejected SDEC’s argument that the Associate Judge exceeded her jurisdiction under Rule 50(1)(e). She noted that the Associate Judge did not hear a motion for an injunction and did not issue an order on such relief. Instead, she found the underlying procedure premature because SDEC had not exhausted the administrative appeal. Justice Gagné therefore concluded that there was no jurisdictional overreach.

The request to amend and the proposed mandamus remedy
Where Justice Gagné identified a gap in the Associate Judge’s reasons was on SDEC’s request to amend its Notices of Application. SDEC had specifically asked, in paragraph 92(b) of its Written Representations, for an order granting leave to amend its Notice of Application in accordance with a draft amended Notice of Application filed in its motion record.
In her Reasons and Order, the Associate Judge stated that the Notices of Application filed in the matter and in each of the other files were struck “without leave to amend,” but she gave no reasons explaining why the proposed amendment would not cure the defect. Justice Gagné noted that the Associate Judge did not appear to have turned her mind to this issue. In light of that silence and SDEC’s submissions on appeal, Justice Gagné decided to dispose of the motion for leave to amend herself.
In its draft Amended Notice of Application, SDEC proposed to add, as an alternative remedy to its existing judicial review of the Denial Decision, an order in the nature of mandamus directing ISC to make a final determination in SDEC’s appeal of the Denial Decision.

Legal framework for amendments and the distinction between certiorari and mandamus
Justice Gagné referred to Rule 75(1), which gives the Court authority to allow a party to amend a document at any time (subject to certain timing limits), on terms that protect the rights of all parties. She also acknowledged that leave to amend is often granted in response to a motion to strike.
SDEC cited several decisions—Canderel Ltd. v Canada, Enercorp Sand Solutions Inc. v Specialized Desanders Inc., and Janssen Inc. v Abbvie Corporation—to support its position that amendments should generally be allowed when brought promptly, without delaying the matter or prejudicing other parties, and when they help the Court determine the true substance of the dispute. Justice Gagné noted that all of these authorities arose in the context of actions, not applications for judicial review.
She then described the nature of SDEC’s existing proceeding. The Notice of Application, as filed, challenged ISC’s Denial Decision and criticized the adequacy and effectiveness of ISC’s appeal process. On that basis, SDEC sought declarations that the Denial Decision was contrary to natural justice or procedural fairness, unreasonable, otherwise invalid or unlawful, and orders quashing or setting aside the Denial Decision and compelling ISC to grant specific funding for four Student Support Assistants for the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 school years, or alternatively remitting the matter for re-determination consistent with the Court’s reasons. This was characterized as a certiorari proceeding to set aside a decision.
By contrast, the proposed amendment would introduce an alternative remedy in mandamus: an order compelling ISC to make a final determination on SDEC’s internal appeal of the Denial Decision. Justice Gagné drew on Habitations Îlot St-Jacques Inc v Canada (Attorney General), 2017 FC 535, where the Court had rejected an amendment that would have added a mandamus remedy and new evidence on top of an existing certiorari proceeding. In that case, the Court viewed the proposed change as “less of an amendment and more of a different application for judicial review.” Justice Gagné considered the present situation analogous, emphasizing that certiorari and mandamus judicial reviews between the same parties can be “completely different and somewhat incompatible.”

Application of the Apotex mandamus test to SDEC’s pleadings
Justice Gagné then turned to the specific legal test for mandamus, citing Apotex Inc v Canada (Attorney General), as affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada. She set out eight factors that must be addressed for mandamus: the existence of a public legal duty to act; that the duty is owed to the applicant; a clear right to performance of that duty (including satisfaction of conditions precedent, a demand for performance, reasonable time to comply, and refusal or unreasonable delay); consideration of the nature and exercise of any discretion; absence of another adequate remedy; practical value or effect of the order sought; absence of equitable bars; and that on a balance of convenience, mandamus should issue.
Justice Gagné observed that SDEC’s appeal of the Denial Decision to the External Expert Review Committee had been filed on June 27, 2025, while the judicial review application was filed on July 3, 2025. She found that there was “obviously no factual background” in the original Notice of Application supporting the Apotex factors for mandamus.
In its Amended Notice of Application dated August 27, 2025, SDEC added three paragraphs. These alleged, among other things, that SDEC had repeatedly followed up with ISC on the status of the appeals; that ISC could not provide specific timelines for decisions through its internal appeals process; that SDEC had been unable to determine basic information about the appeals process, including the identity of the decision-maker; that ISC had, as far as SDEC could tell, altered its appeals structure to change the final decision-maker to the Senior Assistant Deputy Minister; and that ISC had discretion in structuring its decision-making and appeals process. SDEC also pleaded that, given these issues and “the urgency of this funding request and the direct impact of the Denial Decision on First Nation students in the Sahtu,” ISC’s internal appeals process was “an inadequate alternative remedy” for resolving the appeal.
Justice Gagné concluded that these additional allegations, made about two months after the appeal was filed with ISC, did not support the listed factors for mandamus. Instead, she found that they supported SDEC’s contention that ISC’s appeal process was inadequate and should be circumvented in favour of a judicial review of the Denial Decision. She noted that, for the reasons set out in the Associate Judge’s decision, the Court did not agree with SDEC on that point.

Disposition of the amendment request and final outcome
In light of this analysis, Justice Gagné dismissed SDEC’s motion for leave to amend its Application for Judicial Review. She did so without prejudice to SDEC’s right to bring fresh applications for judicial review in the nature of mandamus in files where ISC’s appeal decision had not yet been rendered, or to bring a fresh application for judicial review challenging an unfavourable decision of ISC’s External Expert Review Committee, where such a decision was issued.
In the formal Judgment in T-2269-25, Justice Gagné ordered that SDEC’s appeals in the present file and in files T-2165-25, T-2271-25, T-2295-25, T-2297-25, T-2298-25, T-2382-25 and T-2539-25 were dismissed. She awarded costs to the Respondent, fixed at the midpoint of Column III of Tariff B on the lead file motion only (T-2269-25). She also directed that a copy of the Judgment and Reasons be placed in each of the seven related files.
The Attorney General of Canada was thus the successful party on the appeal. The decision does not specify a numerical dollar amount for the costs award.