Veluppillai Pushpanathan arrived in Canada seeking refugee status from his native country of Sri Lanka.

On the basis of his conviction, he was denied refugee status under article 1F(c) of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees which excluded claimants "with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that [they have] been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

Bastarache noted that even though the lower courts did not address it, the standard of review must be established before considering the other issues.

In a key passage, the judgement redefined the meaning of 'jurisdictional' in administrative law: A question which "goes to jurisdiction" is simply descriptive of a provision for which the proper standard of review is correctness, based upon the outcome of the pragmatic and functional analysis.

These factors include: The court concluded that since the issue was "a serious question of general importance" there was no other standard but that of "correctness".