Docket: IMM-771-14
Citation:
2015 FC 457
Toronto, Ontario, April 14, 2015
PRESENT: The Honourable Madam Justice Mactavish
|
BETWEEN:
|
|
LIU, CHENGGUI
|
|
LIU, LULU
|
|
LIU, ZHUANGZHUANG
|
|
Applicants
|
|
and
|
|
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION
|
|
Respondent
|
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
(Reasons delivered orally in Toronto on April 13, 2015)
[1]
The Refugee Protection Division of the
Immigration and Refugee Board rejected the refugee claims of Liu Chenggui and
his two children on the basis that they had failed to establish their identity.
The applicants say that the Board erred in its treatment of their identity
documents, and that they were treated unfairly by the Board, as it refused to
allow them to call the RCMP Officer who conducted a forensic analysis of their
documents as a witness.
[2]
An identity finding is a finding of fact that
goes to the heart of the Board’s expertise. As a consequence, difference is
owed to such findings by this Court. For the reasons that follow, I have not
been persuaded that the applicants were treated unfairly by the Board. I am
moreover satisfied that the Board’s identity finding was reasonable. As a
result, the application for judicial review will be dismissed.
I.
The Board’s Treatment of the Principal
Applicant’s Resident Identity Card
[3]
As the Board noted, a Resident Identity Card (or
RIC) is the most important document in establishing the identity of a refugee
claimant allegedly from the People’s Republic of China. After examining the RIC
produced by the principal applicant, the Board was not satisfied that the
person depicted in the photo on the card was in fact the principal applicant.
[4]
The principal applicant attributes the
difference in his current appearance from that in the photo to the fact that he
had undergone cosmetic surgery to his eyelids. Even if this was true, as the
Board noted, it did not account for the differences that the Board observed in
various features on the principal applicant’s face when compared to the person
in the RIC photo, including differences in their lips, eyebrows, noses,
nostrils, chins, philtra and ears.
[5]
This Court has held that the Board is empowered
to make findings than an individual is or is not the person depicted in a
photograph, and that expert evidence on this issue is not required: Liu v.
Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2012 FC 377, at para. 10.
Having found there to be material and unexplained differences between the faces
of the principal applicant and the person whose photo was on the RIC, the
Board’s finding that the principal applicant was not the person whose photo was
on the identity card was reasonable.
II.
The Board’s Treatment of the Hukou and Divorce
Documents
[6]
The applicants also produced what appeared to be
an original Household Register (or Hukou) in the same name as was on the RIC.
Having found that the principal applicant was not the person whose photo was on
the RIC, the Board quite reasonably concluded that the Hukou was not that of
the principal applicant.
[7]
Similarly, it was also reasonable for the Board
to discount a divorce document tendered by the principal applicant on the basis
that the RIC number on the divorce document corresponded to the RIC that the
Board had found not to be that of the principal applicant.
III.
The Board’s Treatment of the Children’s Birth
Certificates
[8]
The principal applicant also produced birth
certificates for his two young children. These documents were sent for forensic
examination. An RCMP document examiner noted that there was a misspelled word
on one birth certificate, and that the serial number on the other certificate
did not glow when exposed to ultra-violet light. Despite noting these
anomalies, the RCMP report did not state with certainty that the documents were
fraudulent because the officer did not have a genuine Chinese birth certificate
to use for comparison purposes.
[9]
However, the Board itself had specialized
knowledge of Chinese birth certificates. The Board knew that genuine birth
certificates have a security feature that causes the documents to glow under
ultra-violet light, and that fraudulent birth certificates frequently
misspelled the very word that was misspelled on the second birth certificate.
It was based upon the combination of the RCMP’s forensic findings and the
Board’s specialized knowledge that the Board reasonably concluded that the
birth certificates did not satisfactorily establish the identity of the two
children.
IV.
The Board’s Refusal to Issue a Summons
[10]
Finally, the applicants say that it was unfair
for the Board to have refused to issue a summons to compel the RCMP officer to
appear before it to explain the forensic report. I do not agree.
[11]
The applicants have not taken issue with the
actual findings made in the forensic analysis as to the anomalies that appeared
in the face of the two birth certificates. What they wanted to do was to
question the “inconclusive” finding as to the
authenticity of the two documents. However, as was noted earlier, the Board did
not draw any conclusions from the fact that the RCMP could not say for sure
that the documents were fraudulent, but relied instead on its own specialized
knowledge to reach that conclusion.
[12]
It is not clear how the Officer’s evidence could
have assisted the applicants, and the Board did not err in concluding that the
evidence of the RCMP officer was not necessary to provide for a full and proper
consideration of the claim. As a result, no breach of procedural fairness has
been established.
V.
Conclusion
[13]
For these reasons, the application for judicial
review is dismissed. I agree with the parties that the case is fact-specific,
and does not raise a question for certification.
Email this Content