Date: 20080208
Docket: IMM-2962-07
Citation: 2008
FC 171
Ottawa, Ontario, February 8, 2008
PRESENT: The Honourable Mr. Justice Harrington
BETWEEN:
SANDRA
OJEZELE
Applicant
and
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER AND ORDER
[1]
According
to Ms. Ojezele, she is a Nigerian lesbian. She is wanted by the Nigerian police
who murdered her partner in their small village. She escaped to Benin City where she lived on the
street. She was befriended by a Good (and Bad) Samaritan who took her under his
wing, arranged a passport, brought her to Canada and then abandoned her with $300 in a Montreal motel. She later amended
her Personal Information Form to add that while they were in Benin City he repeatedly raped
her.
[2]
The
Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board held that she
was neither a refugee within the meaning of the United Nations Convention
nor a person in need of international protection. She was found not to be
credible. This is a judicial review of that decision.
[3]
It
was submitted on behalf of Ms. Ojezele that her story was possible and that the
Panel erred in the manner in which questions were put to her. She was asked to
explain why the police only looked for her sporadically from 2004 to 2006 when
she was living in notoriety at the time in a small village and was not in
hiding. She was also asked why the man in Benin City befriended her rather than some other street
person. Naturally, she could not give an answer. In context, however, the
questions were really whether any reason had been given to her.
[4]
Findings
of fact, including credibility, are not to be disturbed unless patently
unreasonable. The Panel expressed some concern as to whether she was really
from Nigeria, but proceeded on the
basis that she was. That is a fact which must be accepted for the purposes of
this case. The Panel simply did not believe her allegations that she came to
Canada with the help of a total stranger who brought her to a hotel in Benin
City where he paid her expenses, bought airline tickets, let her use his
daughter’s passport, flew with her to Montreal where he dropped her off at a
motel, gave her some money and then disappeared. The essence of the Panel’s
decision is:
This makes no sense, why would a man who
took pity on a woman to the point of spending thousands of dollars and his time
to bring her to Montreal, and abandon her in a strange country where she
alleged to know no one.
Moreover,
the claimant filed an addendum to her Personal Information Form (PIF) (P-7), in
which she stated that Emma had raped her while at the hotel in Benin City. The panel asked her why she had not disclosed this
information when she wrote her original story. She answered that she was
ashamed and could not make herself reveal these events at that time.
The
panel again doubts the veracity of these last minute allegations. For why, if
in payment for services rendered, Emma abused the claimant in Nigeria, he would
not continue to do so once in Canada, if this was the reason he took her under
his care.
[5]
There
is a complete air of unreality about this story. As the Court of Appeal held in
Shahamati v. Canada (Minister of Employment
and Immigration),
[1994] F.C.J. No. 415 (C.A.):
[…] we have not been persuaded that the Board's
finding on credibility was either unreasonable or perverse. Contrary to what
has sometimes been said, the Board is entitled, in assessing credibility, to
rely on criteria such as rationality and common sense.
ORDER
THIS
COURT ORDERS that the application for judicial review is dismissed. There
is no serious question of general importance to certify.
“Sean Harrington”
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