Docket: IMM-16667-24
Citation: 2025 FC 1772
Ottawa, Ontario, November 3, 2025
PRESENT: The Honourable Madam Justice Strickland
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BETWEEN: |
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ZUBAIR |
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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] The Applicant is a citizen of Pakistan. He seeks judicial review of a July 16, 2024, decision of an officer [Officer] of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada refusing his temporary resident visa [TRV] application. That decision included a finding that the Applicant was inadmissible to Canada for five years for misrepresentation, under paragraph 40(1)(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [IRPA]. The Applicant also seeks judicial review of a decision by the same Officer on the same date refusing the Applicant’s previously submitted Start-Up visa work permit application. The work permit application was refused on the basis of the inadmissibility finding with respect to the Applicant’s TRV application. The applications for judicial review of the two decisions were consolidated and were heard together.
Background
[2] Upon review of the Applicant’s TRV application, the Officer had concerns with the employment reference letter submitted by the Applicant in support of his application. On April 5, 2024, the Officer sent the Applicant a procedural fairness letter. The letter advised that the Officer was concerned that the Applicant had not fulfilled the requirement of subsection 16(1) of the IRPA which requires that a person who makes an application must answer truthfully all questions put to them. The letter states that the Applicant had provided a fraudulent employment reference letter and, therefore, the Officer had concerns that the Applicant had misrepresented material facts in his application and was inadmissible pursuant to paragraph 40(1)(a) of the IRPA as a result. The Officer gave the Applicant the opportunity to respond to this concern.
[3] By letter dated April 19, 2024, the Applicant provided his response to the procedural fairness letter. He submitted that the employment letter from YODO PVT. LTD [YODO] had been provided truthfully, reflecting his employment history. However, when addressing the Officer’s concerns “a typographical and printing error was discovered.”
Accordingly, he had sought clarification from YODO’s human resources department which acknowledged that the discrepancy was a result of an administrative oversight on their part.
[4] As part of his response to the procedural fairness letter, the Applicant also submitted a letter from YODO’s human resources manager stating that they were writing to address a “clerical error”
in the employment documents the Applicant had submitted with his visa application and that there was an “unintentional typo mistake”
in the Applicant’s employment letter. YODO apologized for the oversight and took responsibility for any resultant confusion. It also stated that its letter “confirms that Mr. Zubair is a valued employee with all documents issued by us, from employment letters to salary slips, being genuine and accurate to the best of our knowledge.”
The Applicant also submitted two new employment letters from YODO, both dated April 17, 2024. The first states that the Applicant has worked with YODO “from July 2019 to June 2020 as a Business Development Associate on a pay scale of 50,000 (Fifty thousand rupee only) basic + sales commission transferred to his bank account each month.”
The second states that the Applicant has been working in YODO “since June 2020. Currently, he’s designated as a Chief Marketing Officer on a pay scale of 450,000 PKR (four hundred and fifty thousand rupees only) basic + sales commission transferred to his bank account each month.”
To support his employment with YODO, the Applicant also submitted YODO salary slips and bank payment transaction details for the months of January to March 2024, as well as his LinkedIn Profile.
Decisions
[5] The TRV refusal letter states that the Officer determined that the application did not meet the requirements of the IRPA and refused it on the grounds that:
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-The Officer was not satisfied that the Applicant truthfully answered all questions asked of him;
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-The Applicant submitted documentation that lacked authenticity as part of his application, which diminished the overall credibility of his submission; and
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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.
[6] The Officer stated that the Applicant had been found to be inadmissible to Canada in accordance with paragraph 40(1)(a) of the IRPA for directly or indirectly misrepresenting or withholding material facts relating to a relevant matter that induces or could induce an error in the administration of the IRPA. Further, in accordance with paragraph 40(2)(a), he would remain inadmissible to Canada for a period of five years.
[7] The global case management system [GCMS] notes, which form part of the reasons for the decision, include an entry by an initial reviewing officer indicating that the Applicant responded to the procedural fairness letter by stating that the reason for the issue with the employment letter was a printing error by his employer. He had provided a new letter from his employer which states that there was an unintentional typo printing mistake for which the employer apologized and attested to the genuineness of the Applicant’s stated employment. The reviewing officer indicated that they did not find this response to be reasonable. This was because the employment letter had clearly been altered and did not simply feature typographical or clerical errors. That officer also noted that the Applicant had subsequently requested to withdraw this TRV application but that his request had been denied. The officer recommended a finding of misrepresentation.
[8] This was followed by an entry by the Officer who recorded that they had reviewed the Applicant’s submission in response to the procedural fairness letter and concluded that:
The client’s response does not adequately or reasonably explain the digital alteration of the original documentation. The facts are relevant to the officer's eligibility assessment. The client has not disabused me of the concerns of factual misrepresentation, which were specifically addressed to the applicant and which could have induced an error in the administration of the Act. A finding of misrepresentation is determined pursuant to A40(1)(a). As such, the client is inadmissible for 5 years from the date of this decision.
[9] The work permit application refusal letter states that that the application was denied because at a prior refusal (the TRV refusal) the Applicant had been found to be inadmissible to Canada for misrepresentation and remains inadmissible for a period of five years from the date of his prior refusal or from the date a previous removal order was enforced.
Issues and Standard of Review
[10] The Applicant submits that the TRV decision was unreasonable and procedurally unfair. Further, that the negative TRV decision resulted in the Officer’s decision to deny his work permit application.
[11] The standard of review on the merits of the Officer’s decision is reasonableness. On judicial review the court “asks whether the decision bears the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and whether it is justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that bear on the decision”
(Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at para 99).
[12] The standard of review for issues of procedural fairness is correctness (see Mission Institution v Khela, 2014 SCC 24 at para 79; Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2020 FCA 196 at para 35). Functionally, this requires the Court’s analysis to focus on whether the procedure followed was fair, having regard to all the circumstances (Canadian Pacific Railway Company v Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 69 at para 54).
Applicant’s Position
[13] The Applicant, in essence, submits that there was no misrepresentation and that the Officer failed to consider the evidence submitted with his response to the procedural fairness letter which demonstrates this to be so. The February 14, 2024, employment letter submitted with his TRV application was “digitally altered”
as the Officer contended. However, it was issued by his employer and contained the correct information about the Applicant’s employment as demonstrated by the subsequent April 17, 2024, employment letter and YODO’s explanatory letter. That is, the TRV application did not contain false information. However, the Officer focused on the digital alteration and failed to recognize that even if there was digital alteration in the original employment letter, the letter contained only accurate information. The Applicant submits that a mere alteration in format or appearance, without misrepresentation of the underlying facts, does not amount to misrepresentation. Nor did the Officer contact YODO to verify the information. Accordingly, the decision was unreasonable.
[14] The Applicant also asserts that the Officer erred by failing to consider whether the alleged misrepresentation was an innocent mistake. That is, while the general rule is that misrepresentation can occur without an applicant’s knowledge, there is an exception where the applicant honestly and reasonably believed that they were not misrepresenting a material fact. The Officer failed to consider whether the Applicant fell within that exception.
[15] Further, even if the employment letter, which had been digitally altered by the Applicant’s employer before giving the letter to the Applicant, was a source of concern then the explanations and corroborating evidence demonstrate that this was not a material fact that could have impacted the outcome of the application. However, the Officer failed to assess this.
[16] Finally, the Applicant submits that the Officer maintained credibility concerns about the employment letter. This suggests that the Officer may have had concerns that were not communicated to the Applicant who was therefore denied an opportunity to respond. This was a breach of procedural fairness.
Analysis
[17] I agree with the Applicant that the Officer’s decision is unreasonable because the Officer failed to consider whether the digital alteration of the February 14, 2024, employment letter amounted to misrepresentation in light of the evidence provided by the Applicant in response to the procedural fairness letter. Additionally, given the evidence provided, whether the misrepresentation was material to the determination of the application.
[18] While the Officer’s reasons do not explain the nature of the “digital alteration”
identified as a concern in the original employment letter, they appear to concern the use of bold and a change in font and/or cut and paste of the stated pay scale and a modification of the year of employment.
[19] A copy of the February 14, 2024, employment letter is attached as an exhibit to the affidavit of Cynthia Greenhalgh, paralegal with the Department of Justice, sworn on September 3, 2025, and filed by the Respondent as well as in the certified tribunal record. It is copied here from the affidavit to demonstrate the “digital alterations”
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The revised April 17, 2024, employment letter states:
This is to certify that Mr. Zubair Akbar (CNIC# 36502-4033881-7) has been working in YODO. Pvt. Ltd. since June 2020. Currently, he’s designated as a Chief Marketing Officer on a pay scale of 450,000 PKR (four hundred and fifty thousand rupees only) basic + sales commission transferred to his bank account each month.
[20] The Officer found that the Applicant’s response to the procedural fairness letter did not adequately or reasonably explain the digital alterations to the original letter. However, YODO’s letter explained that this was a clerical error, being an unintentional “typo printing mistake.”
I note that the difference in the letters is the use of bold, some shading and some font (possibly suggesting a cut and paste) in portions of the text and a possible modification of the year of employment. However, the relevant information provided in the initial letter – being the Applicant’s position, start date and pay – is the same in both letters.
[21] The Respondent submits that the response to the procedural fairness letter, including YODO’s explanation, did not explain why there were digital alterations.
[22] The Officer was not obliged to accept the explanation and the description by YODO of the “digital alterations”
as an administrative error. However, given that the evidence provided in response to the procedural fairness letter demonstrates that the content of the two letters is the same, it is difficult to see how the alteration in and of itself supports that the initial letter was fraudulent.
[23] Paragraph 40(1)(a) of the IRPA states that a foreign national is inadmissible for misrepresentation for directly or indirectly misrepresenting or withholding material facts relating to a relevant matter that induces or could induce an error in the administration of the IRPA. As held in Oloumi v Canada (Citizenship and Immigrations), 2012 FC 428 at para 25, relied upon by the Respondent, “to be material, a misrepresentation need not be decisive or determinative. It will be material if it is important enough to affect the process.”
[24] Here, after stating that the Applicant’s response did not adequately or reasonably explain the digital alteration of the original documentation, the Officer stated that “the facts are relevant to the officer’s eligibility assessment”
and that the Applicant had not disabused the Officer’s concern of “factual misrepresentation.”
However, it is not clear to me what factual misrepresentation is problematic for the Officer. As indicated above, YODO explained the clerical nature of the “digital alteration.”
YODO also confirmed the Applicant’s employment with YODO as a Chief Marketing Officer since June 2020, his stated salary and the genuineness of the information provided. The Officer did not engage with this evidence. While I accept the Respondent’s point that because the employment letter was altered on its face, the Officer reasonably took issue with it, my concern is that having done so, the Officer did not proceed further in their analysis. This is because while the letter may have been digitally altered, this alone does not establish that there was a misrepresentation.
[25] As held in Hoseinian v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 514:
[12] Thus, when immigration or citizenship officials find that a document was altered, they cannot conclude, on that basis only, that there was a misrepresentation. They must ask themselves whether the alteration conveyed false information that related to a circumstance that is material to the application before them (Koo v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2008 FC 931, [2009] 3 FCR 446). In that inquiry, evidence showing that the information is true would be highly relevant.
[13] The officer in this case omitted to do this. My understanding of his reasons, quoted above, is that the finding that Ms. Hoseinian’s passport had been altered was conclusive and he therefore did not need to consider the additional evidence tendered by Ms. Hoseinian because this evidence did not contradict the fact that the passport was altered. Moreover, the officer stated that any evidence showing that Ms. Hoseinian travelled from Canada to Iran on February 21, 2012 would be relevant to a determination under section 5 of the Act (whether Ms. Hoseinian resided in Canada during the relevant three years) but not to a determination under section 22 (whether she made a misrepresentation).
[14] At the hearing, counsel for the Respondent confirmed that this was also his understanding of the officer’s reasons. He argued that the officer correctly applied the law in doing so. As I showed above, this is not so. The officer failed to assess Ms. Hoseinian’s evidence and to make a determination as to whether it buttressed her argument that the alteration to her passport did not constitute a misrepresentation, as the information shown was actually true.
[15] Most importantly, nothing in the record shows that the officer reached any conclusion as to the truthfulness of the information conveyed by the disputed entry stamp. The document analysis report does not explain what the genuine entry date was and how it had been modified. Thus, the report does not support the conclusion that the date shown on the entry stamp was false. This is unlike the situation in Zhamila, where a cursory examination of the passport revealed that the date “2016” had been changed to “2018.” In this case, the colour copy of Ms. Hoseinian’s passport that was filed in the Certified Tribunal Record does not allow me to supplement the silence of the officer’s reasons as to the nature of the purported misrepresentation.
[26] In my view, this is a similar circumstance. The fact that the original employment letter was digitally altered did not alone, in light of the evidence submitted in response to the procedural fairness letter, establish either that the initial employment letter was fraudulent; that the content of the letter was untrue and therefore a misrepresentation; or, that the digital alteration or the facts that the letter contained relating to a relevant matter that induced or could induce an error in the administration of the IRPA.
[27] Further, the Officer failed to engage with the Applicant’s evidence to determine if there actually was a material misrepresentation caused by the alteration of the employment letter. The three employment letters indicate that the Applicant was employed from July 2019 to June 2020 as a Business Development Associate with a pay of 50,000 rupee plus commission and from June 2020 to present as Chief Marketing Officer with a pay of 450,000 PKR plus commission. The January, February and March 2024 salary slips, and bank transactions provided by the Applicant confirm that for these months the Applicant was paid 450,000 PKR plus commission. The salary slips also list the Applicant as “Chief Marketing Officer.”
[28] The GCMS note entry dated April 3, 2024, indicates that information in the February 14, 2024, employment letter had clearly been digitally altered “such as the start date and salary”
and that it was for that reason that the procedural fairness letter was sent. The Applicant’s evidence submitted in response would appear to contradict the Officer’s finding of misrepresentation because the date and salary information was correct, albeit by way of an altered document. Accordingly, the Officer was obliged to address the evidence submitted in response and, if it was not accepted, explain why that was the case (Khayati v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 1402 at para 22). The failure to do so renders the decision unreasonable. Having found the Officer’s finding of misrepresentation was unreasonable, I need not address the Applicant’s innocent mistake argument.
[29] Finally, I note that the Respondent refers to a YODO letter dated May 24, 2023, submitted in support of the Applicant’s work permit application. This letter states that the Applicant was employed as Chief Technology Officer since July 1, 2019, and currently holds the same position. The Respondent points out that this differs from the content of the YODO letters pertaining to the TRV application. This may be so, however, the Officer did not raise this discrepancy as a reason for denying either application nor did they refer to the May 24, 2023 letter in their reasons. The misrepresentation found by the Officer in connection with the TRV application was based solely on the alterations to the February 14, 2024, YODO letter. The work permit application was refused because the Applicant had been found to be inadmissible based on that finding of misrepresentation and resultant inadmissibility.
[30] Put otherwise, the work permit application was refused based solely on the refusal of the TRV application. Accordingly, as the TRV refusal was unreasonable, so too was the refusal of the work permit application. While it is entirely possible that if the Officer had found that there were factual discrepancies between the work permit employment letter and the TRV employment letters, or other discrepancies or related concerns, the Officer may have reasonably refused the TRV based on the same. But the Officer did not do so.
Procedural Fairness
[31] As I have found that that the decisions were unreasonable, I need not address the issue of procedural fairness raised by the Applicant.
Conclusion
[32] For the reasons set out above, the Officer’s finding of misrepresentation was unreasonable. Accordingly, the decision denying Applicant’s TRV application cannot stand. Because the refusal of the Applicant’s work permit application was based solely on the TRV misrepresentation finding, it too was unreasonable.
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