Chowdhury v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 1242

Date : 20050914

Docket : IMM-1730-05

Citation : 2005 FC 1242

OTTAWA, Ontario, this 14^th day of September, 2005

PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice Teitelbaum

BETWEEN :

                                                 FARZANA CHOWDHURY

                                                 MEHRAN CHOWDHURY

                                                                                                                            Applicants

AND :

                       THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

                                                                                                                         Respondent

                                     REASONS FOR ORDER AND ORDER

TEITELBAUM, J.

[1]                This is an application under section 72(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27 (IRPA) for judicial review, pursuant to section 18.1 of the Federal Courts Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. F-7, of a negative Pre-Removal Risk Assessment ("PRRA") decision of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, dated February 18, 2005, concerning Farzana Chowdhury ("the Applicant") and her son Mehran Chowdhury.

[2]                The Applicant is a 40-year old citizen of Bangladesh. She has two sons with her - one, Mehran, is 11 years old and is the son of the Applicant's husband in Bangladesh. The second, Rakib, is almost 3 years old. He was born in Canada following an alleged rape of the Applicant.

[3]                The Applicant states that she left Bangladesh to get away from her violent and abusive husband. She alleges that her marriage was never legitimate because she was forced into it at 14 years of age after being raped by the husband, and was required to stay with him by her family and social pressures, even though the marriage "ceremony" was apparently not legal. She also alleges that her husband regularly drank and used illegal drugs. Her husband was apparently a well-connected member of the ruling party (the BNP) and acted as a paid thug, or "enforcer", for them.

[4]                The Applicant states that she had left her husband several times, including during her pregnancy, but was always forced to return. She says he frequently beat her and threatened to throw acid in her face. She says in September 1996 her husband hit Mehran and pushed him across the room, where he crashed into the wall and was left with a scar over his eye. (He was 2 years old at the time.) She says she tried to take her son and leave, but her husband stopped her by stabbing her in the stomach. She says she went to a local rural doctor for treatment, and then returned home. She says she did not go to the police because her husband was allied with them through his work as an enforcer for the BNP.

[5]                The Applicant says that in December 1996 she found out from the maid that her husband was planning to kill both her and her son. Her husband appeared over her bed one night with a knife, which she pushed away from her throat, wounding her hand. After her husband, who was intoxicated at the time, fell asleep, the Applicant and her son left, staying first with her family for the night (it appears from the narrative that this was the night of December 31, 1996) and then taking a bus from the city of Pabna to the city of Dhaka, on January 1, 1997. She and her son lived in Dhaka undiscovered until February 2001, when she says she received word that her husband had found out where they were. She says she thinks her husband found out from the Dhaka police but does not know for sure.

[6]                She says she pulled her son out of school to hide him until her brother was able to organize passage overseas for her. She received assistance in leaving the country from a smuggling agent, and landed in New York in December 2001. The smuggling agent put her in a safe house in New York for a few days, allegedly until her transportation to Canada could be arranged, and told her not to set foot outdoors. She says several men stayed in the safe house at night, one of whom came into her room and raped her. (She says her son was sleeping in the same room at the time, and she did not cry out because he would have woken up and seen it.) She says this is how she became pregnant for the second time.

[7]                According to the Applicant, the rapist told her he would turn her in to the police (presumably as an illegal immigrant) if she told anyone what he had done. She did not discover she was pregnant until several months later.

[8]                The Applicant says the day after the rape she told the agent she had to leave. On December 15, 2001, she paid him $1,000 to get back her passport, which he had taken from her upon arrival, and she and her son took a bus with him to Plattsburgh. The agent then left them in a parking lot, saying he would return, but did not come back. A passer-by helped her phone a friend of her brother's in Montréal, Mohammed Latif, who told her to take a taxi across the border to Montréal, which she did.

[9]                According to the Applicant, Mr. Latif put her up in an apartment during her pregnancy and brought her food, but also took over the preparation of her refugee claim and the administration of her welfare cheques, removing them from her control. The Applicant claims he was responsible for the translation of her narrative to give to the Board, since she could not speak much English at the time. The Applicant says she did not tell him about the rape, and it is not clear whose child Mr. Latif thought the Applicant was expecting.

[10]            Mr. Latif was travelling outside Canada for a while in 2002, so the Applicant's lawyer was unable to contact her through him, and the Applicant was not informed when she received notice of her original refugee claim hearing, so she missed it. The hearing was re-scheduled when Mr. Latif returned and told her about it, but the Applicant's lawyer was by then out of town on vacation. On September 3, 2002, the Applicant, who was 9 months pregnant, came to the re-scheduled hearing by herself. She says she arrived a few minutes late because she was initially sent to the wrong room in the building, and discovered upon arrival that the Board had already declared her claim abandoned.

[11]            The Applicant's lawyer returned the next day, and the Applicant says she then told her about the rape in New York. In her submissions on this file, the Applicant says she had not previously disclosed the rape to anybody else. However, in the submissions on her refugee claim,^[1] she says she had told Mr. Latif's wife, who she thought had told him. In any case, the Applicant's lawyer initiated a motion to re-open her case before the Board and included this new evidence, which had not been in the original PIF. A new refugee claim hearing was granted and scheduled for April 2003, but did not proceed because the Applicant's lawyer was in the hospital at that time.

[12]            The Applicant started receiving help from social services once her son Rakib was born in September 2002, got back control of her welfare cheques from Mr. Latif, and is no longer in touch with him.

[13]            The refugee claim hearing eventually took place in two parts, on September 16, 2003 and February 16, 2004, and a negative decision was handed down on April 14, 2004. The Applicant sought judicial review of this decision, but leave was denied by Gauthier J.

[14]            The Applicant made a PRRA application on September 30, 2004, and a negative decision was given on February 18, 2005. This is the decision under review before the Court.

[15]            The decision under review is solely the PRRA decision and not the decision on the original refugee claim. However, it is necessary to examine the decision in the original refugee claim, since the submissions are unclear on the distinction between what was decided by the Board and what was decided by the Officer. Much of the new evidence submitted by the Applicant on the PRRA concerns what she says were errors in the findings of fact in the refugee claim, and so I will lay out the chief points of both decisions in order to distinguish between them.

(i) The Refugee Claim Decision

[16]            This decision found that:

- The passports of the Applicant and her son Mehran, which she said had been obtained by the Bangladeshi agent, stated that they were born in Dhaka, not Pabna. So did the Port of Entry notes, which the Applicant says she filled out to be consistent with the passports. The Board did not accept the validity of other documents proffered by the Applicant indicating a Pabna birthplace and found this to be a major inconsistency in the Applicant's testimony.

- The Board accepted the passports as valid documents, and said that if it were to instead view them as faked documents with incorrect information, then it would be forced to question the identity of both the Applicant and her son as well.

- The Applicant's testimony with regard to her education and her post-secondary qualifications was found to be inconsistent. While her original PIF said she went to Dhaka University, the Applicant later submitted a corrected PIF indicating she was educated at Pabna Women's College (which she claims is a satellite campus of Dhaka University).

- No documents were produced substantiating her son Mehran's education in Pabna.

- The Board found that the incident alleged in December 1996 that triggered the Applicant's move from Pabna to Dhaka did not occur, because it did not believe the Applicant had ever resided in Pabna. (It should be noted that the Board appears to have conflated the two alleged stabbing attempts, one in September 1996 and one in December 1996, and referred to them as though they were one incident.)

- The Applicant did not provide a medical record to substantiate the incident during which she was stabbed in the stomach, and her explanation as to why she could not provide it was inconsistent. The Board also stated that the type of treatment she testified to receiving at the time would not have been sufficient to deal with a stab wound of the nature alleged.

- The Applicant stayed in Dhaka for ten months after she alleges that her husband found out she was there, and did not report her fears to the police. The Board did not accept the Applicant's explanation that her husband was "well connected", stating that her husband was in a different city 12 hours away. (The Board appears to have accepted that her husband lived in Pabna, despite its opinion that the Applicant herself never did.)

- The Board did not accept the Applicant's evidence that her husband was well-connected and influential, since it found that her husband would have discovered her before 2001 if that was the case.

- The Board found the Applicant's testimony about when exactly she decided to leave Dhaka for Canada to be inconsistent, did not accept that she was dependent on her brother (who did not live in Dhaka) to organize her departure, and did not accept the Applicant's explanation for how and when she obtained her visa.

- The Board found the Applicant's omission of the rape incident in New York from her original PIF to be a major inconsistency. It also did not believe that the smuggling agent would have left her alone in a house in New York with strange men - the Board found this would have been socially unacceptable to him, since he was also from Bangladesh.

- The Board found the Applicant's testimony as to whether she had ever sought a divorce to be inconsistent, and found it not credible that she would not have tried to divorce her husband from Canada. (The Applicant had stated to the Board that she was not aware that she could and had not thought to pursue it.)

- The Board found the Applicant's testimony about whether Canada was her original intended destination to be inconsistent. The Board also found that it could not account for the agent's acceptance of her leaving for Canada when he had told her to stay in the residence, if she had not told him about the triggering incident (the rape). The Board also found it was unclear whether her departure for Canada was actually her idea or her agent's.

- The Board found the Applicant's testimony that Mr. Latif's translation of her PIF was only reviewed very generally with her, and that she was physically and mentally unwell at the time, to be not credible. The Board also did not believe that the Applicant only discovered mistakes in her PIF in August 2003, while preparing for the first part of the hearing. (A revised PIF was submitted a week before that hearing, on September 12, 2003, and an additional revision was submitted later, on September 23, 2003.) The Board found that the Applicant should have discovered any mistakes in this translation earlier, since she had earlier hearing dates originally scheduled, with the help of either her counsel, her social worker or Mr. Latif.

- The Board expressed concerns about custody issues concerning the son Mehran and his father's potential ignorance of his whereabouts.

- The Applicant provided no evidence that her marriage took place, and the Board did not find her description of it to be credible.

- The Board found there was an inconsistency in the Applicant's Port of Entry Notes, where the Applicant said her husband was in Dhaka, and the PIF, which said her husband's whereabouts were unknown.

- The Applicant's frequent changes to her PIF were seen to undermine her credibility.

- The Board looked at the medical records and found that the conception date of the Applicant's second child was November 28, 2001, before she left Bangladesh. The Board found the Applicant's explanation of when, where and how she conceived not credible as a result.

- The Board stated that it had considered the Board's Women Refugee Claimants Fearing Gender-Related Persecution Guidelines ("Gender Guidelines") but did not find them "applicable" because of the lack of credibility of the Applicant.

- The Board found the Applicant and her son Mehran to be neither refugees nor persons in need of protection.

[17]            As I have stated, an Application for Leave to have the Board's decision reviewed was denied and is final.

(ii) The PRRA Decision

[18]            This decision found that:

- The Applicant submitted new evidence, in the form of a letter explaining birth registration procedures in Bangladesh, which described how births are often registered a few days later, so the date on the registration is not necessarily the same as the birth date. The authenticity of this new evidence was not doubted, but the Officer found it did not explain why the date on the birth registrations of both the Applicant and her eldest son was one week after her arrival in Canada.

- The Applicant's passport was obtained in October 2001, and the Board accepted the passport as valid, meaning she would have had to have valid birth registration documents to obtain it. Her birth registration documents are dated December 2001. The birthplace of the Applicant and her son must therefore be Dhaka, as stated in the passport, and not Pabna.

- The Officer did not accept the Applicant's statement that the passports were fakes, citing s. 93 of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees' Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status ("UNHCR Handbook"), which states that the declaration that a passport is fake does not erase the presumption of nationality.

- Children under 12 are normally put on their mother's passport in Bangladesh, and the Applicant's explanations as to how she obtained a separate passport for her son are not credible.

- The Applicant's PIF says she studied at the University of Dhaka from 1985 to 1988, but the Applicant said at the hearing that she did not live in Dhaka before 1997, and studied at Pabna Women's College. She provided new evidence to prove that she studied at this College, which showed she took courses in Pabna from 1986 to 1988. The Officer found this to be authentic, but stated that this document did not prove that any risks were faced by the Applicant in Pabna.

- The Officer noted that the Board did not believe that the events of December 1996 had occurred, noting that the Bangladeshi medical evidence submitted by the Applicant was found not to be consistent with a stab wound, and that the Canadian medical evidence did not mention any traces of such an injury. The Officer stated that the only evidence the Applicant added to this on her PRRA was an observation that the Board had confused the October 1996 and December 1996 incidents, and this was not sufficient to refute the Board's finding.

- The Officer noted that the Board found it not credible that the Applicant's husband did not find her in Dhaka if he was as influential with the police as the Applicant claimed, and that it was not credible that the Applicant waited so long after she alleged the husband discovered which city she was in to leave Bangladesh. The Officer did not accept the Applicant's explanation that she was dependent on her brother, who did not live in Dhaka, for these arrangements.

- The Officer noted that the Applicant appeared to have all the characteristics of a more privileged woman in Bangladesh - she studied at college, her family had servants, she had worked in Dhaka - and therefore had more freedom than many rural women in Bangladesh, she did not fit the profile of someone who would have been dependent on her brother for help to get her out of Bangladesh.

- The documentary evidence shows that most brides in Bangladesh must be married with the consent of their family, so the Officer does not believe the Applicant's story that she was married against her will and against theirs. The Officer also found a contradiction between the Applicant's statements that she could not get a divorce and that she had not thought to try and get one. (The Officer appears to disregard the Applicant's testimony that the marriage was not legal.)

- The Officer accepts that the new bloodwork evidence submitted by the Applicant that shows her two children are not from the same father, but continues to find contradictions in the evidence concerning the Applicant's date of conception. The Officer states that the doctor's finding of the date of conception is based on the Applicant's statements to him about the date of her last period, and there is no proof the Applicant was telling the doctor the truth.

- The Officer also notes that the medical evidence states that the Applicant was 34 weeks pregnant in mid-August. The Officer states that the fact that the Applicant was 8.5 months pregnant in mid-August contradicts the doctor's testimony that she conceived in mid-December 2001.

- The Applicant has provided no reason why she did not claim asylum in the United States instead of Canada, and the Board found her testimony about whether it was her idea or her agent's to go to Canada to be inconsistent.

- The Applicant submitted new evidence in the form of letters from family members substantiating her history of abuse by her husband; the Officer found that based on the Board's findings that the Applicant was not credible and that her family had an interest in her proceedings, these letters should be given little weight.

- The Applicant submitted new evidence from the psychiatrist who had evaluated her, Dr. Jarvis, explaining why his first report on the Applicant did not diagnose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and his second one did. The Officer gave low weight to this evidence, since the diagnosis was based on the Applicant's own recital of her history, without many independent observations.

- The new evidence does not displace the findings of the Board, with which the Officer agrees.

- While the best interests of the child must be considered, that does not exempt children from the requirement of proving risk upon return.

- While the social worker's report notes that deporation would be stressful for the eldest son, the boy functioned in school in Bangladesh before and can do so again, he will receive adequate education there and he will also have his mother's family around him.

- The Officer did not believe the Applicant's testimony that she has not told her family in Bangladesh about the second child, and that she will be rejected and ostracized when she arrives with him.

- The Applicant lived on her own with her first child in Dhaka during the 4-year separation from her husband, so there is no reason why a second child would change her ability to do so; the Officer also already found that the Applicant was of the class of women who could live a more privileged and free life in Bangladesh.

- The constitution of Bangladesh guarantees equality to men and women, and the government of Bangladesh has been pursuing a plan of action to assist women, particularly through its ministry for women and children.

- The Applicant is better-off than the 85% of rural-based women who suffer greater discrimination than her, so she has no credible reason for fearing she will be ostracized and ill-treated like them.

- The Applicant's new evidence is based on the same story and the same alleged risks that the Board has already rejected.

- There is no more than a mere possibility that the Applicant and her children will face any risks upon return under s. 96, nor any likelihood they will be subject to torture, threat to life, or cruel and unusual treatment under s. 97.

[19]            I have read with interest the written submissions of both parties and do not believe it necessary to repeat these submissions in the present reasons but will simply give my analysis of the facts.

[20]            I will restrict my analysis to the two elements on which the Officer was supposed to concentrate in the PRRA findings, and one further issue.

(i) Findings of Fact on the New Evidence

[21]            The Applicant submitted extensive new evidence in her PRRA application, including evidence to refute the Board's finding that she had never resided in Pabna, the validity of which the Officer accepted despite stating that the Board's decision stands. The Applicant also submitted letters alleged to be from her family testifying to her husband's abuse, to which the Officer gave low weight. While the Officer had broad discretion to make her findings, there is one finding based on the new evidence which is patently unreasonable.

[22]            One of the major issues on which the Applicant submitted new evidence in her PRRA application is the conception date of her second child. The Officer discusses this evidence as part of her decision, apparently on the basis that it is relevant to the issue of whether the Applicant's child really is born out of wedlock, and whether both he and his mother would therefore be at risk of ill-treatment upon return to Bangladesh.

[23]            The Applicant says the Board looked at her medical records and pronounced her conception date to be a different one from that given by the doctor, and used this new date to impugn her credibility with regard to when, where and how she became pregnant. The Applicant has accurately characterized this portion of the Board's decision on the refugee claim.

[24]            The new evidence submitted on the PRRA includes a statement by the Canadian doctor in response to the Board's finding on the medical records, which the Board had interpreted to show that the Applicant's conception date was at the end of November 2001, before she left Bangladesh. The new letter from the doctor clarifies that the conception date was in fact in mid-December 2001, the time during which the Applicant was in New York.The Officer disregards this, and instead finds that the Board's calculation of the Applicant's conception date is more accurate than that of her own obstetrician.

[25]            The Respondent says the Officer found the new evidence to be irrelevant. I do not think this is an accurate characterization. The Officer explicitly found this particular new evidence to be not credible. The credibility analysis by the Officer on this point cannot stand.

[26]            The Officer's finding is based on two premises. The first is that the Applicant was being dishonest with her doctor about when her last menstrual period occurred. Since the conversations with the doctor took place well before the Applicant's first hearing, I think it is far-fetched, to say the least, to find that the Applicant would have plotted to deceive her doctor in their confidential conversations during her pregnancy so as to be able to later induce the doctor to present inaccurate evidence to the Officer. While the Applicant stated that she had irregular cycles, and one can see from the medical records that the original estimates about her due date were revised during the course of her pregnancy, this is a common occurrence, and cannot by itself be a reasonable basis for an inference that she was lying to her doctor.

[27]            The second premise is that the doctor is not giving truthful testimony in his letter because the revised figures in the medical records date the pregnancy at 34 weeks (8.5 months) in mid-August 2002. According to the Officer, this puts the conception date at the end of November, just before the Applicant's departure from Bangladesh.

[28]            It is a well-known fact that a pregnancy does not last exactly nine months, but rather around 38 weeks (closer to nine and a half months), and that doctors often estimate for 40 weeks.^[2] Counting back 38 weeks from Rakib's birth date of September 19, 2002,^[3] puts us at late December 2001, and counting back 40 weeks puts us exactly at mid-December 2001. The Applicant's testimony on this point, the medical records and the letter provided by her doctor are demonstrably consistent, and there was no basis for finding that they are not.

[29]            Had the Applicant conceived on the date the Officer would have preferred, the delivery would have taken place when she was 10 and a half months pregnant. She would have been dangerously overdue, to say the least.

[30]            The Respondent correctly states that the acceptance of medical evidence by the Board is subject to the facts upon which the medical evidence is based. The Respondent also correctly argues that the Officer's factual findings may be overturned by the Court only where they are "entirely out of keeping with the relevant evidence." In this case, the medical facts giving rise to the opinion are entirely verifiable, and there is no need to depend on any testimony of the Applicant. The Officer's findings are not in keeping with the evidence or even the basic facts of the file.

[31]            The Officer has expertise in risk assessments, not obstetrics. The only person who can make a finding regarding a probable conception date of a baby based on medical evidence is a qualified doctor. The Officer's findings on this point are not only inaccurate, they are patently unreasonable and should not have played any part in the assessment of the new evidence.

[32]            Nor were these findings particularly relevant to the risk assessment the Officer was supposed to be doing. The Officer accepted as legitimate evidence the bloodwork proving Rakib is not fathered by the same man as his half-brother. The Officer was therefore obliged to consider the risks a woman would face returning to her home country on her own with a child that is not her husband's.

[33]            I will now turn to this issue.

(ii) Assessment of Risk Upon Return

[34]            The Applicant has put new and detailed submissions before the Court about the risk she would face upon return, via the affidavit of an independent expert to provide information about the risks an unmarried woman with a child born out of wedlock would face in returning to Bangladesh.

[35]            The Applicant also applied for an extension of time to put additional new evidence before the Court. This motion was dismissed by Justice Gauthier, who had also previously dismissed leave to judicially review the original refugee claim. She correctly states in her order on the motion of August 24, 2005 that the Court cannot consider evidence that was not before the decision maker at the time of the decision.

[36]            While the additional evidence might have made a difference had it been submitted to the Officer at the time of the decision, the Court is not able to consider extrinsic evidence on a judicial review of a PRRA decision.

[37]            I am therefore restricted under s. 18.1(4) of the Federal Courts Act to looking at the Officer's findings on risk, and determining whether they were within the bounds of reasonableness, made with reference to the evidence before her at the time, and made in accordance with the law. There are two instances in which the Officer's conclusions do not meet this standard.

[38]            The first is the Officer's finding that the Applicant had lived alone ("a vécu seule", p. 12 of the decision under review) in Dhaka for four years with her son, i.e. as a single mother, and therefore there could not be at any risk in returning to that state. This observation is one basis for the Officer's finding that the Applicant is part of a privileged class of Bangladeshi women who can live as they please.

[39]            The Applicant's testimony was in fact that she was taken in by friends in Dhaka, and lived in their homes, presumably under their protection. Even if the Officer does not find this testimony to be credible, she cannot make the leap to assuming that the Applicant must have lived alone in Dhaka without having evidence to this effect in front of her. This finding is not based on the Board's conclusions in the original refugee claim either, since the Board explicitly found that the Applicant had been "living with friends" in Dhaka after 1997.^[4] (It also does not distinguish between the possible desire of friends to help a woman claiming to have difficulties with her husband and their potential reaction to a new child born out of wedlock.) This is a capricious conclusion not based on the record before the decision maker.

[40]            Secondly, the Officer upholds the Board's finding that the Applicant's passport is genuine despite the Applicant's statement that it is fake. In doing so, she cites s. 93 of the UNHCR Handbook. Section 93 is as follows:

93. Nationality may be proved by the possession of a national passport. Possession of such a passport creates a prima facie presumption that the holder is a national of the country of issue, unless the passport itself states otherwise. A person holding a passport showing him to be a national of the issuing country, but who claims that he does not possess that country's nationality, must substantiate his claim, for example, by showing that the passport is a so-called "passport of convenience" (an apparently regular national passport that is sometimes issued by a national authority to non-nationals). However, a mere assertion by the holder that the passport was issued to him as a matter of convenience for travel purposes only is not sufficient to rebut the presumption of nationality. In certain cases, it might be possible to obtain information from the authority that issued the passport. If such information cannot be obtained, or cannot be obtained within reasonable time, the examiner will have to decide on the credibility of the applicant's assertion in weighing all other elements of his story.

[41]            This section deals with the presumption of the claimant's nationality once a passport is deemed to be valid. It then goes on to discuss how to approach a situation where a claimant has a passport that they are claiming is valid but cannot be proven to be so.

[42]            The use of this section to counter an Applicant's assertion that the passport itself is fake, or to support the finding that the holder was born in one city rather than the other, appears to me to be both perverse and illogical. While both these findings could theoretically be made on the other evidence, they are not related at all to s. 93. The Officer's reliance on this section for her finding is a misapprehension of the law.

(iii) Best Interests of the Child

[43]            Lastly, the Officer's consideration of the best interests of the children focussed upon the eldest child, Mehran. The interests of the 3-year old Rakib were not considered at all, beyond the assertion I have already dealt with that the Applicant was a single mother in Dhaka before, and the number of children will not make any difference.

[44]            Rakib is a Canadian citizen, not a Bangladeshi one. His options are apparently to be left here without any parents by himself if his mother is removed from Canada, or to accompany her to Bangladesh without status where he may be subjected to ill-treatment for being born out of wedlock. Even if the Officer chose to give low weight to Rakib's best interests, the risk analysis on this issue was inadequate, especially considering that as a Canadian citizen Rakib cannot be deported should the mother choose to leave him behind.

                                                                 ORDER

This application for judicial review is allowed. The matter is returned for a new hearing before a different PRRA officer. No question for certification was submitted by either party.

« Max M. Teitelbaum »

       JUDGE

OTTAWA, Ontario

September 14, 2005

                                           FEDERAL COURT OF CANADA

                                                SOLICITORS OF RECORD

DOCKETS :                                IMM-1730-05

STYLE OF CAUSE :                   Farzana Chowdhury, Mehran Chowdhury v. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration

PLACE OF HEARING:              Montréal, Québec

DATE OF HEARING:                September 8, 2005

REASONS :                                 The Honourable Mr. Justice Teitelbaum

DATE OF REASONS:                September 14, 2005

APPEARANCES :                      

Me Eleanor K. Comeau                                                       FOR THE APPLICANTS

Me Louise-Marie Courtemanche    FOR THE RESPONDENT

SOLICITORS OF RECORD :

Me Eleanor K. Comeau

Montreal, Quebec                                                               FOR THE APPLICANTS

John H. Sims, Q.C.

Deputy Attorney General

of Canada

Ottawa, Ontario                                                                  FOR THE RESPONDENT