IMM-1889-96
BETWEEN:
MOHAMMAD REZA NADALI
A.K.A.
MOHAMMAD REZA NADALI JELOKHANI
Applicant
AND:
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER
JOYAL, J.:
The Applicant seeks judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Board ("the Board"), dated May 1, 1996, which determined that he was not a Convention refugee on grounds that he was not credible or trustworthy, and that his testimony contained too many implausibilities.
Counsel for the Applicant, in a well-structured argument, urges the Court to find that the Board's findings on these issues are based on unjustified inferences and that in fact and in law, the Board arrived at a wrong conclusion. Counsel stresses that a credibility issue must be well supported, which in a number of instances the Board failed to do.
I would certainly agree with Applicant's counsel that the Board made certain observations in its decision which provoke some controversy. For example, the Board inferred negative motives in the Applicant's destruction of his Iranian passport prior to his arrival in Canada. It also attributed the Applicant's conduct, which led to his expulsion from school at an early age, to mere teenage excess, where there was no evidentiary basis in that respect. I find, however, that the flaws, per se, are not particularly material to the case, nor are they determinative of the Board's ultimate decision.
Counsel for the Applicant raises other objections concerning the validity of the decision. These objections, however, must be studied in the context of the decision as a whole, and not in isolation from it. With all due respect to counsel for the Applicant, they do not necessarily vitiate the whole of the Board's decision.
As mentioned earlier, the decision is based on the Applicant's credibility. The law now appears quite settled that a Court can only intervene by way of judicial review only where it appears that a board or tribunal has acted in a "patently unreasonable manner": Pezim v. British Columbia Securities Commission et al, (1994) 168 N.R. 321. Furthermore, as ruled in Aguebor v. Canada (M.E.I.), (1993) 160 N.R. 315 (F.C.A.), questions of credibility are squarely within the jurisdiction of the Board and a Court should be reluctant to interfere in a specialized tribunal's area of expertise.
My colleague Noël J. expressed that general rule very well in Oduro v. M.E.I., 66 F.T.R. 106, when he stated at p. 107:
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[ ... ] it is not for me to substitute my discretion to that of the Board. The question I must answer is whether it was open to the Board on the evidence to conclude as it did. Recognizing that if confronted with the same evidence, I would have been inclined to hold otherwise, I cannot say that the Board ignored the evidence before it or acted capriciously. |
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In the circumstances, I fail to find sufficient grounds to intervene in the Board's decision, and I should thus dismiss the within application for judicial review. So went my Order dated May 13, 1997.
L-Marcel Joyal
_________________________
J U D G E
O T T A W A , Ontario
May 27, 1997.
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