What is the impact of relaxed standing rules on judicial resources?

The concern about the need to carefully allocate scarce judicial resources is in part based on the well-known “floodgates” argument. Relaxing standing rules may result in many persons having the right to bring similar claims and “grave inconvenience” could be the result: see, e.g., Smith v. Attorney General of Ontario, 1924 CanLII 3 (SCC), [1924] S.C.R. 331, at p. 337. Cory J. put the point cogently on behalf of the Court in Canadian Council of Churches, at p. 252: “It would be disastrous if the courts were allowed to become hopelessly overburdened as a result of the unnecessary proliferation of marginal or redundant suits brought by well-meaning organizations pursuing their own particular cases certain in the knowledge that their cause is all important.” This factor is not concerned with the convenience or workload of judges, but with the effective operation of the court system as a whole.