Docket: IMM-3533-21
Citation: 2022 FC 1060
Ottawa, Ontario, July 18, 2022
PRESENT: The Honourable Madam Justice Heneghan
| BETWEEN:
|
| MUHAMMED KARAOGLAN
|
| Applicant
|
| and
|
| THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
|
| Respondent
|
REASONS AND JUDGMENT
[1] Mr. Muhammed Karaoglan (the “Applicant”
) seeks judicial review of the decision of the Immigration and Refugee Board, Refugee Protection Division (the “RPD”
), finding that he is neither a Convention refugee or person in need of protection, pursuant to section 96 and subsection 97(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27 (the “Act”
).
[2] The Applicant is a citizen of Turkey who fears persecution on the basis of his Kurdish ethnicity and political activities. The RPD made negative credibility findings, based upon an inconsistency in the Applicant’s evidence about the dates he was detained.
[3] The decision is reviewable on the standard of reasonableness, following the decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, [2019] 4 S.C.R. 653.
[4] In considering reasonableness, the Court is to ask if the decision under review “bears the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and whether it is justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that bear on that decision”
; see Vavilov, supra at paragraph 99.
[5] The Applicant argues that the decision is unreasonable. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (the “Respondent”
) submits that the decision meets the legal standard.
[6] Although the Applicant challenges other aspects of the decision, in my opinion, the dispositive issue in this proceeding is the negative credibility finding.
[7] In my opinion, the RPD unreasonably impugned the Applicant’s credibility on the basis of one inconsistency.
[8] I also find that the RPD unreasonably failed to consider documentary evidence submitted by the Applicant’s father independent of this negative credibility finding.
[9] In the result, the application for judicial review will be allowed, the decision will be set aside and the matter remitted to a new panel of the RPD for redetermination.
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