Docket: IMM-7714-25
Citation: 2026 FC 1223
Toronto, Ontario, October 2, 2026
PRESENT: Madam Justice Go
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BETWEEN:
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LESLAW PAWLOWSKI
DANUTA PAWLOWSKA
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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
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REASONS AND JUDGMENT
I. Overview
[1] Leslaw Pawlowski and Danuta Pawlowska [Applicants] are spouses. They seek judicial review of a decision of a Senior Immigration Officer [Officer] rejecting the Applicants’ Pre-Removal Risk Assessment [PRRA] application [Decision].
[2] The Applicants are Polish citizens of Roma ethnicity. They allege that they would face discrimination amounting to persecution in Poland because of their ethnicity. They allege that state protection would not be available to them.
[3] The Applicants first came to Canada in April 2011 and claimed refugee protection. The Refugee Protection Division [RPD]—after various appeals and judicial reviews—ultimately denied that claim in December 2019 [2019 RPD Decision]. The Applicants returned to Poland in 2020 and re-entered Canada on May 27, 2023 via the United States of America. Upon their entry, the Applicants made another refugee claim.
[4] The Officer rejected the Applicants’ PRRA application on the basis that they had provided little evidence that they had sought state protection or that state protection measures in Poland were inadequate.
[5] The Applicants argue that the Officer failed to consider the adequacy of state protection and failed to consider evidence that contradicted the Officer’s findings.
[6] For the reasons set out below, I dismiss the application.
II. Analysis
[7] The applicable standard of review is reasonableness as per Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov]. The Court’s role is to consider whether the Decision bears the requisite hallmarks of justification, transparency and intelligibility: Vavilov at para 99.
[8] The Applicants submit that it was unreasonable for the Officer to refuse the PRRA application on the basis that they had not rebutted the presumption of state protection. The Applicants raise two arguments in support of their position.
[9] The Applicants’ first argument is that the Officer unreasonably relied on the state protection finding from the 2019 RPD Decision, even though they had returned to Poland since then and had lived in Poland for three years before returning to Canada. The Applicants further submit that the Officer failed to assess their post-2019 experiences in Poland in light of the objective evidence filed in support of their PRRA application and did not meaningfully engage with that evidence in reaching the Decision.
[10] I reject this argument.
[11] While the Officer in their Decision included excerpts from the 2019 RPD Decision, they did so as part of setting out the Applicants’ background and immigration history. More importantly, the Officer did consider the Applicants’ post-2019 experiences as new evidence. The Officer noted submissions from the Applicants’ counsel stating that upon their return to Poland after their failed refugee claims, the Applicants continued to face harassment and discrimination due to their Roma ethnicity. The Officer referred to the incidents of hardship and violence described in the Applicants’ affidavits, such as their living in tents with other Roma families, being attacked by skinheads, and having difficulties in accessing health care.
[12] The Officer acknowledged that discrimination against the Roma has been an ongoing issue in Poland and that this community has been facing social and economic exclusion in several aspects of life. Thus, contrary to the Applicants’ argument, the Officer did not fail to assess their post-2019 experiences.
[13] The Applicants’ main argument is that the Officer’s state protection analysis was unreasonable because it selectively relied on portions of the country conditions evidence while failing to address evidence demonstrating that the cited protective measures were not operationally effective. In particular, the Applicants argue that the 2024 Poland Country Report [2024 Poland Report], published by the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission, and relied upon by the Officer, showed that notwithstanding government initiatives aimed at improving conditions for Roma, significant systemic problems persisted.
[14] The Applicants submit that the 2024 Poland Report indicated that the situation for a considerable number of Roma in terms of housing and living conditions remain poor and that the Roma were still living in extreme poverty on the margins of society with no real opportunities to improve their living conditions. The Applicants also submit that the 2024 Poland Report emphasised that discrimination persisted, leading to further perpetuation of negative stereotypes about various social groups, and that legal instruments are limited in addressing the problems of housing for Roma and the continued perpetration of hate crimes.
[15] The Applicants submit that the Officer failed to analyze the whole report and all the relevant evidence as to whether there were opportunities for the Applicants to remedy the pervasive discrimination they faced in Poland, and failed to refer to evidence indicating that state protection was not operationally effective. The Applicants further argue that the Officer failed to refer to the report of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination dated September 24, 2019 [UNCERD 2019 Report]. The Applicants relied on the UNCERD 2019 Report to show, among other things, that Roma are frequently subjected to hate speech and hate crimes and are often not provided with adequate protection.
[16] Citing Mata v Canada (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship), 2017 FC 1007 [Mata] and Canada (Attorney General) v Ward, [1993] 2 S.C.R. 689 at 724, 1993 CanLII 105 (SCC) [Ward], the Applicants argue that the Officer ought to have grappled with the adequacy of state protection at the operational level and that the Applicants are not required to actually engage the state protection apparatus where the objective evidence indicates that state protection is not operationally adequate.
[17] I agree with the Applicants that, in assessing whether the presumption of state protection has been rebutted, the question is whether state protection is adequate at an operational level. However, I find the Officer in this case did in fact consider the adequacy of state protection at an operational level.
[18] In the Decision, the Officer noted that “the onus is on the applicants to demonstrate that the state protection measures in their home country are inadequate or unavailable to them.”
Importantly, the Officer considered the evidence before them, most notably the 2024 Poland Report, before finding that the objective evidence indicated that the government of Poland has been making continuous efforts to address the structural problems, and that while the situation is not yet ideal, progress has been noted. The Officer noted that the Roma programmes alone “are not enough to effectively counteract the exclusion from social and economic life that is still faced by a large part of the Roma community.”
However, the Officer also considered evidence showing that the state has “taken steps to increase the effectiveness of prosecutions of crimes based on racial, religious, national or ethnic hatred.”
Thus, overall, the Officer considered both the measures adopted by the state as well as the effectiveness of these measures.
[19] The Applicants’ argument that the Officer made “absolutely no reference to any of the objective evidence that the Applicants submitted in support of their PRRA applications”
is inaccurate. The Officer specifically acknowledged the Applicants’ country conditions documents in the Decision.
[20] I also agree with the Respondent that the fact that the Officer did not specifically quote from the UNCERD 2019 Report does not constitute a reviewable error—it was open to the Officer to rely on the more recent objective country conditions evidence. Further, while the Officer may not have quoted extensively from the 2024 Poland Report, as the Applicants would prefer, overall the Decision indicates that the Officer was aware of the limitations of state protection but nevertheless concluded that the Applicant had failed to show that state protection was inadequate.
[21] Furthermore, one critical factor that led the Officer to find that the Applicants had not rebutted the presumption of state protection was that the Applicants had “provided little evidence that they have exhausted all recourses of protection available to them in their home country.”
As the Respondent points out, and I agree, it is uncontroversial that there was no evidence before the Officer indicating that the Applicants sought state protection during the relevant time period while they were living in Poland.
[22] As confirmed by Ward, absent a complete breakdown of the state apparatus, it is generally presumed that a state is able to protect its citizens; further, without some evidence, a claim about a state’s inability to protect should fail: Ward at 724-25.
[23] While Ward did contemplate scenarios where claimants would not be required to risk their lives seeking ineffective protection of a state, merely to demonstrate that ineffectiveness, in this case the Applicants have not provided evidence to establish that their circumstances were such that they could not reasonably be expected to seek state protection because doing so would put them at risk of harm.
[24] I also find that Mata, cited by the Applicants, does not assist them. In Mata, there was evidence that the applicant sought state protection “a number of times”
but the officer only addressed one incident pertaining to the applicant. The Court held that the officer had applied the incorrect test for state protection by failing to assess whether the state’s efforts were operationally adequate. This error was compounded by the officer’s failure to consider the experiences of the applicant’s similarly situated family members: Mata at paras 14-17.
[25] As this Court confirmed in Solano Cometa v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 1286 at para 5, to meet the burden of rebutting the presumption of state protection, “a claimant will typically have to demonstrate a seeking out, but denial of, state protection. While this is not a legal requirement, it goes to whether the claimant has met their evidentiary burden”
: see also Orsos v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 FC 248 at para 18; Lakatos v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2018 FC 367 at para 20.
[26] In this case, the Applicants did not adduce any evidence demonstrating that they sought state protection and were unable to obtain it, nor did they adduce evidence to demonstrate that their circumstances were such that requiring them to seek state protection would be unreasonable. As such, it was reasonable for the Officer to conclude that the Applicants had not provided sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption of state protection.
[27] The application for judicial review is dismissed.
[28] There is no question for certification.
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