Date: 20251107

Docket: IMM-19801-24

Citation: 2025 FC 1800

Ottawa, Ontario, November 7, 2025

PRESENT: The Honourable Justice Thorne

BETWEEN:

ADEEL AKHTER

Applicant

and

THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Respondent

JUDGMENT AND REASONS

I. Nature of the Matter

[1] The Applicant, Adeel Akhter, challenges the decision of an Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada [IRCC] visa officer [Officer] refusing his Express Entry permanent resident application pursuant to section 11.2 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [Act].

[2] The Officer assessed the Applicant’s “qualifying offer of arranged employment”, submitted pursuant to subsection 29(2) of the relevant Ministerial Instructions and subsection 82(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, SOR/2002-227 [Regulations], and found that the Applicant did not have the requisite number of points under the Express Entry Comprehensive Ranking System [CRS]. The Officer therefore refused his permanent resident application. The Applicant alleges the Officer’s decision was unreasonable and procedurally unfair, because the Officer refused the application without allowing the Applicant to provide an updated offer of employment letter, and because they claim the Applicant qualified under a different section of the relevant Ministerial Instructions.

[3] For the reasons that follow, this application is dismissed. I find the Applicant has not established that the decision is unreasonable or procedurally unfair.

II. Background

[4] The Applicant, a citizen of Pakistan, seeks judicial review of the refusal of his application for permanent residence under the Express Entry system as a member of the Canadian Experience Class.

[5] Pursuant to the requirements of this program, his would-be employer in Canada, Ayeshmir Inc. [Employer], had initially submitted a Labour Market Impact Assessment [LMIA] application which was approved by IRCC in a letter dated January 23, 2023.

[6] The Employer’s associated offer of employment letter, dated February 2, 2023, confirmed that it was offering the Applicant employment for “a permanent full-time position for a period of 24 months from the date of issue of your work permit by CIC.” The Applicant was issued a closed work permit valid from February 2, 2023 to February 2, 2025 under the LMIA.

[7] By letters dated December 4, 2023, IRCC acknowledged that the Applicant had submitted his Express Entry profile and notified him of his acceptance into the Express Entry pool of candidates.

[8] On February 16, 2024, the Applicant was invited to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class through the Express Entry round of invitations #1. [Invitation] The letters outlined his points score under the program and identified the various criteria on which his overall CRS points score of 468 had been based. Among these included an assignment of 50 points for “Arranged Employment”. The letters established a deadline of April 17, 2024 for submission of his application for permanent residence and also noted that in the final assessment of this application, his point allocation score evaluation could be varied by ongoing developments, including if he then no longer had a valid job offer. The letter also summarized his CRS score at the time the invitation was issued as follows:

[9] On March 21, 2024, the Applicant submitted his permanent residence application, which included his spouse and dependents. In a letter accompanying the application, the Applicant acknowledged that the inclusion of his dependents would affect his CRS score, lowering it from 468 to 444. However, the Applicant noted that even so “[f]ollowing this update, my revised CRS score is now 444, which exceeds the minimum CRS requirement of 437 for this draw.” The Applicant also submitted, among other documents, pay slips, a 2023 T4, and letters from his former and current employers. Included in his application was the February 2, 2023 offer of employment letter, which said of his job offer: “This will be a permanent full-time position for a period of 24 months from the date of issue of your work permit by CIC.”

[10] In a Global Case Management System [GCMS] Notes entry on October 7, 2024, an IRCC Officer flagged the application for review. This entry outlined the CRS scores at various points in the process. It noted that at the time the Invitation was issued for the Applicant to apply for permanent residence under the Canadian Experience Class through the Express Entry round of invitations, the Applicant exceeded the minimum qualifying score of 437. However, it further noted that at the application stage the Applicant asserted his CRS score was 444, but that the Officer had rather determined that his Verified CRS score was actually 409, lower than the minimum threshold of 437 points. The GCMS Notes read in part as follows:

Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) CRS Score at invitation to apply (ITA) 463 CRS points minimum score for round: 437 CRS score at application (APR): 444 Total CRS Points Assessed: 409 / Verified CRS score: 409 (emphasis added)

A. The Decision

[11] By letter dated October 15, 2024, the Officer refused the application. [Decision] The Officer’s Decision states, in part:

Section 11.2 of the Act requires that information provided in your Express Entry Profile concerning your eligibility to be invited to apply (10.3(1)(e)) as well as the qualifications on the basis of which you were ranked (10.3(1)(h)) be valid both at the time the invitation was issued and at the time the application for permanent residence is received.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) invited you to apply for permanent resident status based on the qualifications you claimed in your Express Entry profile. In your Express Entry profile you indicated 50 points for a qualifying offer of arranged employment. Upon review of your application and submissions, I am not satisfied on the balance of probabilities, that you have been offered a qualifying offer of arranged employment. More specifically, on the balance of probabilities I am not satisfied that you have been offered continuous full-time employment for a period of at least one year from the date on which a permanent resident visa would be issued as defined in section 82(1) of the Regulations, which is also included in section 29(2) of the Ministerial Instructions.

This change in your qualifications resulted in a loss of points that brought your rank below the lowest ranking person who was invited to apply in your round of invitation, under the Express Entry Comprehensive Ranking System.

As I have found that you no longer possess the qualification on the basis of which you were ranked under an instruction given under paragraph 10.3(1)(h), you no longer meet the requirements of Section 11.2 of [sic] Act. (Emphasis added)

[12] In essence, the Officer noted that pursuant to the program the Applicant had applied under, for him to obtain 50 points for a “qualifying offer of arranged employment” his Employer must have offered him continuous full-time employment for a period of at least one year from the date on which a permanent resident visa would be issued to the Applicant. However, the offer of employment letter submitted by the Applicant instead offered him a “permanent full-time position for a period of 24 months from the date of issue of your work permit by CIC.” As a result, the Applicant’s eligibility score lost the 50 points allotted for a “qualifying offer of arranged employment”, lowering his overall CRS score below the minimum allowable threshold of 437 points.

[13] The Applicant submitted a request for reconsideration of the Decision on October 18, 2024. In this, he included a second Offer of Employment letter, dated October 16, 2024, which confirmed the Applicant’s position as a Cook with the Employer, and which stated that “This will be a permanent guaranteed on going [sic] full time [sic] position for at least one year after issuance of a permanent residence visa. This is also to confirm that Mr. Adeel Akhter has been working as a Cook since Feb 2023 up-till [sic] today.”

[14] By letter dated October 21, 2024, the reconsideration request was refused.

[15] In his leave application, the Applicant sought judicial review of only the initial October 15, 2024 refusal Decision.

III. Issues and Standard of Review

[16] The issues at play in this matter are whether the Officer’s Decision was reasonable and whether it was rendered in a procedurally fair manner.

[17] Procedural fairness issues are reviewed on a correctness-like standard (Mission Institution v Khela, 2014 SCC 24 at para 79). The reviewing court must determine whether the procedure was fair in all the circumstances (Canadian Pacific Railway Company v Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 69 at para 54).

[18] To assess the reasonableness of a decision, the reviewing court must consider the justification, transparency and intelligibility of the decision-making process (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 (CanLII), [2019] 4 S.C.R. 653 [Vavilov], at para 86). 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). Further, an applicant bears the onus of demonstrating that the challenged decision was unreasonable (Vavilov at para 100).

IV. Analysis

A. Relevant Provisions

[19] In essence, the Applicant’s permanent residence application was refused due to a series of interacting provisions of the Regulations, the Act and the Ministerial Instructions [MI] relevant to the Canadian Experience Class program.

[20] Under subsection 10.1(3) of the Act, prospective applicants for permanent residence may submit an “Expression of Interest” through an electronic system, known as the Express Entry system. Based on this Expression of Interest, the Minister may find an applicant eligible and, if their Comprehensive Ranking Score is high enough, invite the applicant to apply for permanent residence (ss. 10.1(1) and 10.2(1) of the Act). As described in further detail by Justice McHaffie in Oladimeji v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 183 [Oladimeji], this assessment process is governed by Ministerial Instructions (s. 10.3 of the Act).

[21] To qualify for the 50 Additional Points which would have enabled the Applicant to, in his particular case, meet the minimum required CRS score, the Applicant was required to provide a “qualifying offer of arranged employment”. This is a term defined in the relevant MI and section 82 of the Regulations.

[22] In particular, the Ministerial Instructions regarding the Express Entry for the relevant period define “qualifying offer of arranged employment” at section 1 and subsection 29(2):

[23] The term “Arranged Employment” is itself defined in the Regulations at section 82:

[24] The point allotment for the “qualifying offer of arranged employment” relevant to Mr. Akhter’s application was set out at paragraph 29(1)(b) of the MI:

[25] Finally, pursuant to paragraphs 11.2(1)(a) and (b) of the Act, an officer is prohibited from issuing a visa or other document in respect of an application for permanent residence under an invitation pursuant to Division 0.1 if the applicant did not meet the eligibility criteria set out in the MIs, or did not have the qualifications upon which the invitation was issued either at the time the invitation was issued or at the time the officer received their application:

B. The Decision was not procedurally unfair or unreasonable

[26] In essence, the Applicant submits that the Officer should have found him eligible to claim 50 points towards his CRS score as he states that he had a qualifying offer of arranged employment from his Employer. He argues that the Officer refused the application without allowing the Applicant to provide a corrected and updated offer of employment letter, and that the Decision breached procedural fairness as a result.

[27] The Applicant also argues that the Officer failed to realize that he was eligible under the MI paragraph 29(2)(a), and had also failed to provide reasons which were justified, transparent or intelligible. The Applicant particularly submits that even if he did not satisfy the requirements of MI paragraph 29(2)(b) due to the language of the letter of employment that he had submitted, he still met the requirement for a qualifying offer of employment as set out in the MI subparagraphs 29(2)(a)(ii) or (iii). He asserts that the Decision was therefore unreasonable as the reasons given were not responsive to the Applicant’s submitted documents.

[28] For its part, the Respondent submits that the Court must refrain from reweighing and reassessing the evidence. It also asserts that an Officer’s decision is entitled to a high degree of deference, and that the level of procedural fairness required for “these types of cases” is low: Ardestani v Canada (MCI) 2023 FC 874 at paras 14 and 17 [Ardestani]. The Respondent submits that the Applicant did not meet the criteria in subsection 29(2) of the Ministerial Instructions, and the Officer was not required to apprise the Applicant of deficiencies in his application, nor give him an opportunity to respond. The Respondent argues that the Applicant failed to meet the requirements both at the time the Invitation was issued and at the time the application was received, and that the reasons for refusal were clearly set out in the Decision.

[29] While I am quite sympathetic to the Applicant, I cannot find that the Officer’s Decision was rendered in a procedurally unfair manner.

[30] Though the Respondent cites Ardestani, a matter that instead concerned a work permit application, I agree that the level of procedural fairness required in permanent residence applications is also on the low end of the scale. (Asif v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 1326 at para 9, citing Sayekan v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 97 at para 12; Mohammadzadeh v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 75 at para 22; Lv v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 935 at para 22). The Respondent is correct that there is no obligation on the part of the Officer to “provide an applicant with an opportunity to address concerns regarding supporting documents that are incomplete, unclear or insufficient to satisfy the decision maker that the applicant meets the legal requirements governing the application” (Potla v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2020 FC 646 at paras 28-29; Lazar v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2017 FC 16 at paras 20-21, cited recently in Gumtang v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 758 at para 17).

[31] I note there do not appear to be in the file, nor was any argument advanced by either party, concerns on the part of the Officer regarding the credibility, accuracy or authenticity of the information submitted that would give rise to a duty on the part of the Officer to request further information (Kaur v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2025 FC 360 at para 25).

[32] Finally, as was reiterated by Justice McHaffie of this Court, a visa officer is not required to provide an applicant with an opportunity to respond to concerns arising directly from the Regulations and the Act (Oladimeji at para 41 citing Hassani v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2006 FC 1283 at para 24). Similarly, in my view, it was open to the Officer to refuse to reopen and reconsider the application with the new job offer letter. Inflexible though this may have been, it did not violate procedural fairness.

[33] In terms of the question of reasonableness, the crux of this matter is that the application submitted by the Applicant simply did not meet the requirements of the program, as set out in subsection 82(1) of the Regulations and subsection 29(2) of the relevant MI.

[34] It may be that there has been a misunderstanding of the interaction between the language of the MI and the Regulations. In oral submissions, counsel asserted that even if he did not satisfy the requirements of MI paragraph 29(2)(b), the Applicant did meet the requirements for a qualifying offer of arranged employment as set out in the Ministerial Instruction subparagraphs 29(2)(a)(ii) or (iii). However, with respect, MI subparagraph 29(2)(a)(iii) clearly does not apply as it specifically refers to provisions pertaining to other specific work permits that are not applicable to Mr. Akhter’s situation. Subparagraph 29(2)(a)(ii), meantime, is explicit in its reference to Applicants needing to establish “arranged employment as defined in subsection 82(1) of the Regulations” [emphasis added]. As previously noted, this section of the Regulations requires that the offer of employment must be “for continuous full-time work in Canada having a duration of at least one year after the date on which a permanent resident visa is issued …” As a result, all facets of paragraph 29(2)(a) appear to clearly contain the same requirement as paragraph 29(2)(b) in this regard. However, the Employer’s February 2, 2023 offer of employment letter instead outlined that it was offering the Applicant employment for “a permanent full-time position for a period of 24 months from the date of issue of your work permit by CIC”, and so did not satisfy this requirement.

[35] In correctly finding that the offer of employment did not accord with the requirements of subsection 82(1) of the Regulations and paragraph 29(2)(a) of the MI, it cannot be said that the reasons given were not responsive to the Applicant’s submitted documents, or that the Decision itself was unreasonable. Indeed, as counsel for the Respondent noted, the Officer did not have the discretion to disregard the clear requirements of the program, pursuant to section 11.2 of the Act.

[36] The Applicant also understandably submits that, in his view, a minor mistake was made in his application, that could have been corrected with a re-worded offer of employment that met the requirements set out in the Regulations, Act and Ministerial Instructions. The Applicant accordingly sought a reconsideration of the Decision, but this was refused by the Officer, who held “there are insufficient reasons for re-opening your application.” It may well have been open to the Officer to reconsider the application with the new job offer letter, but the Officer opted not to do so, and reconsideration is a discretionary decision (Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v Kurukkal, 2010 FCA 230 at paras 3-4). In any event, I note that the Applicant has challenged only the original Decision, and not the reconsideration decision in this judicial review.

[37] I cannot find that the Decision lacks the hallmarks of reasonableness. Contrary to the position of the Applicant, the reasons do not arrive at a “peremptory conclusion” but simply reflect the statutory requirements, and in so doing provide a rational chain of analysis (Vavilov at para 102). The Officer arrived at a decision which was justifiable, and indeed, required within the factual and legal constraints at play. As such, the Decision cannot be said to lack internal coherence or a rational chain of analysis. Accordingly, I do not find that it is unreasonable.

V. Conclusion

[38] For the foregoing reasons, this application for judicial review is dismissed

[39] Neither party proposed a question for certification, and I agree that none arises.

 

JUDGMENT IN IMM-19801-24

THIS COURT’S JUDGMENT is that:

1. The judicial review application is dismissed without costs.

2. No question of general importance is certified.

blank	"Darren R. Thorne"
blank	Judge

FEDERAL COURT

SOLICITORS OF RECORD

DOCKET:	IMM-19801-24
STYLE OF CAUSE:	ADEEL AKHTER v. MCI
PLACE OF HEARING:	Toronto, ontario
DATE OF HEARING:	OCTOBER 8, 2025
REASONS AND JUDGMENT:	Thorne J.
DATED:	November 7, 2025

APPEARANCES:

Narinder Mann	For The Applicant
Stephen Jarvis	For The Respondent

SOLICITORS OF RECORD:

Pelican Law Professional Corporation Toronto, Ontario	For The Applicant
Attorney General of Canada Toronto, Ontario	For The Respondent