Ovais v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), docket IMM-4094-99

     Date: 20001023

     Docket: IMM-4094-99

Between :

     THILSHAD MOHAMED OVAIS

     Applicant

     - and -

     THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP

     AND IMMIGRATION

     Respondent

     REASONS FOR ORDER

PINARD, J. :

[1]      The applicant, a citizen of Sri Lanka, seeks judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (the Board), dated July 21, 1999, determining him not to be a Convention refugee as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Immigration Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-2.

[2]      The Board found the applicant not to be credible. In addition to this finding of non-credibility, the Board found that the applicant had an Internal Flight Alternative (IFA).

[3]      With respect to the first finding, it is well established that credibility is squarely within the jurisdiction of the Board as the trier of fact. The Board is entitled to infer that an applicant is untrustworthy because of implausibilities in his or her evidence as long as its inferences are not unreasonable (see Aguebor v. M.E.I. (1993), 160 N.R. 315 at 316 (F.C.A.)).

[4]      The applicant's principal argument is that the Board erred in drawing a negative inference from the amendment to his father's birth date and his failure to mention the mosque shooting of 1998 in his Personal Information Form (PIF). However, the Board is entitled to consider the contents of the PIF in reaching its determination and to draw negative inferences about credibility if matters considered important are omitted from the document or are only added after the hearing has commenced (see Kutuk v. M.C.I. (April 18, 1995), IMM-2484-94). Likewise, it is open to the Board to draw negative credibility inferences from an unsatisfactorily explained contradiction between the PIF and the applicant's oral testimony (see Grinevich et al. v. M.C.I. (April 11, 1997), IMM-1773-96). Accordingly, I am unable to conclude that the Board's findings with respect to the birth date or the mosque shooting were perverse or capricious.

[5]      The Board also found that the applicant's allegation that the army suspected him of spying for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was not supported by the documentary evidence. Specifically, Exhibit A-24, Response to Information Request LKA 29682.E, 06/07/98, indicates:

[6]      The Board preferred this evidence to the documents submitted by the applicant. The latter referred only once to the arrest of Muslims suspected of having links to the LTTE and was characterized by the Board as "vague and derived from unidentified sources". Moreover, the evidence supplied by the applicant pre-dates Exhibit A-24, and was therefore available to its author.

[7]      Finally, the applicant denies in his affidavit that he was not forthcoming, stating that "some of my answers were not clearly interpreted". However, nothing in the transcript indicates that the applicant raised an objection to the translation at the time of the hearing.

[8]      In this context, I accept the finding of credibility made by the Board. As the tribunal's perception that the applicant is not credible effectively amounts to a finding that there is no credible evidence on which it could allow his claim for refugee status (see Sheikh v. Canada (1990), 11 Imm.L.R. (2d) 81 at 86 (F.C.A.)), it will not be necessary to deal with the applicant's arguments with respect to the existence of an IFA.

[9]      For all the above reasons, the application for judicial review is dismissed.

                                     JUDGE

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

October 23, 2000