Date: 20070301
Docket: IMM-4055-06
Citation: 2007
FC 240
OTTAWA, ONTARIO, MARCH 1, 2007
PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice de Montigny
BETWEEN:
RODON
ELEZI
Applicant
and
THE
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER AND ORDER
[1]
Rodon
Elezi applied for refugee status after escaping his native country, Albania. After the Refugee
Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (the Board) dismissed
his claim, Mr. Elezi applied for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA). On June
20, 2006, a PRRA officer rejected his application. This is a judicial review
of the officer’s decision.
[2]
For a
number of reasons to be outlined below, I have decided to grant Mr. Elezi’s
application, quash the officer’s decision and remit the matter back to a
different officer.
FACTS
[3]
Mr. Elezi,
an Albanian citizen, was born in 1975 in Lushnje, Albania. He arrived in Canada on June 21, 2004, and claimed refugee
status at the border. He submits that if returned, he will be murdered by
extremists as retribution for supporting his town’s Democratic Party.
[4]
Mr.
Elezi’s Personal Information Form narrative goes back to his grandfather’s 1948
execution by communists for his “anticommunist intellectual ideas”. During the
Communist Party’s reign in power, all of his family’s property was confiscated
and they were sent to a labour camp in Lushnje. Mr. Elezi and his sister
suffered from discrimination during childhood because of their family’s
political history.
[5]
In the
early 1990s, Albania’s democratic movement gained
strength. Mr. Elezi’s father and uncle founded the Lushnje Democratic Party
branch, and Mr. Elezi became politically involved himself, joining the Youth
Democratic Forum in September 1993. At the end of 1996, he also started
working as a judicial advisor for the District Council of Lushnje in the
Commission for the Return and Compensation of Property of Ex-owners (the
Commission). The Commission helped people whose property had been seized by
the Communists while they were in power.
[6]
In March
1997, Mr. Elezi says extremists burned down his office at the Commission, along
with hundreds of files inside containing property documents dating back to
1945. After the fire, Mr. Elezi tried to reconstruct the files so people who
had their property stolen could be compensated. But in December 1997, men came
to his office and threatened to kill him. After receiving further threats by
phone, he decided to go to Greece in January 1998 - but had to go back to Albania after a few weeks because he
only had a visa for one month.
[7]
In October
2000, Mr. Elezi says the Socialist Party fraudulently won local elections. He
says criminal groups helped the party, including one led by a man named Aldo
Bare. Several months later, Mr. Elezi was fired from his job and replaced by a
member of the Socialist Party. However, he continued to receive threats from
people who blamed him for losing property that they had seized illegally in the
first place during the communist regime.
[8]
In
November 2001 Mr. Elezi fled to Italy,
but Italian authorities sent him back to Albania two days later. He made continued
efforts to leave, and in December 2002, contacted someone to traffic him to Canada. In January 2003, he flew to
Ecuador en route to Canada. However, after five months,
the trafficker told Mr. Elezi security was too tight to continue on to Canada. Again, he returned to Albania.
[9]
The main
facts supporting Mr. Elezi’s claim relate to the Lushnje election held in
October, 2003. In preparing for the election, the Democratic Party appointed
Mr. Elezi’s father Chairman of the local Electoral Commission. This led to
more threats against the family. Those threats were focused on Mr. Elezi, as
his sister had emigrated to the U.S.
by that time. Socialist Party supporters continually pressured Mr. Elezi’s
father to help them “win” the election. When he refused to manipulate the
election results, they told him they had sources in Albania’s Information Agency and police
department, and that they would kill his son.
[10]
On
September 10, 2003, Mr. Elezi was beaten by three men on his way to a
Democratic Party demonstration. Before leaving, the men allegedly said: “Say ‘hi’
to your father by the group, and don’t forget that we remember all the bad
things you have done to us. This is only the beginning. Next time we will be
using these” – and showed Mr. Elezi their guns. Mr. Elezi says two police
officers witnessed the assault and did nothing to help him.
[11]
In October
2003, the Democratic candidate, Mr. Kadri Gega, won the election and became
mayor of Lushnje. From then on, Mr. Elezi hid in his family’s home, and had
his family spread rumours that he had already fled the country. He did not
actually leave until February 2004, to stay with a friend in Italy for two months. That friend loaned him
money and got him a fake Italian passport, which Mr. Elezi used to travel to Canada. On June 19, 2004, Mr. Elezi
took a train from Torino to Paris. The next day, he flew to Montreal.
[12]
Mr. Elezi
says his family still receives threats from criminals, claiming they will
murder Mr. Elezi as retribution for his father’s failure to help the Socialist
Party win the 2003 elections. He says his family believes the threats because
the same people tried to murder Mr. Elezi’s uncle, Kamber Elezi, in October
1998. His uncle fled to Canada and successfully claimed
refugee status here.
[13]
The Board
rejected Mr. Elezi’s refugee claim on October 28, 2004. It made negative
findings about his credibility, based on his testimony about his work with the
Commission in Albania. It concluded he did not
actually work for the Commission, because he could not tell the Board when it
had been created, and by which political party. The Board also found he was
not a Convention refugee because he lacked subjective fear: he had waited six
months to leave after having been attacked, he had transited through several
countries where he could have claimed refugee status before arriving in Canada,
and he had returned to the same city each time he came back to Albania after
trying to flee. Finally, the Board concluded that vengeance is not a ground
covered by the Convention, and that the Albanian government was able to protect
Mr. Elezi from any threats.
[14]
On March
3, 2005, this Court dismissed Mr. Elezi’s application for leave to seek
judicial review of the Board’s decision. He applied for a PRRA, which was
denied June 20, 2006. On August 7, 2006, this Court granted a stay of Mr.
Elezi’s removal order until it decided this application for judicial review.
IMPUGNED DECISION
[15]
The PRRA
officer concluded that out of 30 documents Mr. Elezi submitted to support his
application, he would not consider the first 20 because they were not “new
evidence” under subsection 113(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection
Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27 (the IRPA). The first six documents Mr. Elezi
provided were undated, and thus it was impossible to know whether or not they
predated the Board’s decision. In any event, the officer noted, the facts
recounted in these documents were all known to their authors and to Mr. Elezi
when he filed his refugee status claim with the Board. Therefore, it was
reasonable to expect that Mr. Elezi could have presented them to the Board. As
for the other 14 documents, they all predated the Board’s decision, so Mr.
Elezi should have submitted them earlier.
[16]
After
excluding all of the above evidence, the officer concluded that organized crime
poses a general threat to all Albanians, and so Mr. Elezi’s risk was not
personalized. Moreover, while documentary evidence shows that Albania’s
police, judiciary and administrative services suffer from corruption and
inefficiency, the country’s authorities fight criminality and corruption as
best they can. Therefore, Mr. Elezi had not established the absence of state
protection.
ISSUES
[17]
The
applicant has raised a number of issues with respect to the Board’s decision.
These issues can be reduced to the following four questions:
a) What is the appropriate
standard of review?
b)
Did the
officer err by refusing to accept the 20 documents as “new evidence” under subsection
113(a) of the IRPA?
c) Did the officer err in his
analysis of personalized risk?
d) Did the officer err in his
analysis of state protection?
[18]
Since I
have come to the conclusion that the Board made an error in applying subsection
113(a), and because that issue is determinative of the application, it will not
be necessary to deal with the third and fourth questions.
ANALYSIS
[19]
Before
turning to the issues identified in the preceding paragraph, I must say a word
about a letter Mr. Elezi submitted in his application for this judicial
review. It is written by Mr. Ilir Bano, Deputy of the Albanian Parliament,
explaining that many letters in Mr. Elezi’s application record are not dated
because their authors were simply following Albanian custom. Mr. Elezi says he
included Mr. Bano’s letter to respond to the PRRA officer’s scepticism about
the undated letters.
[20]
This Court
has recognized on numerous occasions that the judicial review of a decision must
be based only on the evidence that was before the decision maker: see, for
example, Pandher v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2006
FC 80; Zolotareva v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2003 FC 1274. I must
therefore disregard this document, as it was not part of the record when the
PRRA officer made his determination.
a) Standard of review
[21]
It is by
now well established that the proper standard of review for a PRRA decision,
when considered globally and as a whole, is reasonableness: Figurado v.
Canada (Solicitor General), 2005 FC 347. While agreeing
with this standard, Justice Richard Mosley refined it somewhat in Kim v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration),
2005 FC 437. After conducting a pragmatic and functional analysis of the
relevant legislative provisions, he concluded, at paragraph 19, that “the
appropriate standard of review for questions of fact should generally be patent
unreasonableness, for questions of mixed law and fact, reasonableness simpliciter,
and for questions of law, correctness.”
[22]
When
assessing the issue of new evidence under subsection 113(a), two separate
questions must be addressed. The first one is whether the officer erred in
interpreting the section itself. This is a question of law, which must be
reviewed against a standard of correctness. If he made no mistake interpreting
the provision, the Court must still determine whether he erred in his
application of the section to the particular facts of this case. This is a
question of mixed fact and law, to be reviewed on a standard of reasonableness.
b) Subsection 113(a)
[23]
Subsection
113(a) of the IRPA states as follows:
113. Consideration of an
application for protection shall be as follows:
(a) an applicant whose claim to
refugee protection has been rejected may present only new evidence that arose
after the rejection or was not reasonably available, or that the applicant
could not reasonably have been expected in the circumstances to have
presented, at the time of the rejection;
|
113. Il est disposé de la demande comme il suit :
a) le demandeur d’asile débouté ne peut présenter que des éléments
de preuve survenus depuis le rejet ou qui n’étaient alors pas normalement
accessibles ou, s’ils l’étaient, qu’il n’était pas raisonnable, dans les
circonstances, de s’attendre à ce qu’il les ait présentés au moment du rejet;
|
[24]
Mr. Elezi submits
that because the three parts of subsection 113(a) are separated by the word “or”,
they should be considered three distinct situations in which an applicant can
be considered to present “new” evidence. In other words, he argues the test
under subsection 113(a) is disjunctive. Applying that notion to this case, he
submits the 20 new documents fit within the first branch of subsection 113(a) –
“new evidence that arose after the rejection …” Thus, according to Mr. Elezi’s
submissions, it does not matter whether the evidence was reasonably available
at his hearing, or whether he could have presented it earlier.
[25]
To support this
proposition, Mr. Elezi relies on the case of Mendez v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 111, in which Justice Douglas
Campbell allowed a Mexican claimant’s application for judicial review. The new
evidence in Mendez was documentation from a similarly situated
applicant, whose refugee claim had succeeded (the Flores evidence). Mr. Mendez tried to submit the Flores evidence
in his PRRA application to prove that, contrary to the Board’s conclusion,
health care professionals in Mexico discriminated against homosexual men
with HIV/AIDS. Justice Campbell found that one letter within the package of
evidence was dated after the Board’s decision in Mr. Mendez’s case. As such,
it was an error to treat that letter the same way as the rest of the Flores
evidence. He wrote:
17. As I expressed during the hearing of
the present application, in my opinion, the PRRA Officer made an error in the
application of s. 113(a) with regard to the letter signed by Mr. Flores.
Section 113(a) requires a careful determination on the admissibility of
evidence on three available grounds. In my opinion, precision is required in
making a finding under this provision since important ramifications follow on
the determination of the risk to be experienced by an individual applicant. In
my opinion, the PRRA Officer failed to meet this expectation.
18. Mr. Flores’ letter of March 17, 2004
clearly post-dates the Refugee Board’s decision in the present case. It
appears that the PRRA Officer failed to understand this fact by lumping it in
with the tendered evidence which pre-dates the Refugee Board’s decision. I
find that, as a result of this mistake, the PRRA Officer failed to understand,
and consequently reach a clear decision on the Applicant’s rectification
argument of risk.
[26]
I am prepared to
accept that subsection 113(a) refers to three distinct possibilities and that
its three parts must be read disjunctively. If the use of the word “or” is to
be given meaning, the three parts of subsection 113(a) must clearly be seen as
three separate alternatives. While the first part refers to evidence that
postdates the Board’s decision, the second and third parts obviously relate to
evidence that predates its decision. Only evidence that existed before the
Board’s negative decision requires an explanation before it can be admitted
with a PRRA application. As for evidence that arises after the Board’s
decision, there is no need for an explanation. The mere fact that it did not
exist at the time the decision was reached is sufficient to establish that it
could not have been presented earlier to the Board.
[27]
That being said, a piece
of evidence will not fall within the first category and be characterized as
“new” just because it is dated after the Board’s decision. If that were the
case, a PRRA application could easily be turned into an appeal of the Board’s
decision. A failed refugee applicant could easily muster “new” affidavits and
documentary evidence to counter the Board’s findings and bolster his story.
This is precisely why the case law has insisted that new evidence relate to new
developments, either in country conditions or in the applicant’s personal
situation, instead of focusing on the date the evidence was produced: see, for
example, Perez v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration),
2006 FC 1379; Yousef v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration), 2006 FC 864; Aivani v. Canada (Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration), 2006 FC 1231.
[28]
Justice Mosley heard
the exact same argument that Mr. Elezi’s counsel makes now in the case Raza
v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration), 2006 FC
1385. Relying on Mendez, above, the applicant in Raza had
submitted that subsection 113(a) provided for the admissibility of three
distinct types of new evidence, and that only the second and third types of new
evidence called for an explanation why they were not presented to the Board.
As for the first type, evidence that arose after the Board’s rejection, the
applicant argued the only requirement was that it be created after the date
of the Board’s decision.
[29]
Justice Mosley gave
short shrift to that argument. He wrote:
22. It must be recalled that the role of
the PRRA officer is not to revisit the Board’s factual and credibility
conclusions but to consider the present situation. In assessing “new
information” it is not just the date of the document that is important, but
whether the information is significant or significantly different than the
information previously provided: Selliah, above at para. 38. Where
“recent” information (i.e. information that post-dates the original decision)
merely echoes information previously submitted, it is unlikely to result in a
finding that country conditions have changed. The question is whether there is
anything of “substance” that is new: Yousef, above at para. 27.
23. In the present case, though the evidence
of the applicant post-dates the refugee determination in time with respect to
the date it was written, nothing in the letter, affidavits or articles is
substantially different than the information that was before the Board. As
noted by the Officer with respect to the letter and affidavits: they “refer
only to the applicants’ circumstances which were considered by the Board”, “no
new risk developments are contained”, and they contain “essentially a
repetition of the same information”. In those circumstances, it was not
patently unreasonable of the officer to question why they had not been present
before. With respect to the articles in particular, the Officer noted that
they were “generalized” and did not “address the material elements of the
present application”.
[30]
I fully agree with
Mr. Justice Mosley’s conclusions and I adopt them. The mere fact that a piece
of evidence was created after the Board’s rejection of a refugee claim will not,
in and of itself, suffice to characterize that evidence as “new” for the
purposes of subsection 113(a). There are other factors to take into
consideration when assessing whether the evidence sought to be introduced arose
after the Board’s decision. One should not forget that this provision, like
the rest of the IRPA, must be construed and applied in a manner that “ensures
that decisions taken under this Act are consistent with the Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedoms…”, and that “complies with international human
rights instruments to which Canada is signatory” (paragraphs 3(3)(d) and (f) of
the IRPA).
[31]
This brings me to the
PRRA officer’s application of subsection 113(a) to the facts of this case. It
is not obvious from a plain reading of the officer’s decision that he interpreted
subsection 113(a) incorrectly, as his reasons are not very detailed. However, I
do believe he applied that section in an unreasonable way, considering the
circumstances of this case and the nature of the evidence submitted.
[32]
It is relevant, at
this stage, to canvass the nature of the evidence that the PRRA officer
excluded. Only then will it be possible to fully appreciate the reasonableness
of his decision. The undated documents are all letters, accompanied by
photocopies of their respective authors’ passports.
[33]
The first letter is
from Mr. Rifat Demiri, a lawyer in Albania and a friend of Mr. Elezi’s father. He
confirmed that, contrary to the Board’s findings, Mr. Elezi did work for the
Commission, and that he was beaten and threatened by the “Lushnja Gang”. The
second and the third letters are from Nikan Gjeci and Altin Kreci, both of whom
are Mr. Elezi’s friends. They witnessed the beating in September, 2003.
[34]
The fourth letter is
from Mr. Kadri Gega, the Mayor of Lushnje, who won the local Lushnje elections
in October, 2003. He knows Mr. Elezi personally, because they worked together
in the Regional Council Executive Staff from 1997 to 2000. He believes Mr.
Elezi is not safe anywhere in Albania, and that police cannot protect him.
[35]
The fifth letter is
from Mr. Ilir Bano, a Deputy in the Parliament of Albania. He personally knows
Mr. Elezi because his father was chairman of Mr. Bano’s electoral staff. He
also writes that Mr. Elezi was attacked on September 10, 2003, and believes
police are not able to protect citizens from mafia groups.
[36]
The sixth letter is
from Mr. Elezi’s parents, and it corroborates all the main details of their
son’s story.
[37]
Mr. Elezi also
submitted various documents that predated the Board’s decision. These include a
dentist’s note, confirming he had treated Mr. Elezi at home the night of
September 2003, and documents from Mr. Elezi’s work with the Commission to
prove that he had indeed worked there. The PRRA officer similarly disregarded
an article about Emir Dobjani, the Albanian ombudsman. Mr. Elezi provided
this document because the Board wrote that he should have contacted an
ombudsman before fleeing Albania. The article quoted Mr. Dobjani
advocating that certain groups – including people whose lives are threatened
because of vengeance – should be able to claim asylum outside of Albania.
[38]
All of this evidence
is obviously extremely probative, and to a large extent, refutes all of the
Board’s conclusions against Mr. Elezi. Had he submitted this evidence at his
Board hearing, the Board may well have written a very different decision. Yet,
these documents do not raise any “new” risks, per se. The risks
outlined were the same as those Mr. Elezi claimed during his hearing before the
Board. Was it then reasonable for the PRRA officer to exclude all these
documents on that basis? In my opinion, no.
[39]
I believe the PRRA
officer should have considered at least some of these documents pursuant to the
first branch of subsection 113(a) of the IRPA. First, the letters appear to
have been written after the Board’s decision. They were notarized after the
Board’s decision, and the date on the envelopes in which they were sent also postdates
the Board’s decision. More importantly, however, I think the officer should
have admitted the undated letters because they contain information that goes
beyond a mere repetition of what was already in front of the Board. Unlike
country condition reports and other documentary evidence of a general nature,
the six letters that were excluded all directly relate to Mr. Elezi. The
letters from his friends are first-hand witness accounts that corroborate his
story. Of even more significance are the letters from state officials of the
highest rank, which, lend credit to Mr. Elezi’s fear of reprisals and to his
claim that Albania cannot protect him.
[40]
This approach, I
hasten to say, appears to be consistent with this Court’s findings in both Mendez,
above, and Raza, above. In the latter decision, Justice Mosley went out
of his way to distinguish the case before him from Mendez, opining that
the new evidence in Mendez was “central to the applicant’s claim as it
went to the very heart of the Board’s conclusion that he would not be at risk
as a HIV-positive gay man in Mexico” (Raza, above, at paragraph 18). He
added, at paragraph 22, that when assessing “new information”, “it is not just
the date of the document that is important, but whether the information is
significant or significantly different than the information previously
provided.”
[41]
In other words, the
nature of the information, its significance for the case, and the credibility
of its source, are all factors that can and should be taken into consideration
in determining whether it can be considered “new evidence”, when it appears to
have been created after the Board’s decision. In the context of the present
case, I believe the information contained in the letters from the Mayor and
from the Deputy, at the very least, qualify as “new evidence.”
[42]
As for the evidence
that predated the Board’s decision, I am also of the view that the PRRA officer
erred in excluding it. However, here I believe the error relates to the second
and third branches of subsection 113(a). The dentist’s letter, confirming treated
Mr. Elezi’s injuries on September 10, 2003, was extremely relevant, because
that is the day he claims he was attacked. The dentist’s letter even notes
that Mr. Elezi insisted on being treated at his home – which supports his
submissions about subjective fear. As for the documents emanating from the
Commission, they all bear his name and confirm that he did work for the
Commission. Finally, the article reporting on the Ombudsman’s declaration was
also extremely probative because it directly confirms Mr. Elezi’s fears and his
claim that he could not be protected in Albania.
[43]
Not only were all
these documents extremely helpful in assessing Mr. Elezi’s claim, but he could
not reasonably have been expected in the circumstances to have presented them
to the Board. After all, the Board’s hearing took place only three months
after he arrived in Canada, and it does not require a stretch of
the imagination to consider that this is not much time to gather that kind of
evidence. The same applies, obviously, to the letters coming from the Mayor
and the Deputy, if they were to be considered as evidence that arose before the
Board’s decision. Thus, even though I find that these two letters arose after
the Board’s rejection, in the alternative I believe they should have qualified
as new evidence under the other branches of subsection 113(a).
[44]
At the end of the
day, I am of the view that it would be unconscionable for this Court not to
grant Mr. Elezi a new hearing. Even though he might be at fault for not
providing some of the excluded evidence earlier, this should not excuse a PRRA
officer from using his discretion to consider such critical, direct evidence.
That evidence goes to the very heart of the Board’s conclusion, and certainly
tends to confirm not only Mr. Elezi’s story but also the risk he would be
facing were he to be returned to Albania.
[45]
If Canada is to
respect its international obligations and abide by its Charter of
Rights and Freedoms, it cannot disregard credible evidence
that a person would be at risk if sent back to his or her country of origin on
the sole basis that this evidence is technically inadmissible. Such a narrow
interpretation of subsection 113(a) would make a mockery of our most
fundamental commitments. It would also be incompatible with Parliament’s objectives
about how the IRPA is meant to be construed and applied. I am therefore in
full agreement with Lorne Waldman when he writes, in his book Immigration
Law and Practice (2nd ed.), at section 4.999:
Finally, I would argue that the nature of
the evidence itself should also be considered. If the evidence is highly
probative of the case and is credible evidence, then the officer should
generally exercise his or her discretion in favour of receiving the evidence
because of the importance of the issues at stake. In the final analysis, if
there is credible evidence that a person is at risk of torture, then any
attempt to remove the person to that country would be a violation of s. 7. I
doubt that any court would countenance removal in those circumstances, even if
there were some failure on the part of the applicant to obtain the information
at an earlier stage in the process.
[46]
This finding, in and
of itself, is sufficient to warrant sending the matter back to a different PRRA
officer. Considering the potential impact and material significance of the
evidence excluded from the officer’s risk assessment, Mr. Elezi deserves the opportunity
to have all of the evidence carefully reviewed. There is therefore no useful
purpose served in addressing his other arguments, as they are closely
intertwined with the facts as they were found.
[47]
The applicant urged
me to certify a number of questions, some having to do with the interpretation
of subsection 113(a), and others related to the interplay between the Board’s decision
and the PRRA and to the issue of vengeance as a ground for granting refugee
status under both sections 96 and 97.
[48]
The last two sets of
issues clearly do not raise any issue for certification, if only because I have
not addressed them in these reasons. As for the questions related to the
proper interpretation of subsection 113(a), I note that my colleague Justice
Mosley has already certified two questions in Raza, above. I would
therefore certify the same two questions (#1 and #2) and add two more of my own
(#3 and #4):
1.
Is “new evidence” for
the purposes of s. 113(a) of the IRPA limited to evidence that post-dates and
is “substantially different” from the evidence that was before the RPD?
2.
Does the standard for
the reception of “new evidence” under s. 113(a) of the IRPA require the PRRA
Officer to accept any evidence created after the RPD determination, even where
that evidence was reasonably available to the applicant or he/she could
reasonably have been expected to present it at the refugee hearing?
3.
In determining
whether evidence has arisen after the Board rejects a refugee claim and is
therefore “new,” must the PRRA officer look only for new facts or new risks, or
can he or she also take into consideration other factors like the nature of the
information, its significance for the case, and the credibility of its source?
4.
In light of
paragraphs 3(3)(d) and (f) of the IRPA, is the PRRA officer precluded from
considering personalized evidence that goes to the heart of an applicant’s
claim and establishes that he would be at risk if returned, when that evidence
could conceivably have been presented to the Board?
ORDER
THIS COURT ORDERS that the application for judicial
review is granted.
“Yves
de Montigny”
FEDERAL COURT
NAMES OF COUNSEL AND SOLICITORS OF RECORD
DOCKET: IMM-4055-06
STYLE OF CAUSE:
RODON ELEZI
Applicant
and
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
PLACE OF HEARING: Montréal, Quebec
DATE OF HEARING: February 15, 2007
REASONS FOR ORDER : THE HONOURABLE MR.
JUSTICE DE MONTIGNY
DATED: March
1, 2007
APPEARANCES:
Mr. Peter Shams FOR
APPLICANT
Ms. Lynne Lazaroff FOR
RESPONDENT
SOLICITORS OF RECORD:
Saint-Pierre Grenier FOR
APPLICANT
Montréal, Quebec
Morris Rosenberg FOR
RESPONDENT
Deputy Attorney General of Canada
Montréal, Quebec