Docket: IMM-4851-24
Citation: 2025 FC 1982
Ottawa, Ontario, December 17, 2025
PRESENT: Mr. Justice Norris
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BETWEEN: |
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INES DOMINGOS DUARTE GOMES |
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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 36-year-old citizen of Angola. In December 2023, after being offered admission to a Business Management program at Fanshaw College, the applicant applied for a study permit. On February 8, 2024, an officer with Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) refused the application and determined the applicant to be inadmissible to Canada for misrepresentation under paragraph 40(1)(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27 (IRPA) because she failed to disclose in her study permit application that, in 2013, she had been refused a visitor visa to the United States. The applicant requested reconsideration of this decision but it was confirmed in a decision dated March 25, 2024.
[2] The applicant has applied for judicial review of the original refusal as well as the reconsideration decision under subsection 72(1) of the IRPA. (A request to consolidate the two applications for judicial review was granted on an earlier date.) The applicant submits that the decisions are unreasonable because they do not address her submission that her failure to disclose the US visa refusal was an innocent mistake on her part.
[3] As I will explain, the applicant has not persuaded me that either decision is unreasonable. This application for judicial review will, therefore, be dismissed.
[4] The parties agree, as do I, that the merits of the officer’s decision are reviewed on a reasonableness standard. Reasonableness review begins by examining the reasons provided and “seeking to understand the reasoning process followed by the decision maker to arrive at its conclusion”
(Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at para 84). The reasons must be read “holistically and contextually”
(Vavilov, at para 97) in light of the record to determine if they led to a decision that is “based on an internally coherent and rational chain of analysis and that is justified in relation to the facts and law that constrain the decision maker”
(Vavilov, at para 85). To set aside a decision on the basis that it is unreasonable, the reviewing court must be satisfied that “there are sufficiently serious shortcomings in the decision such that it cannot be said to exhibit the requisite degree of justification, intelligibility and transparency”
(Vavilov, at para 100).
[5] There is also no issue that information that was not before the officer may not be considered in determining the reasonableness of the decisions under review (Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada v Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), 2012 FCA 22 at para 19; Sharma v Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 48 at paras 7-9; Andrews v Public Service Alliance of Canada, 2022 FCA 159 at para 18).
[6] The applicant swore an affidavit in support of this application for judicial review on May 1, 2024. Most of the affidavit provides unobjectionable background information. However, in paragraph 10, the applicant describes steps she took after receiving the initial refusal of her study permit application. This information was not before the officer when the original decision was made nor was it provided in support of the reconsideration request. While new evidence is permitted on applications for judicial review in limited circumstances, none of those circumstances apply to the information in paragraph 10. As a result, the contents of paragraph 10 (including Exhibit F mentioned therein) are inadmissible in this application and, as such, must be disregarded.
[7] As noted above, the refusal of the study permit application and the misrepresentation finding were based on the applicant’s failure to disclosure that she had been refused a US visa in 2013. When she completed her application for a study permit, the applicant answered “Yes”
to the question “Have you ever been refused a visa or permit, denied entry or ordered to leave Canada or any other country or territory?”
The applicant then added: “Study permit refused on 2023-06-28.”
This information was correct as far as it went. IRCC confirmed that the applicant had, indeed, been refused a Canadian study permit in June 2023. However, IRCC had been informed by the United States that the applicant was refused a US visitor visa in 2013.
[8] The failure to include information relating to the US visa refusal on the study permit application gave rise to a concern that the applicant may be inadmissible for misrepresentation under 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 this Act.”
Accordingly, IRCC sent the applicant a procedural fairness letter alerting her to this concern and offering her an opportunity to respond before a decision was made. The procedural fairness letter set out specifically that the concern was that the applicant had “been refused US visas in the past, namely on 2013-06-17, which you have failed to declare on your application.”
[9] The applicant’s authorized representative responded to the procedural fairness letter by letter dated January 25, 2024. Enclosed with the letter was a letter from the applicant dated January 23, 2024, that the applicant had solemnly declared to be true before a notary public. In the letter, the applicant acknowledges having applied for a US visa in 2013. However, she explains that, when she completed her study permit application, she did not believe that the US visa application had been refused. This was because, after attending at the US embassy in Luanda on June 17, 2013, and having a “relaxed conversation”
with an embassy employee, “the embassy employee suggested that [the applicant] return at another time.”
According to the applicant, she “failed to realize that the embassy employee’s suggestion to return another time was not [
sic] an indication of a negative response to my visa application or even a response at all.”
She explained: “In my naivety, I misunderstood the situation, erroneously believing that my request had not been assessed, but withdrawn.”
[10] Relying on this account, the applicant’s authorized representative submitted that the applicant had not engaged in misrepresentation when she failed to mention the US visa refusal in her study permit application because she “honestly and reasonably believed she was not making a misrepresentation in her application.”
(Erroneously, the authorized representative cited section 127 of the IRPA, which requires knowingly misrepresenting or withholding material facts, as the relevant provision.) The authorized representative also submitted that, in any event, a US visa refusal is not a material fact relating to a relevant matter in a study permit application.
[11] The reasons for the visa officer’s initial decision are recorded in Global Case Management System (GCMS) notes. In sum, the officer was not satisfied that it was reasonable for the applicant to assume that her US visa application had not been refused. In the officer’s view, “it would be the applicant’s obligation to learn whether they were refused or not, rather than to simply assume their application was withdrawn or cancelled without any evidence to that effect.”
The officer then explained why information regarding the US visa application was a material fact relating to a relevant matter the withholding of which could induce an error in the application of the IRPA. Accordingly, the officer concluded that the applicant is inadmissible for misrepresentation under paragraph 40(1)(a) of the IRPA and refused the study permit application.
[12] The applicant was informed of this decision by letter dated February 8, 2024. The refusal letter stated that the officer was not satisfied that the applicant had “truthfully answered”
all questions asked of her and, further, that the applicant had been found inadmissible for misrepresentation under paragraph 40(1)(a) of the IRPA.
[13] By email dated March 8, 2024, the applicant’s authorized representative requested reconsideration of the decision. The submissions in support of this request essentially repeated the representative’s earlier submissions in response to the procedural fairness letter. Inexplicably, they also included references to section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
[14] The visa officer responded to the request for reconsideration by email dated March 25, 2024. The officer explained in detail why an applicant’s immigration history (including visa approvals and refusals by other countries) is relevant to an application for a Canadian study permit. Regarding the omission of information regarding the 2013 US visa application, the officer wrote: “It is the applicant’s obligation to provide truthful information in all aspects of their application; if an applicant is unsure whether they have been refused a visa in the past despite filling out application forms and presenting them to the relevant authority, it would nonetheless be their obligation to enquire whether they have been refused or, at the very least, to provide the information of a potential refusal in their application.”
Being satisfied that the original decision was not based on any error in fact or law, the officer confirmed that decision.
[15] The applicant submits that the decisions under review are unreasonable because the officer failed to address her submission that omitting information about the 2013 US visa refusal was an innocent mistake. I do not agree.
[16] In the evidence and submissions presented to the officer, the applicant attempted to explain that she omitted this information because she “honestly and reasonably”
did not believe her US visa application had been refused. The officer addressed this explanation directly in the original decision and again in the reconsideration decision. Reading both decisions together, the officer’s reasons for rejecting this explanation are transparent, intelligible, and justified. It was altogether reasonable for the officer to find that omitting information about the US visa application was not an honest and reasonable mistake and to conclude, instead, that the applicant had not been fully truthful in her study permit application because she had not exercised the care reasonably expected of applicants given their obligation to answer truthfully all questions put to them (see IRPA, subsection 16(1)). This is a complete answer to the applicant’s contention that she innocently (i.e. honestly and reasonably) omitted material facts in her application (Alalami v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 328 at para 16; Malik v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2021 FC 1004 at para 36). There was no need for the officer to say more.
[17] In the absence of any basis to interfere with the decisions, this application must be dismissed.
[18] The parties did not suggest any serious questions of general importance for certification under paragraph 74(d) of the IRPA. I agree that no question arises.
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