Date: 20080219
Docket: IMM-3027-07
Citation: 2008 FC 215
Ottawa, Ontario, February 19, 2008
Present:
The Honourable Mr. Justice Simon Noël
BETWEEN:
DOUNGOUS
HASSANE
Applicant
and
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT AND
JUDGMENT
[1]
This is an
application for judicial review of a decision by the Refugee Protection
Division (RPD) dated July 3, 2007, which concluded that the applicant is
neither a “Convention refugee” nor a “person in need of protection”.
I. Issue
[2]
Did the
RPD err in fact or in law in determining that the applicant lacked credibility?
[3]
For the
following reasons, the application for judicial review will be dismissed.
II. Facts
[4]
A citizen
of Chad, the applicant alleges that he operated a store selling computer
equipment from 2004 to 2006. He travelled two or three times a year to
Cameroon, Nigeria and Benin to purchase products to resell in his business.
[5]
On one of
these trips to Cameroon on February 15, 2006, the applicant met some residents
of Chad; he talked to them and did business with them as he had done on
previous trips.
[6]
On
February 23, 2006, soldiers burst into the claimant’s place of business without
explanation. The soldiers beat the applicant and destroyed his store. They also
seized business documents and took him to the Agence nationale de sécurité
(ANS) prison, where he was tortured and accused of spying for the opposition
and of providing information about President Idriss Déby to opponents of the
Chad government on his business trips in West Africa.
[7]
On
March 25, 2006, with the help of his uncle, the applicant managed to
escape from prison and take refuge at the home of a friend of his uncle in
Doubali. The ANS soldiers searched his parents’ home and gave the applicant’s
mother an order to appear. Two days later, the soldiers gave his mother an
arrest warrant for the applicant.
[8]
He
obtained a student passport in 2005, and his uncle helped him obtain a student
visa for the United States. He left Chad on June 13, 2006. After staying 24
days in the United States, the applicant arrived in Canada on July 7, 2006, and
applied for refugee protection the same day. The refusal of that application is
the subject of this judicial review.
III. Decision under review
[9]
After
assessing the applicant’s testimony and analyzing the documentary evidence in
the record, the RPD found that the applicant’s allegations were not credible.
The RPD determined that the applicant was neither a member of an opposition
political party nor was he revealing information that could be harmful to the
President. Furthermore, the RPD doubted that the applicant had operated his
business until 2006 since he only had documents for 2004. Logically, it would
have been easier for him to obtain recent documents than documents that were
two years old. Last, the RPD dismissed the applicant’s explanations about his
student passport, stating that that type of passport would not have been
helpful to him in the circumstances since he was a businessman. The RPD
concluded that this story was a complete fabrication.
IV. Analysis
[10]
The
standard of review of an applicant’s credibility is patent unreasonableness
(see the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Aguebor v. Canada (Minister of
Employment and Immigration), [1993] F.C.J. No. 732 (QL), and, more
recently, Awad v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration),
[2008] F.C.J. No. 74, 2008 FC 63, at paragraph 8).
[11]
The
respondent argues that the RPD properly found that it was implausible that the
authorities believed that the information the applicant was suspected of
disseminating was dangerous for the President, given that this information was
public and common knowledge. The RPD also noted that the applicant was not a
member of an opposition political party and that his business activities did
not allow him to obtain confidential information that might have been harmful
to President Déby.
[12]
The
respondent also submits that the RPD was justified in drawing a negative
inference as to the applicant’s credibility because he failed to provide
evidence to support one of the key elements of his refugee claim.
[13]
In support
of her position, the respondent invites the Court to follow Mr. Justice
François Lemieux’s comments in Quichindo v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship
and Immigration), [2002] F.C.J. No. 463, 2002 FCT 350 at paragraphs 26 and
28, as follows:
26
Counsel for the applicants
argues that the panel erred in requiring that they give documentary
corroboration, considering that Angola was under the yoke of a civil war, that
the main claimant had lost all contact with her sisters since 1992 and that her
parents had been killed.
. . .
28 A
panel's finding on the lack of credibility of a claimant may be based in part
on the absence of efforts to obtain documentary corroboration. (See Muthiyansa
v. M.C.I., [2001] F.C.J. No. 162, 2001 FCT 17 and Sinnathamby v. M.C.I.,
[2001] F.C.J. No. 742, 2001 F.C.T. 473.
[14]
Last, it
is submitted that the RPD’s comments about the student passport were not
patently unreasonable under the circumstances.
[15]
The
applicant contends that the RPD misunderstood the claim; he says that it was
the association with members of the Chad government on his trips that was
central to his claim, not that he was a member of an opposition political party
or that his activities enabled the applicant to be in possession of information
that could be harmful to the Chad government.
[16]
I do not
believe him. It is clear from a careful reading of the entire decision and the
transcript of the hearing that the RPD simply did not believe the applicant.
The RPD questioned whether the business existed until 2006 and even doubted
that the business was operational after 2004. If this is a finding, it
goes without saying that the story about him meeting with opponents of the Chad
government on his trips does not hold water. He could not have been travelling
on business.
[17]
The RPD
found that the applicant’s story lacked credibility.
[18]
As for the
argument that the invitation to submit the applicant’s 2006 documents was not
finalized, the burden of presenting the claim lies on the applicant. He did not
provide documents to show that the business existed in 2006; he says the reason
for this was that those documents were seized by the ANS and that he asked his
family to obtain them but he had not received them.
[20]
On this
last point, the Court notes that the applicant obtained a passport designated
as a student passport in 2005. The passport shows that trips were taken, and
the evidence indicates that this designation facilitates travel. I should add
that, according to the applicant’s version, his uncle obtained an American visa
for him to study in an academic institution in the United States. The RPD
concluded that since the applicant owned a business, it was unlikely that a
student passport could have been helpful under the circumstances. Considering
all the evidence, this finding is not patently unreasonable.
[21]
The RPD is
responsible for assessing the credibility of a refugee claim. After reviewing
the RPD decision and reading the transcript of the hearing together with the
documents in support of the claim, the Court has no reason to question the
RPD’s findings. They are not patently unreasonable.
[22]
The
parties were invited to submit questions for certification, but they did not do
so.
JUDGMENT
THE COURT ORDERS THE FOLLOWING:
- The application
for judicial review is dismissed;
- There
is no question to be certified.
Certified true translation
Mary Jo Egan, LLB
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