Date: 20001002
Docket: IMM-4424-99
BETWEEN:
BALJINDER SINGH MANGAT
Applicant
-and-
THE MINISTER OF
CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
SUPPLEMENTARY REASONS FOR ORDER
GIBSON J.
[1] Under date of the 18th of August, 2000, I issued reasons indicating that I would grant this application for judicial review and that an order would follow once counsel had had an opportunity to make written submissions regarding a serious question of general importance arising out of the order and I had had an opportunity to review those submissions.
[2] Counsel for the respondent submitted four questions for certification arguing that each was a serious questions of general importance and that each would be determinative of an appeal from my decision. Counsel for the applicant urged that no question should be certified. Counsel for the respondent replied. I have now had an opportunity to review the submissions and will certify a single question for the reasons that follow.
[3] In Pushpanathan v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration)1 at paragraph 25, the Supreme Court of Canada held that subsection 83(1) of the Immigration Act2 does not restrict the Federal Court of Appeal, on an appeal based on a question certified under that subsection, to addressing only the certified question and issues related to it. It wrote:
| The certification of a "question of general importance" is the trigger by which an appeal is justified. The object of the appeal is still the judgment itself, not merely the certified question. |
This position was confirmed by the Supreme Court in paragraph 12 of its reasons in Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration)3. In the result then, no purpose is served by certifying more than a single question.
[4] Neither counsel who appeared on this matter cited any jurisprudence directly on the point on which this application for judicial review turned. I am satisfied that that point is a serious question and one of general importance. The respondent's submissions in support of certification of a question are, I am satisfied, persuasive. In the result, I will certify the following question which will appear as part of my order:
| What is the appropriate standard of review of a decision of the Convention Refugee Determination Division to deny a request for an adjournment that is not governed by subsection 69(6) of the Immigration Act and, if that standard is reasonableness simpliciter, was any irrelevant consideration taken into account by the Motions judge in determining that the Convention Refugee Determination Division erred in a reviewable manner against that standard in failing to grant an adjournment on the facts of this matter? |
__________________________
J. F.C.C.
Ottawa, Ontario
October 2, 2000
__________________
1 [1998] 1 S.C.R. 982.
2 R.S.C. 1985 c. I-2.
3 [1999] 2 S.C.R. 817.
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