Date: 20080208
Docket: IMM-6397-05
Citation: 2008 FC 169
Ottawa, Ontario, this 8th day of February, 2008
PRESENT: The Honourable Barry Strayer, Deputy Judge
BETWEEN:
HUBERT PETER GOMES, GEETA
GLORIA GOMES
LIRA MARIA GOMES, FLORA ADRIANA GOMES
Applicants
and
THE
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT AND JUDGMENT
INTRODUCTION
[1]
This
is an application for judicial review of a decision of the Immigration and
Refugee Board (Refugee Protection Division) (Board) of September 30, 2005,
rejecting the claims to refugee status and section 97 protection of the
Applicants.
FACTS
[2]
The
Principal Applicant, Hubert Peter Gomes and his spouse, Geeta Gloria Gomes are
citizens of Bangladesh. Their two
children, Lira and Flora, were born in Bermuda but are also citizens of Bangladesh. The parents
assert that they are Christians and the Board does not seem to question that
fact. They have lived outside of Bangladesh at various times since 1991, when
the husband left to work in Saudi Arabia. He was there for two
years and then returned to Bangladesh. He left Bangladesh in 1995 to
work in Bahrain for 2.5 years before returning to Bangladesh in 1997.
That same year, he went to Bermuda and worked there for
seven years and it appears that his wife was there with him, at least part of
the time. He says that he returned to Bangladesh twice, once for five
weeks in 2000 and once for two months in 2004. On each occasion, he was
attacked by “Jamat and BNP goons” (these being apparently political groupings
who consider Christians to be their political opponents). In each case he was
beaten (on the second occasion “mercilessly”) and threatened. According to his
wife, in 2000 their home was invaded by the same or similar people searching
for her husband who threatened her and her husband and she had received other
threats from them in 2004. Both husband and wife said that they had made
reports to the police of these incidents but the police had done nothing. They
continued to live in Bermuda until March, 2005 when they came to Canada on
visitors’ visas to be present at the baptism of the son of a friend. They
planned to continue on to Bangladesh for a holiday after
their visit to Canada. However, the husband says that a few days after their
arrival he phoned his mother in Bangladesh and she reported to him
that she had received threats against him and that he and his family ought not
to return. On March 31, 2005 they all made a claim for refugee protection in Canada.
[3]
The
Board, after hearing evidence, rejected these claims on the grounds that the
claimants were not credible and that they had failed to establish subjective
fear of serious harm or persecution should they return to Bangladesh.
ANALYSIS
[4]
At
the outset of the hearing the Applicants withdrew their arguments based on
alleged unfairness in the Board having questioned the Applicants first.
[5]
It
appears to me that the issues are essentially of credibility and of facts, and that
with respect to both the proper standard of review is patent unreasonability: Harb
v. Canada 2003 FCA 39 at para. 14; Sinan v. Canada 2004 FC 87,
paras. 8, 11.
[6]
Having
considered carefully the criticisms of the Board decision made by counsel for
the Applicants, some of which criticisms are not without validity, I am unable
to say that the Board’s conclusion is patently unreasonable on these issues.
[7]
I
believe that some of the Board’s reasons for finding the Applicants lacked
credibility are rather far fetched. The Board points to certain inconsistencies
between the oral evidence and their personal information forms. For example, the
Principal Applicant testified that a friend was with him who also experienced
the February, 2000 attack, and they both made reports to the police. His friend
was not mentioned in the personal information form nor was the fact that his
friend had also made a complaint to the police. The male claimant had an
explanation for this which was, in my view, plausible. The Board was sceptical
about the fact that both husband and wife stated that they had made reports to
the police of these incidents but could not produce a copy of the police report
as they were given none. The Board found it suspicious that the husband and
wife in their respective “Schedule I, Background Information form” gave the
names of the persons they feared in Bangladesh but did not do so in
their Personal Information forms. The Board thought is suspicious that the
claimants “delayed” from March 17, 2005 to March 31, 2005 while in Canada
before filing a refugee claim. (They were lawfully in Canada and were in
no danger of being removed at that time, and according to the Applicants, they
did not decide to make refugee claims until a few days after their arrival when
the husband spoke to his mother). Also, the Board noted that the Applicants had
obtained from the Bangladesh consulate in New York in 1999 a
renewal of their Bangladesh passports and obviously thought this detracted
from their claims. It is unclear to me why this brought into question the
Applicants’ claim to lack of state protection: this passport event took place a
year before the Principal Applicant suffered any attack in Bangladesh; and the
Applicants do not complain of persecution by their state but rather by the
failure of their state to protect them and this is completely consistent with
the state issuing them new passports in 1999 in New York.
[8]
It
appears to me that all of these suspicions were of doubtful weight and if I
were judging the matter I might well have come up with a different conclusion
in respect of these issues.
[9]
Looking
at the remainder of the evidence before the Board, however, it appears to me
that there were strong reasons for doubting that the Applicants had established
a subjective fear of return to Bangladesh: in spite of the husband and wife
having experienced threats and, in the case of the husband, physical assaults
in Bangladesh in 2000 and 2004, they were, in March of 2005, actually planning
to go to Bangladesh after their sojourn in Canada. It is true that they assert
that the husband, after their arrival in Canada, phoned his mother who reported
to him recent threats made against him. But these threats were very similar to
those injuries and threats which he had already experienced in 2000 and 2004,
and in spite of which he and his family were planning to holiday in Bangladesh in 2005. The
Board also found implausible, and I think reasonably so, that the Applicants
would be such targets of political or religious opponents in Bangladesh,
considering that they had only spent a total of three months in Bangladesh in
the last eight years. Looking at the decision as a whole, then, I am unable to
say that it is patently unreasonable. That is, it was not made perversely or
without regard to the material before the Board.
DISPOSITION
[10]
I
will therefore dismiss the application for judicial review. Counsel had no
suggested questions for certification and none will be certified.
JUDGMENT
THIS COURT ORDERS AND
ADJUDGES that
1.
The
application for judicial review of the Immigration Refugee Board (Refugee
Protection Division) of September 30, 2005 be dismissed.
“Barry
Strayer”
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