Date: 20260309
Docket: IMM-22745-24
Citation: 2026 FC 318
Toronto, Ontario, March 9, 2026
PRESENT: Mr. Justice Brouwer
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BETWEEN: |
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BEATHA MUTANGAMPUNDU |
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Applicant |
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and |
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THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION |
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Respondent |
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
[1] Beatha Mutangampundu seeks judicial review of the decision of a Member of the Refugee Protection Division [RPD] of the Immigration and Refugee Board [IRB] dismissing her claim for refugee protection on credibility grounds, based largely on notes from an interview conducted at the port of entry [POE] by the Canada Border Services Agency [CBSA]. For the reasons set out below, the RPD’s decision must be set aside. The Member erred by failing to adopt a trauma-informed, intersectional approach to the adjudication of the Applicant’s claim, resulting in an unreasonable decision that is not justified in relation to the legal and factual constraints that bear on the decision. The RPD also erred by unreasonably rejecting unimpugned corroborative evidence based on the Applicant’s credibility.
I. Background
[2] Ms. Mutangampundu is a 64-year-old Tutsi survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, one of the worst atrocities in recent memory. Like others who survived, she lost many relatives, including all her siblings, to the carnage, and she continues to struggle with the trauma of the genocide today. Having recently been widowed, Ms. Mutangampundu came to Canada on June 24, 2021, and requested refugee protection, based on her fear of persecution for her imputed anti-government political opinions. She alleged that these political opinions were being imputed to her by the Rwanda Bureau of Investigation [RIB] because of her association with a gospel singer and government critic who had recently been assassinated for his political stance.
[3] On arrival at the Canada-US border at Roxham Road and declaring her claim to refugee status, Ms. Mutangampundu was taken for questioning by the CBSA. The CBSA has a mandate to examine arriving refugee claimants to determine their admissibility to Canada and eligibility to have their claims referred to the RPD for determination. CBSA officers are not, however, trained refugee adjudicators and have no authority to make findings regarding the credibility or merits of the refugee claims of those they interview (Cetinkaya v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2012 FC 8 at para 51 [Cetinkaya]).
[4] The POE examination of Ms. Mutangampundu took place the day after her arrival, on June 25, 2021, and lasted for two hours. The CBSA Officer concluded that there were no identity, criminality or security issues, but asserted that some aspects of Ms. Mutangampundu’s refugee claim were not credible and the CBSA should intervene in the RPD hearing to challenge her credibility.
[5] Ms. Mutangampundu retained counsel and prepared a detailed Basis of Claim [BOC] narrative, supported by corroborating evidence, to explain her reasons for seeking refugee protection and demonstrate that her fear was well-founded. CBSA intervened. The POE interview notes were only disclosed to Ms. Mutangampundu in the course of her RPD hearing.
[6] By decision dated November 4, 2024, the RPD dismissed Ms. Mutangampundu’s claim, finding that her claimed association with the slain gospel singer/government critic, allegations of past persecution, and reason for fleeing to Canada were not credible. The Member rejected the entirety of Ms. Mutangampundu’s testimony and documentary evidence, giving it “no weight”
, and instead relied fully on the POE interview notes, giving them “full weight.”
II. Issues
[7] Although Ms. Mutangampundu raises several grounds for review, I find that the determinative issues are (a) whether the RPD applied a trauma-informed approach to adjudicating Ms. Mutangampundu’s claim, (b) whether the RPD’s treatment of the POE interview notes was reasonable, and (c) whether the RPD’s treatment of the RIB summons was reasonable.
[8] These issues are reviewable on the deferential reasonableness standard of review. A reasonable decision is one that is based on an internally coherent and rational chain of analysis and is justified in relation to the facts and law bearing upon it (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at para 85 [Vavilov]). This Court asks whether the decision under review bears the hallmarks of reasonableness: justification, transparency, and intelligibility (Vavilov at para 99). Where, as here, the impact of the decision on the applicant’s rights and interests is severe, the reasons must reflect these stakes (Vavilov at para 133).
III. Analysis
A. The RPD fell short of the requirement to apply a trauma-informed approach to adjudication
[9] The IRB’s Amended Chairperson’s Guideline 4: Gender Considerations in Proceedings Before the Immigration and Refugee Board [Guideline] was issued in October 2023 and requires Members to adopt a trauma-informed approach to the adjudication of any matter “involving gender considerations, where trauma impacts a person’s ability to fully participate in the proceedings.”
The Guideline notes that its application includes cases where trauma “is disclosed, clearly arises from the record, or becomes apparent during the course of the proceeding.”
(Guideline, s 5.2.2). It goes on to explain:
5.2.3 The following principles should be applied by all those engaged in the adjudication process:
• lead the proceeding with sensitivity to help prevent re-traumatization through the IRB decision-making process;
• anticipate the possibility that trauma may impact a person's memory and ability to provide testimony; and
• create a safe adjudicative environment for all participants to facilitate the giving of testimony.
[10] The Guideline also requires that the IRB’s decision makers apply an intersectional approach to adjudication. The Guideline explains:
6.1 Intersectionality is a framework for understanding how multiple identity factors including, but not limited to gender, disability, race, religion, indigenous identity, age, or sexual orientation may interact to create distinct and compounded forms of discrimination, mistreatment or marginalization. …
6.2 An intersectional approach takes into account the historical, social and political context and recognizes the unique experience of the individual based on the intersection of all relevant factors.
6.3 Members should apply an intersectional approach in all proceedings to which this Guideline applies, based on the evidence of the proceeding….
[11] The Guideline emphasizes the importance of recognizing the impact of trauma when assessing credibility, implausibility and demeanour, pointing out:
7.5 An individual who has experienced trauma may have certain difficulties in presenting their case, including recalling specific times, dates, and locations, recounting events in chronological order, and recalling certain events fully. IRB members often must make credibility findings, including in cases where the individual may have experienced trauma. Trauma may impact memory, which can produce inconsistencies, omissions, and vagueness in the individual’s testimony.
[12] Although Ms. Mutangampundu did not identify her gender as a ground upon which she fears persecution and did not ask the RPD to apply the Guideline when adjudicating her claim, I nevertheless find that, pursuant to section 5.2.2 of the Guideline, the RPD was required to apply an intersectional, trauma-informed approach to the adjudication of Ms. Mutangampundu’s claim. That Ms. Mutangampundu, as a female Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan genocide, has been exposed to trauma, is indisputable. The horrors of the genocide are public knowledge and are also reflected in the record that was before the Member. For example, one of the documents that formed part of the National Documentation Package [NDP] before the Member, Rwanda: In Brief (United States Congressional Research Service), described the genocide as follows:
In April 1994, extremist members of Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu majority (then estimated at 85% of the population) orchestrated the mass murder of some 800,000 people—over 10% of the population—within a three-month period. The masterminds of the genocide sought to exterminate the ethnic Tutsi population (roughly 14%); politically moderate Hutus and Indigenous Twa (1%) were also targeted. Hutu hardliners coordinated killings and widespread sexual violence, distributing arms and issuing commands via FM radio to grassroots militia groups throughout the country, whose members hunted down neighbors and even relatives at the local level.
(NDP: Rwanda, 31 October 2023, item 1.9)
[13] Moreover, after describing her family losses in the genocide, Ms. Mutangampundu stated explicitly in her basis of claim narrative: “I still have the genocide trauma 27 years later.”
[14] The Respondent contends that because Ms. Mutangampundu did not claim a fear of persecution based on her gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression or sex characteristics, the Guideline does not directly apply. As noted above, I find to the contrary that it applied based on the record before the Member.
[15] The Respondent argues in the alternative that the Member took a trauma-informed approach, even if not explicitly. The only support for this proposition pointed to by the Respondent is that the recording of the hearing indicates that the Member acknowledged the difficulty of discussing the genocide and did not ask Ms. Mutangampundu to give evidence about it beyond confirming her membership in the genocide survivors’ organization, IBUKA.
[16] With respect, to accept the Respondent’s argument on this point would be to reduce the Chairperson’s carefully-developed Guideline to a simple direction: “Don’t ask about traumatic experiences”
. As is clear from the excerpts of the Guideline set out above, a good deal more is required of RPD members. In the decision under review, not only is the Guideline not mentioned, neither is trauma, nor the genocide. There is no analysis as to whether and how Ms. Mutangampundu’s trauma may have affected her ability to respond to the CBSA officer’s aggressive questioning at the POE or to present her case to the RPD, “including recalling specific times, dates, and locations, recounting events in chronological order, and recalling certain events fully.”
Instead, the Member simply found that she “was not a credible witness overall and that the events she described did not happen as alleged.”
On this basis the Member put “no weight”
on any of her testimony, nor indeed on any of her documentary evidence.
[17] I acknowledge that the record discloses inconsistencies in Ms. Mutangampundu’s evidence, some of which were significant, and that these warranted the Member’s careful consideration and analysis. But the record before the Member also established that Ms. Mutangampundu is a survivor of extraordinary intersectional trauma, a consideration that RPD members are required to take into account when assessing the credibility and adjudicating the claims of those who appear before them. This trauma is one of the “relevant factual and legal constraints that bear on the decision”
(Vavilov at paras 99, 106), and the Member’s decision shows no sign of having engaged with it. As such, the decision falls short of the requirements of justification and is unreasonable.
B. The RPD’s treatment of the POE interview notes was unreasonable
[18] The RPD’s failure to apply the Guideline is particularly evident in its adoption of the CBSA’s POE interview notes.
[19] The POE interview notes, characterized as a transcript by the parties, do not indicate a dispassionate examination of Ms. Mutangampundu’s admissibility and eligibility for referral to the RPD but rather an inexplicably hostile interrogation about peripheral matters and – even more inappropriately - the merits of Ms. Mutangampundu’s refugee claim. For example, the CBSA officer badgered Ms. Mutangampundu at length about the clearly peripheral fact that she had taken 20 days to come to the border after arriving in the USA, despite her repeated explanation that she was sad (she was recently widowed and had just fled her country of birth in fear of persecution), had no energy, was not feeling well and was not fit to travel on to Canada after fleeing from Rwanda.
[20] Even more concerning is the CBSA officer’s aggressive cross-examination on the merits of Ms. Mutangampundu’s claim. For example, the CBSA officer confronted Ms. Mutangampundu with excerpts from her daughter’s successful refugee claim narrative, which were alleged to be inconsistent with Ms. Mutangampundu’s story, and demanded she either explain the discrepancies or agree that her daughter had lied. The Officer then proceeded to accuse Ms. Mutangampundu, repeatedly, of lying about whether and for how long she had been detained based solely on an apparent contradiction that she quickly attempted to correct. While the Officer eventually accepted that Ms. Mutangampundu was admissible to Canada and was eligible to have her claim referred to the RPD for determination, the Officer urged CBSA intervention in her claim based on “serious credibility concerns”
arising from the interview.
[21] The Respondent concedes that the CBSA questioning was “quite direct”
considering that Ms. Mutangampundu is an older woman and a genocide survivor, but asserted during the hearing that CBSA is not bound by the IRB’s Guideline and therefore was not under an obligation to apply the Guideline’s trauma-informed approach when conducting the interview.
[22] Whether the fact that the CBSA officer was not bound by the IRB’s Guideline somehow justifies hostile and aggressive questioning of refugee claimants like Ms. Mutangampundu is, at best, highly doubtful; but that is not the question before me. The question to be decided is whether it was reasonable for the RPD Member, who certainly was bound by the Guideline, to adopt the CBSA officer’s POE interview notes and base credibility findings on inconsistencies with that non-trauma-informed interview.
[23] The Respondent observes that the RPD properly acknowledged the need to be “cautious”
when using POE interviews to evaluate credibility, and relies on three decisions of this Court to argue that notwithstanding the need for caution, POE interviews may be relied upon by the RPD when reaching its credibility determinations: Garcia v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2013 FC 1173 at para 20; Ali v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 1166 at para 41; and Kusmez v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 FC 948. I acknowledge this jurisprudence, of course, but there is also a long line of jurisprudence recognizing that the circumstances in which POE interviews are conducted are far from ideal and finding the RPD’s or RAD’s reliance on the CBSA’s notes of such interviews to make credibility findings was unreasonable (Lin v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 434 at para 23-25; Szarka v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2016 FC 867 at para 21; Cetinkaya at paras 50-51; Hamdar v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2011 FC 382 at paras 46-48; Wu v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) 2010 FC 1102 at para 16; Jamil v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2006 FC 792 at paras 24-25).
[24] The question before me is not whether, as a general matter, inconsistencies between POE interview notes and refugee claim narratives and testimony can ever support a negative credibility finding. The courts have found that, in some cases, they can. But given the difficult circumstances in which POE interviews are conducted and the significant interests at stake in refugee claims, decision makers must provide a rational chain of analysis to explain how they came to the conclusion that they could reasonably rely on discrepancies between POE interview notes and sworn evidence provided in the BOC or at the hearing to find a claimant not credible. To pass muster, this justification must be intelligible and it must be transparent.
[25] In the decision under review, the RPD Member acknowledged the need to be “cautious”
about POE interviews. Nevertheless, because Ms. Mutangampundu had been assisted by a Kinyarwanda and had told the CBSA officer that she had no health conditions, the RPD gave the POE interview notes “full weight”
and based their credibility findings on them. I agree with Ms. Mutangampundu that the decision falls well short of the Vavilov standard in this regard.
[26] In my view, the RPD’s adoption of, and reliance on, the POE interview notes to determine Ms. Mutangampundu’s credibility was fundamentally incompatible with the duty of trauma-informed adjudication. The evidence in CBSA’s POE interview notes was obtained by badgering and bullying a traumatized, recently widowed refugee claimant who, in the Respondent’s words, is “an older woman and genocide survivor.”
The participation of an interpreter at the POE does not change this, nor does the fact that Ms. Mutangampundu said she had no health condition. Even if the RPD had otherwise approached the adjudication of Ms. Mutangampundu’s claim in an intersectional, trauma-informed manner – which I have found was not the case – the RPD’s wholesale reliance on the POE interview notes was unjustified and unreasonable in the circumstances and entirely undermines the reasonableness of RPD’s decision.
C. The RPD’s treatment of the RIB summons was unreasonable
[27] In support of her refugee claim Ms. Mutangampundu adduced a summons from the RIB requiring her to report to that agency’s local station on June 10, 2021. She asserted that on the same day that she received the summons she took a phone call from an unknown number in which the caller told her it was time to prove her patriotism and that if she did as she was told she would be okay. According to Ms. Mutangampundu, having recently lost her husband – who she described as her “rock”
– following the RIB’s campaign of persecution against him, she lost hope. She says she was terrified, at a loss and considered suicide. Instead, after talking to her daughter in Canada, she fled Rwanda and made her way to Canada.
[28] The RPD did not question the authenticity of the summons. Instead, it placed “no weight on the RIB summons as it does not rehabilitate the Claimant’s testimony, nor does it assist in establishing her claim on a balance of probabilities.”
The Member added: “The Panel also finds that the summons is insufficient to render the Claimant’s allegations credible as there is no way of knowing the reason the convocation was sent to the Claimant.”
[29] Ms. Mutangampundu argues that the RPD’s finding regarding the summons is unreasonable. I agree. It is unreasonable to reject “evidence that comes from sources other than the testimony of the principal Applicant simply on the basis that the principal Applicant is not believed”
(RER v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 1339 at para 10 [RER]; see also Shi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 1432 at para 15 and the cases cited therein; Valdeblanquez Ortiz v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2017 FC 410 at para 30; Chen v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2013 FC 311 at paras 20-21). I agree with Justice Douglas R. Campbell, who explained in RER:
[10] …[E]ach independent source of evidence requires independent evaluation. This is so because the independent sources might act to substantiate an Applicant's position on a given issue, even if his or her own evidence is not accepted with respect to that issue.
[30] This is a further basis upon which to quash the RPD’s decision.
[31] Although the Applicant raises several other issues for judicial review, including an allegation that the decision under review gives rise to a reasonable apprehension that the Member was biased against Ms. Mutangampundu, it is not necessary to make findings on these further issues, and I decline to do so. I note, however, that as I advised the parties at the hearing, I have some doubt that the record before me meets the high threshold for establishing a reasonable apprehension of bias (R v S (RD), [1997] 3 S.C.R. 484 at paras 113 - 114).
IV. Conclusion
[32] As I have found the RPD’s decision rejecting Ms. Mutangampundu’s refugee claim to be unreasonable, the decision must be quashed and remitted for redetermination by a different member in accordance with these reasons.
[33] Neither party has proposed a serious question of general importance for certification, and I find that none arises.
JUDGMENT in IMM-22745-24
THIS COURT’S JUDGMENT is that:
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The application for judicial review is allowed.
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The decision dated November 4, 2024, is set aside and the matter is remitted to a different member of the Refugee Protection Division for redetermination in accordance with these reasons.
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No question of general importance is certified.
"Andrew J. Brouwer"
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