Docket: IMM-5829-25
Citation: 2026 FC 745
Ottawa, Ontario, June 5, 2026
PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice Fothergill
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BETWEEN:
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FATHIA KAHIH
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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
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REASONS AND JUDGMENT
[1] Fathia Kahih is a citizen of Somalia and Sweden. She seeks judicial review of a decision by a Senior Immigration Officer [Officer] to refuse her request to apply for permanent residence from within Canada on humanitarian and compassionate [H&C] grounds, pursuant to s 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [IRPA].
[2] Ms. Kahih was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. She entered Canada on February 22, 2022 on a temporary resident visa, together with four of her five children. Ms. Kahih and her eldest daughter have been recognized as refugees in Sweden and are citizens of that country. The four younger children were born in Sweden and are citizens by birth.
[3] Ms. Kahih’s eldest daughter, aged 25, continues to live in Sweden. The other children, aged 15, 11, 10, and 8, live with Ms. Kahih in Hamilton, Ontario.
[4] Ms. Kahih’s children have acquired Canadian citizenship through their father, who is a naturalized Canadian. She met her husband in Somalia, and the couple were married in that country.
[5] Ms. Kahih was subjected to female genital mutilation in Somalia. Shortly after the birth of her first child in 1999, she left Somalia so that her child would not suffer the same fate. She fled to Ethiopia and eventually migrated to Sweden in 2008. Her husband joined her the following year.
[6] After Ms. Kahih and the children arrived in Canada, her husband applied to sponsor her on December 19, 2023. The application was refused on June 11, 2024, because her husband was unemployed and receiving social assistance, and was therefore ineligible to sponsor her.
[7] Ms. Kahih says that she was severely abused by her husband. She and the four children have lived in a shelter for women and children who have experienced domestic abuse since January 30, 2025, when she submitted the H&C application.
[8] The Officer’s decision is subject to review by this Court against the standard of reasonableness (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] at para 10). The Court will intervene only where “there are sufficiently serious shortcomings in the decision such that it cannot be said to exhibit the requisite degree of justification, intelligibility and transparency”
(Vavilov at para 100).
[9] The criteria of “justification, intelligibility and transparency”
are met if the reasons allow the Court to understand why the decision was made, and determine whether the decision falls within the range of acceptable outcomes defensible in respect of the facts and law (Vavilov at paras 85-86, citing Dunsmuir v New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9 at para 47).
[10] Ms. Kahih challenges the Officer’s decision on numerous grounds. One of these is determinative. The application for judicial review must be allowed because the Officer did not properly assess Ms. Kahih’s experience of domestic abuse before refusing her request for relief pursuant to s 25(1) of the IRPA.
[11] Ms. Kahih’s written submissions to the Officer explained that her H&C request was based, inter alia, on the best interests of her children and her experiences of abuse at the hands of her husband. According to her written submissions:
Fathia and her children have been living in Canada since February 2022. They lived as a family here, with [her husband], until June 2022, at which time Fathia was physically abused and moved to a shelter with her children. Fathia had been subject to [her husband’s] abuse since living in Sweden. She put up with his bad behaviour for the sake of their children. She was pressured by her family to reconcile her marriage to which she obliged despite being repeatedly abused by him.
Fathia has lived an incredibly difficult life, and is an extremely deserving H&C candidate. […]
[12] The written submissions provided many details of the abuse Ms. Kahih suffered at the hands of her husband. He called her “fat”
, “ugly”
and “handicapped”
. He isolated her and used her lack of immigration status in Canada against her. He deprived her of food and physically assaulted her. Ms. Kahih complained to the police but later decided not to pursue criminal charges.
[13] The Officer acknowledged that “the applicant reports that her now ex spouse had been abusive since their life in Sweden”
and that “her ex spouse was abusive and as such they have been separated and living apart since JUNE 2022 after a physical altercation”
. The Officer then noted a number of “discrepancies”
in Ms. Kahih’s narrative. According to the Officer:
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(a)Ms. Kahih and her husband had “signed the appropriate forms and continued to submit evidence upon request”
in support of the spousal sponsorship application after the date on which she said they had separated;
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(b)Ms. Kahih alleged that she had sought shelter at Martha’s House in Hamilton but, based on the Officer’s own research, this appeared to be a “short term”
shelter that would not have permitted her to stay for a prolonged period of time; and
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(c)Ms. Kahih’s tax assessment for 2023 listed her husband’s address, raising the question of whether they were in fact separated.
[14] It is unclear what role these “discrepancies”
played in the Officer’s decision. The Respondent insists that they were not adverse credibility findings, because the Officer accepted that Ms. Kahih was a victim of domestic abuse.
[15] The Officer alluded to Ms. Kahih’s experience of domestic abuse only once more in the decision, in the discussion of her mental health and a psychologist’s report prepared by Dr. Elizabeth Holmes-Bose:
While I acknowledge and empathize with the stressors the applicant is experiencing, many single parents who have also experienced domestic abuse report such generalized symptoms. Dr Holmes-Bose noted that the applicant reports she can re-focus to the children or walk off the feelings of anxiety and panic in the moment; which are all positives and indicate self awareness in managing mental health symptoms.
[16] In Febrillet Lorenzo v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2019 FC 925, Justice Cecily Strickland held that the domestic abuse suffered by an applicant is, in and of itself, a compassionate factor that must be weighed in the immigration officer’s analysis (at para 18):
However, the Officer appears to have failed to recognize that the domestic abuse the Applicant has suffered is, in and of itself, a compassionate factor to be weighed in the Officer’s analysis, not just that if she is removed from Canada she will not face that risk in the Dominican Republic. Further, the support provided to the Applicant by her friends and family in Canada should also have been considered in light of her circumstance as a victim of domestic abuse. In that regard, the Applicant refers to the IP-5 Guideline which lists family violence as one of the factors that should be considered when processing H&C applications.
[17] Following the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Kanthasamy v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 SCC 61, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada issued a new policy guideline outlining the factors relevant to an H&C application. The most recent version of this document, updated in August 2025, is titled “Guide 5291 – Humanitarian and Compassionate Considerations”
(Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Guide 5291 – Humanitarian and Compassionate Considerations (Ottawa: IRCC, 2025)). According to this document, one of the relevant factors to be considered when conducting the assessment is “family violence considerations”
.
[18] The Officer did not properly assess Ms. Kahih’s experience of domestic abuse before refusing her request for relief pursuant to s 25(1) of the IRPA. The application for judicial review is therefore allowed.
[19] Neither party proposed that a question be certified for appeal.
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