Docket: IMM-14784-24
Citation: 2025 FC 1741
Toronto, Ontario, October 29, 2025
PRESENT: Madam Justice Whyte Nowak
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BETWEEN: |
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SHABNAM KHAN
ZOYA FAISAL
SUZANE
RAYAN |
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Applicants |
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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, Shabnam Khan [Principal Applicant] and her minor children [Minor Applicants], Zoya Faisal, Suzane and Rayan [collectively, the Applicants] seek judicial review of a decision [Decision] of a senior immigration officer [Officer] dated July 31, 2024, refusing their application [Application] for permanent residence based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds [H&C] under subsection 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [Act].
[2] For the reasons that follow, I am dismissing this application as the Applicants have not met their onus of showing that the Decision is unreasonable.
II. Facts
A. The Applicants’ immigration history
[3] The Principal Applicant is a single mother of the Minor Applicants who are aged 16, 15 and 10. They fled Pakistan in 2018 and made refugee claims in Canada based on the Principal Applicant’s fear of members of a Sunni Muslim terrorist group in Pakistan after she converted from Sunni to Shia Islam in 2015. The Principal Applicant claims that those members include her former husband’s family who she believes want to kill her. The Refugee Protection Division [RPD] refused the Applicants’ claims including by reason that it found that the Principal Applicant had submitted fraudulent documents and was not credible. The Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] upheld the RPD’s decision and the Applicants’ application for judicial review was dismissed by the Federal Court.
[4] The Applicants filed an Application seeking permanent residence based on H&C grounds. The Application was based on the Applicants’ establishment in Canada, the best interests of the children [BIOC] and the hardship associated with adverse country conditions in Pakistan.
B. The Decision
[5] The Officer gave positive consideration to the strength of the Applicants’ meaningful family and community bonds developed over the five years they had lived in the Greater Toronto Area. However, the Officer attributed low probative weight to this establishment considering that these relationships did not involve a level of interdependence and reliance. While acknowledging the period of trauma that the Principal Applicant suffered after her marriage fell apart and her husband re-married, the Officer found that the Principal Applicant had failed to demonstrate financial establishment which was given negative weight. The Officer noted that the Principal Applicant had failed to provide sufficient evidence of her work as a babysitter and her bank statements showed that she was in receipt of social assistance. The Officer found that the Principal Applicant had not shown how she was able to pay rent or support a family of four. The Officer concluded that considering the Applicants’ establishment holistically, they had not demonstrated a “rootedness”
sufficient to warrant an exemption on H&C grounds.
[6] The Officer considered the Applicants’ evidence that the Minor Applicants have adjusted to their life in Canada and their school reports and letters of support show that they are doing well academically, engaged in various activities and integrated into Canadian culture. The Officer did not consider the Minor Applicants’ relationships to be characterized by a level of interdependence that would be adversely impacted if they were forced to return to Pakistan.
[7] The Officer also considered the hardships that the Minor Applicants (two of which are female) would face in Pakistan due to gender-based discrimination, the Principal Applicant’s status as a divorced woman and their Shia faith. The Officer considered that the Minor Applicants would face “an adjustment period,”
that could include discrimination in rural areas and gender-based violence, which the Officer considered to be a global issue. However, the Officer held that the Applicants had not shown they were vulnerable to unsafe and unstable living conditions and their mother was an educated woman who has the ability to relocate to an urban centre and find employment. The Officer noted that there was no evidence provided in respect of the Minor Applicants’ father, who the Officer felt constrained to consider given that, “an absence of information does not necessarily equate to the lack of a relationship.”
[8] The Officer considered that while the Principal Applicant’s claims of risk had been assessed by the RPD and RAD, nevertheless the Officer was required to consider adverse country conditions and the related hardships that the Applicants would face. However, the Officer considered that there was insufficient evidence to refute the internal flight alternatives [IFAs] identified by the RPD and while the Applicants would face challenges and a period of adjustment, they had demonstrated an aptitude to rebuild their lives. The Officer concluded that the Applicants had not demonstrated that adverse country conditions and associated hardships justify H&C relief.
[9] The Officer refused an H&C exemption based on a global assessment of all of the Applicants’ evidence.
III. Issues and Standard of Review
[10] The Applicants have raised issues going to the Officer’s assessment of their establishment, the hardship they say they would face if forced to return to Pakistan and in assessing the BIOC.
[11] The applicable standard of review of the merits of an administrative decision is that of reasonableness as set out in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov]. A reasonable decision bears the hallmarks of justification, transparency and intelligibility with the burden resting on the challenging party to show that the decision is unreasonable (Vavilov at paras 99-100).
IV. Analysis
A. Did the Officer err in assessing the Applicants’ establishment in Canada?
[12] The Applicants submit that the Officer erred in three ways in assessing the family’s establishment in Canada. The problem with each of these arguments, is that they are based on a selective account of the record and a faulty reading of the Decision.
[13] First, the Applicants submit that the Officer erred in finding that the Principal Applicant had not substantiated her employment by providing reference letters, employment contracts or proof of payment. The Applicant argues the Officer failed to acknowledge a reference letter from her employer who attested to the fact that she had been working for him as a babysitter since July 2022. While the Applicants refer to that portion of the letter that commends the Principal Applicant as punctual, hard-working, polite and respectful, the Applicants have omitted that portion of the letter which states:
My name is Rafay Shamim, and I am willing to offer my reference of Shabnam Khan, whom I have personally known since July 2022 in the capacity of an infrequent house help and babysitter for my children [emphasis added].
[14] I find that the Officer’s failure to refer to this evidence to be understandable given that if anything, it supports the Officer’s concern that the Principal Applicant had provided insufficient evidence of her financial establishment and ability to support her family financially.
[15] Second, the Applicants argue that the Principal Applicant’s financial position was the result of a period of trauma that she experienced, and the Officer should not have placed emphasis on the fact that she received social assistance. I agree with the Respondent that not only did the Officer acknowledge the Principal Applicant’s trauma, but the Officer’s mention of her receipt of social assistance was justified in light of the Principal Applicant’s claim to be financially established. The Applicants’ suggestion that the Officer should have asked the Applicant whether she still receives social assistance is also without merit: the onus was on the Applicant, not the Officer, to make out the family’s case for H&C relief.
[16] Finally, the Applicants point to the Officer’s conclusory statement that the Applicants “have not demonstrated a rootedness to this country that would warrant an exemption based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.”
They say that this statement coupled with the fact that the Officer made no adverse credibility findings and gave positive weight to their establishment, amounts to an “implicit”
expectation that the Applicants establish an exceptional level of establishment which is unreasonable (citing Sivalingam v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2017 FC 1185 at para 13). I disagree. The Applicants have chosen to focus on the positive weight attributed to their familial and community ties while ignoring the shortcomings in their evidence related to financial establishment – a failure that undermines any suggestion that the Officer employed too high a standard in assessing the Applicants’ level of establishment considered holistically.
B. Did the Officer err in assessing the Applicants’ hardship?
[17] The Applicants submit that should they return to Pakistan, they will be the target of attacks by Islamic militants for which the Pakistani government has provided inadequate protection and the Principal Applicant as a single mother, will likely be targeted, sexually harassed and raped. The Applicants submit that the Officer erred in rejecting this evidence on the basis that it was evidence they had relied on in support of their failed refugee claims. The Applicants emphasize that there are different legal tests for proving persecution and hardship and the facts underlying their claims of persecution are relevant to an assessment of the hardship they would face in Pakistan since they relate to whether the Applicants face unusual and undeserved, or disproportionate hardship (citing Kanthasamy v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 SCC 61 at para 26).
[18] I agree with the Respondent that the Officer committed no such error: the Officer stated that while the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration may not consider the factors taken into account in an analysis under section 96 and subsection 97(1) of the Act, nevertheless the Officer “must consider elements related to the hardships that affect the foreign national,”
which factors were not limited to those described in sections 96 and 97 of the Act. The Officer considered both the Applicants’ fear of harm by the Islamic Militant Group in light of the Principal Applicant’s religious conversion as well as the Principal Applicant’s fear of gender-based discrimination. The Officer found that the Applicants’ own evidence stated that since 2019, the Islamic Militant Group had lost its operational strength, and a substantial part of the leadership had either been killed or captured. The Officer noted that gender-based discrimination in Pakistan varies regionally and the RPD and RAD decisions had determined that the Applicants had IFAs in what were considered to be progressive urban centres where the Applicants could live safely. These finding were reasonable based on the facts and the law that constrained the Officer.
C. Did the Officer fail to properly assess the BIOC?
[19] The Applicants submit that the Officer erred by focusing on factors related to the BIOC for which there was no evidence, including in particular the Minor Applicants’ biological father. At the same time, the Officer ignored factors for which there was evidence including the children’s age, their financial and emotional dependency on their mother, ties to relatives and friends in Canada and the hardship associated with their return to Pakistan.
[20] The Respondent argues that the Decision reflects a “paucity of evidence,”
not a failure of the Officer to address and consider the circumstances of the children in accordance with the appropriate test (citing D’Aguiar-Juman v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2016 FC 6 at para 20).
[21] I agree that the Officer was sufficiently alert, alive and sensitive to the BIOC, and that the Officer’s concern regarding the Minor Applicants’ relationship with their father was legitimate in the face of a record that simply did not provide sufficient evidence to address a material factor in the children’s well-being in Pakistan. Nor did the Officer ignore other relevant considerations going to the BIOC. The Officer noted that the Applicants had not refuted the availability of IFAs where the Applicants had not shown that the children would be vulnerable to unsafe and unstable living conditions.
V. Conclusion
[22] As the Decision displays the requisite level of intelligibility, justification and transparency, there is no basis for this Court’s intervention and this application is dismissed.
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