Docket: IMM-22396-24
Citation: 2025 FC 1889
Montréal, Quebec, November 27, 2025
PRESENT: Mr. Justice Sébastien Grammond
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BETWEEN: |
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GIDEON KOGI NDUNGU |
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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] Mr. Ndungu is seeking judicial review of the refusal of his application for permanent residence based on humanitarian and compassionate [H&C] grounds. I am dismissing his application, because he failed to show that the refusal decision was unreasonable. Contrary to his submissions, the officer provided sufficient reasons and dealt adequately with the best interests of his children.
I. Background
[2] Mr. Ndungu is a citizen of Kenya. He came to Canada in 2018 and claimed refugee protection, while his wife and two children remained in Kenya. His claim, based on fear of persons who had murdered his parents and brother, was dismissed by the Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] because he had an internal flight alternative. This Court denied leave for judicial review of the RAD’s decision.
[3] Mr. Ndungu then applied for permanent residence based on H&C considerations, pursuant to section 25 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 [the Act]. His application was denied. The officer gave moderate weight to Mr. Ndungu’s establishment in Canada. They considered the best interests of Mr. Ndungu’s son, who was 17 years old at the time of the decision but found that little evidence had been provided in this regard. The officer gave little weight to Mr. Ndungu’s support for another family living in Kenya. Lastly, the officer stated that the gap in socio-economic conditions between Kenya and Canada was not a ground for relief pursuant to section 25 of the Act.
[4] Mr. Ndungu now seeks judicial review of the refusal of his H&C application.
II. Analysis
[5] An H&C decision is discretionary. The officer must weigh several relevant factors, but there is no rigid algorithm that determines the outcome. On judicial review, my role is not to reweigh the relevant factors myself or exercise the discretion anew, but simply to verify that the officer turned their mind to the relevant factors and gave them due consideration. To use the concepts put forward by the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, [2019] 4 S.C.R. 653, the decision must be based on internally coherent reasoning and comply with the relevant legal and factual constraints. If it does not, it is unreasonable and will be struck down.
[6] In general terms, Mr. Ndungu’s submissions are aimed at the alleged insufficiency of the reasons given by the officer. As counsel stated at the hearing, the officer should have provided a more fulsome analysis of his main arguments. In my view, however, the officer gave sufficient reasons. One must bear in mind that once the officer has described the applicant’s evidence and submissions, the assignment of a particular weight to each factor is a matter of judgment (or “discretion”
) and does not always lend itself to a detailed explanation. In reality, Mr. Ndungu’s submissions regarding the insufficiency of reasons amount to a challenge to the weight the officer gave to each H&C factor. As I explained above, however, it is not the Court’s role to reweigh the H&C factors.
[7] Having said this, I will now turn to Mr. Ndungu’s submissions concerning specific aspects of the decision.
A. Employment During the COVID-19 Pandemic
[8] Mr. Ndungu’s first submission is that the officer failed to give sufficient weight to the fact that he worked for a meat processing business that was considered an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic, in disregard of the teachings of Mohammed v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 1 [Mohammed], regarding the “moral debt owed to immigrants who worked on the frontlines to help protect vulnerable people in Canada during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic”
(at paragraph 43).
[9] I am mindful of this Court’s decisions, including Mohammed, dealing with H&C applicants who provided essential services during the pandemic. As my colleague Justice Angus Grant noted in Nnadozie v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 FC 401, whether the denial of H&C relief in such circumstances is reasonable depends on the facts of each case. In particular, it appears that more weight was given to this factor when the applicant worked in the health services sector, as in Mohammed, as opposed to the food processing business: Olvera Quijano v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 551. A decision may also be unreasonable because the underlying reasoning is unintelligible. For example, in Uwaifo v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2022 FC 679 at paragraph 23 [Uwaifo], the officer failed to state what weight was given to establishment in Canada, including the fact that the applicant had worked during the pandemic.
[10] Here, the officer noted that Mr. Ndungu was employed at a meat processing factory during the pandemic and gave moderate weight to his establishment in Canada. Unlike Uwaifo, the officer’s reasoning is intelligible. While Mr. Ndungu would have liked to see a more fulsome explanation, the officer was not required to say anything further, nor to engage in a detailed analysis of this Court’s case law on the subject.
B. Supporting Another Family in Kenya
[11] In an update to his application, Mr. Ndungu disclosed that he is providing support to a family in need in Kenya to whom he is not related, after learning of their predicament through a YouTube video. He provided evidence in this regard. In response, the officer merely stated: “an H&C application for Permanent Residency in Canada was not intended as a means for an individual to support multiple non-family members overseas in addition to one’s own family members living overseas.”
[12] Mr. Ndungu challenges this finding. He argues that the officer should have provided more fulsome reasons for not assigning any weight to this factor.
[13] Mr. Ndungu should be commended for helping a family in need. Nevertheless, the officer’s treatment of this issue was reasonable. Although I agree that the assessment of an H&C application must be holistic, it remains open to an officer to decide that providing financial assistance to an unrelated family is so far removed from the purpose of section 25 of the Act that it is not a relevant consideration in the decision-making process.
C. Best Interests of the Children
[14] The issue of the best interests of the child presents itself differently for Mr. Ndungu’s daughter and son, who were respectively 20 and 17 years old when the officer issued the decision.
(1) Adult Daughter
[15] Mr. Ndungu contends that the officer unreasonably failed to analyze the best interests of his daughter even though she is an adult. I disagree. Several judges of this Court have expressed the view that the requirement to assess best interests only applies to children under 18 years of age: see Leung v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2017 FC 636 at paragraphs 26–29 and the cases cited therein. However, other cases suggest that the best interests of children aged 18 and older may be considered, especially if they have special needs: Chaudhary v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2018 FC 128 at paragraph 34; Hassani v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 1668 at paragraph 11. Here, Mr. Ndungu’s daughter does not have any special needs. There are no grounds for departing from the general rule that an assessment of best interests is required only for children under the age of 18.
(2) Minor Son
[16] In the submissions accompanying his H&C application, Mr. Ndungu stated that his children are in boarding schools in Kenya and that he would no longer be able to pay for their tuition if he were to leave Canada. Moreover, he stated that he wanted his children to grow up in a safe environment. He made submissions concerning country conditions in Kenya, including the lack of safety, the prevalence of human rights violations and gender-based violence and poverty, inferring that it would be in the best interest of his children to come to Canada.
[17] In their reasons, the officer treated the best interests of the child and country conditions under separate headings. They gave little weight to the child’s best interests, largely because Mr. Ndungu failed to provide meaningful evidence about his son, beyond the fact that he is attending school. They also gave little weight to country conditions, largely because section 25 of the Act is not meant to compensate for the difference in standards of living between Canada and the applicant’s country, and because Mr. Ndungu would not be at risk in Kenya and would be able, given his personal circumstances, to reintegrate into Kenyan society.
[18] Mr. Ndungu now argues that this is unreasonable, because the officer failed to assess country conditions in relation to his son, as he had argued in his submissions to the officer. This argument is superficially attractive, as the officer indeed split the analysis in a manner that apparently failed to address the gist of Mr. Ndungu’s submissions. This, however, is of no consequence, because the submissions did not explain how Mr. Ndungu’s son would be affected by the country conditions in a manner that is different from the general population. In other words, Mr. Ndungu simply argued that he did not want his son to live in Kenya because of the unfavourable economic and safety conditions affecting all the population or, as he puts it, because “life in general is difficult in Kenya.”
Thus, as the submissions were generalized, the officer was not required to perform a personalized analysis. In the circumstances, it was not a mistake to analyze country conditions and the best interests of the child in separate sections.
[19] Moreover, Mr. Ndungu’s son recently turned 18. As a practical matter, if I were to allow this application on the sole basis that the officer failed to properly consider his best interests and to send the matter back, the officer reconsidering the matter would no longer be required to perform such an analysis.
III. Disposition
[20] As the officer’s decision was reasonable, Mr. Ndungu’s application for judicial review will be dismissed.
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