Docket: IMM-10565-24
Citation: 2026 FC 320
Toronto, Ontario, March 9, 2026
PRESENT: The Honourable Justice Thorne
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BETWEEN: |
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DILRAJ SINGH GILL
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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
I. Overview
[1] The Applicant, Dilraj Singh Gill, seeks judicial review of a decision by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada [IRCC] that refused his application [Application] for a temporary resident visa [TRV] to visit his cousin and uncle in Canada. I note that at the time of his Application, the Applicant, who is a citizen of India, was studying in the United Kingdom [UK] on a valid study permit.
[2] IRCC refused the Application, holding that they were not satisfied that the Applicant would leave Canada at the end of his stay. The Applicant alleges that the IRCC’s decision was unreasonable, as it provided no explanation of the decision maker’s reasoning and failed to take into account certain information in their Application.
[3] For the reasons that follow, I grant the application and return the decision to IRCC for redetermination.
II. Background
[4] The Applicant is a citizen of India, whose family, including his parents and sister, continue to reside in that country. The Applicant asserts that his family is well-off, and that he is slated to inherit his parents’ ancestral home, agricultural lands, vehicles, and farming equipment.
[5] At the time of both his TRV Application, and his application for leave and for judicial review, the Applicant was studying in the UK on a valid study permit. He notes that his parents funded his studies, during which he also worked part-time, as authorized by his study permit.
[6] On August 8, 2023, the Applicant applied for a TRV to visit his cousin and uncle in Canada.
[7] On May 20, 2024, an IRCC officer [Officer] refused the Applicant’s TRV application [Decision]. In the refusal letter, the Officer stated they were not satisfied that the Applicant would leave Canada at the end of his stay, as required by paragraph 179(b) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, SOR/2002-227 [Regulations], based on the following factors:
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The Applicant did not have significant family ties outside Canada;
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The purpose of the Applicant’s visit to Canada was not consistent with a temporary stay, given the details he provided in his Application;
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The Applicant’s immigration status outside his country of nationality or habitual residence; and
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The Applicant had limited employment possibilities in his country of residence.
[8] The Global Case Management System [GCMS] notes of the Officer, which comprise part of the Decision and set out its reasoning, read in their entirety:
I have reviewed the application. I have considered the following factors in my decision. The applicant does not have significant family ties outside Canada. The purpose of the applicant’s visit to Canada is not consistent with a temporary stay given the details provided in the application. Based on the applicant’s immigration status outside their country of nationality or habitual residence, I am not satisfied that they will leave Canada at the end of their stay as a temporary resident. While applicant has some time-limited ties to UK in the form of their studies, limited evidence of economic and family ties outside of Canada has been provided. Applicant has not listed any dependents and hours of employment in UK are limited by applicant’s status as a student visa holder. Not satisfied applicant is well established in current country of residence. The applicant has limited employment possibilities in their country of residence. Weighing the factors in this application. I am not satisfied that the applicant will depart Canada at the end of the period authorized for their stay. For the reasons above, I have refused this application.
III. Issue and Standard of Review
[9] The issue at play in this matter is whether the decision under review is reasonable.
[10] The standard of review of the merits of an administrative decision is reasonableness (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] at paras 10, 25). In undertaking reasonableness review, the reviewing Court must assess whether the decision bears the requisite hallmarks of reasonableness, namely justification, transparency and intelligibility (Vavilov at para 99). In particular, when reviewing a decision on this standard, “a court must consider the outcome of the administrative decision in light of its underlying rationale in order to ensure that the decision as a whole is transparent, intelligible and justified”
(Vavilov at para 15). Accordingly, a reviewing court may intervene where a decision “[…] is not “justified in light of the facts”
or when “the decision maker has fundamentally misapprehended or failed to account for the evidence before it””
(Mason v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 21 at para 73 quoting Vavilov at para 126). Indeed, the decision must not only be “justifiable”
but be “justified”
(Vavilov at paras 86 and 96). Ultimately, a reasonable decision is one which is “based on an internally coherent and rational chain of analysis and that is justified in relation to the facts and law”
(Vavilov at para 85).
IV. Analysis
A. The Decision is unreasonable
[10] Having regard to this standard of review, I find that the Decision was not reasonable.
[11] The arguments of the Applicant are straightforward. They first submit that the Officer did not provide any reasoning nor rationale to support their conclusion that the Applicant “does not have significant family ties outside Canada.”
The Applicant contends that the Officer was obligated to provide reasoning to support this basis of their refusal, but instead, the Officer’s blanket statement that the Applicant lacks significant family beyond Canada is insufficient to allow the Court to conclude that the Officer’s finding was reasonable. They point out that with respect to this, the Decision says only that the Applicant has not listed any dependants, but that the Officer utterly ignored the evidence of the Applicant’s immediate family in India, including his parents and his sister. They also assert that given the Applicant’s position in life as a young student, it is not surprising that he would lack dependants, and that the evidence of the Applicant was rather that he was essentially a dependant of his parents, who were funding his studies in the UK, and whom he would return to after those studies.
[12] The Applicant further takes issue with the Officer’s conclusion that the purpose of his visit to Canada was not consistent with a temporary stay, given the details provided in his Application. Once again, the Applicant argues that the Officer did not provide any reasoning to support this conclusion. They note that in the GCMS notes, the Officer states only that he was not satisfied that the Applicant was well-established in his current country of residence, the UK, as the Applicant had limited employment possibilities in that country. The Applicant argues that the Officer wholly ignored the context that the Applicant was merely a student in the UK, as well as his evidence that he would return to India after his studies. As a result, while the Officer considered whether he was established in the UK as a temporary student, the Officer did not consider his establishment in India or the evidence to that effect, including the presence of his immediate family in that country, the economic wherewithal of his family in India, the fact that the Applicant was slated to inherit his parent’s wealth and extensive properties there, and the Applicant’s written attestation of his intent to return to India upon the conclusion of his studies.
[13] Given these ties to India, the Applicant submits that the evidence established that he has strong reasons for leaving Canada and that he had no reason to overstay. The Applicant maintains that the evidence supports the fact that his stay in Canada would be temporary. Accordingly, the Applicant argues that the Officer’s conclusion that the purpose of his proposed visit was not consistent with a temporary stay was also made without regard to the evidence, further rendering the Decision unreasonable.
[14] The Respondent contends that the Applicant failed to satisfy the Officer, through the evidence provided, that he would leave Canada after his visit, and that the Applicant now merely seeks to have the Court reweigh the evidence before the decision maker. They state generally that deference should be extended by the Court to such decisions. The Respondent also points out that a visa officer need not refer to every piece of evidence provided, and that given the high volume of visa applications processed by visa officers, they are presumed to have considered and weighed all the evidence. The Respondent argues that while the Applicant provided evidence of his parents’ and sister’s presence in India, he did not explain whether they were dependent on the Applicant, or vice versa. They state the Applicant failed to provide enough information regarding the strength of these family ties to establish that his ties to India contradicted the Officer’s conclusion (Kaur v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 766 at paras 14 –15). The Respondent also asserts that the evidence that the Applicant will inherit his family’s wealth and property is not compelling, and that “anything could happen to the inheritance”
before that time. The Respondent further noted that it was not an error for the Officer to point out that the Applicant’s status in the UK was temporary, that he had not proven a strong establishment in the UK, and also argues that the Applicant had proposed spending $5,000 of his $7,000 in savings to visit Canada.
[15] With respect, I do not find these arguments persuasive.
[16] The Respondent is correct that reasons need not be extensive and that deference is owed to the factual findings made by such officers (Quraishi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2021 FC 1145 at paras 14-15). However, ultimately a logical chain of analysis indicating why the Officer reached their decision must be discernable from the reasons provided. Here, that simply is not the case. It is in no way clear from the Decision why the Officer concluded that the Applicant had failed to establish that he had significant family ties outside of Canada, as the Decision seemingly completely ignored the contrary evidence of the existence of the Applicant’s immediate family in India, and the evidence as to why he would return to them. Though the Respondent is correct that reasons need not address every piece of evidence, it is simply not clear whether the Officer had engaged with this evidence at all, and thus grappled with what the Decision identifies as one of the central issues in the Application (Vavilov at paras 100, 125–128).
[17] Similarly, the Officer concluded that they were not satisfied that the Applicant would leave Canada at the end of their stay as a temporary resident, citing the weakness of the Applicant’s ties to the UK. However, as the Applicant points out, in doing so the Officer ignored the context that the Applicant was only a temporary student in the UK, and did not, in any way, engage with the evidence indicating that he would return to India, where his true ties lay.
[18] Decision makers are generally presumed to have reviewed all of the evidence before them. However, contradictory evidence should not be ignored, particularly when the evidence relates to one of the central points upon which the decision maker relies to reach their conclusions. While a reviewing Court should not be hypercritical of the decision maker’s reasons, or unduly put such reasons under a microscope, the decision maker in question cannot act “without regard to the evidence”
(Vavilov at para 126; Cepeda-Gutierrez v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1998 CanLII 8667 (FC) at paras 16-17; Singh v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 2019 at para 18). When a decision maker’s reasons do not so much as mentioned the evidence that contradicts its conclusions, the Court may infer that they did not review the contradictory evidence in reaching their determination, and may intervene (Siddiqui v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 305 at para 7 citing Kheradpazhooh v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 1097 at para 18). That appears to be the case here.
[19] At the hearing, counsel for the Respondent asserted that perhaps the Applicant’s evidence was not compelling to the Officer, as the Applicant had not explained the direction of the dependency between the Applicant and his family in India. This would appear to be inaccurate, as the evidence established that the Applicant’s parents were funding his international studies, and indicated the Applicant would inherit the family wealth. In addition, while the Respondent now argues that the Applicant failed to provide enough information regarding the strength of the family ties in India such that these would contradict the Officer’s conclusion, the issue was rather that in the Decision the Officer did not mention or engage with any facet of the evidence about India at all – whether that be with relation to his family there or the evidence of the other pull factors pertaining to his establishment there. Instead, the Decision spoke only of his temporary residency in the UK, entirely eliding the issue of where the Applicant asserted that he intended to reside.
[20] The Respondent also suggested that perhaps the evidence that the Applicant would inherit his family’s wealth and property was not compelling, since “anything could happen to the inheritance”
before that time, and that the Applicant’s savings may have been viewed as insufficient for the visit given the Applicant had proposed spending the significant majority of his savings to visit Canada. I agree that such considerations might indeed have been valid reasons to have concluded that the Applicant lacked significant ties outside of Canada, or that the purpose of his visit to Canada might not be consistent with a temporary stay – had the Officer actually said this, or given any indication of such reasoning in the Decision.
[21] In lieu of this, I must reject the Respondent’s speculation as to the reasoning underlying the Officer’s conclusions. The Decision cannot be buttressed in this fashion, after the fact, through speculation about a potential line of analysis by the Officer that is simply not apparent in the Decision itself (Vavilov at para 96). I cannot agree that the wording of the Decision reasonably leads to the conclusion that any of the Respondent’s characterizations reflected the Officer’s line of thought. In any event, the jurisprudence is clear that reasonableness review does not permit this Court to entertain supplemental reasons beyond those issued in the decision under review (see e.g. Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. v Canada (Attorney General), 2021 FCA 157 at paras 8, 15, citing Vavilov at para 97; Rezaei v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2020 FC 444 at para 28). As I have noted previously, a reasonable path to the decision rendered cannot be traced where it simply does not exist (Jennings-Clyde (Vivatas, Inc.) v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FCA 225 at para 18).
[22] I find it is not possible to discern the reasoning or trace the chain of logic which led the Officer to the conclusions reached in the Decision. I also agree with the Applicant that the Officer’s reasons did not demonstrate regard to the evidence, and lack the requisite hallmarks of justification, transparency, and intelligibility (Vavilov at para 99). As such, the Decision is unreasonable.
V. Conclusion
[23] For these reasons, the Decision is set aside and the matter is returned for redetermination by a different IRCC Officer.
[24] The parties proposed no question for certification, and I agree that none arises.
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