Docket: IMM-1394-24
Citation: 2024 FC 1802
Toronto, Ontario, November 13, 2024
PRESENT: The Honourable Justice Battista
BETWEEN: |
GURPREET SINGH HUNDAL |
Applicant |
and |
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION |
Respondent |
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
(Delivered orally from the bench on November 13, 2024.
Edited for grammar and syntax.)
[1] The Applicant challenges the decision of the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) that determined his sponsorship appeal to be abandoned.
[2] Counsel for the Applicant appeared at the hearing and initially requested an adjournment due to scheduling confusion in his office. After confirming that no request for an adjournment was received from the Applicant by the Court or by counsel for the Respondent, counsel for the Applicant agreed to proceed by relying upon his written submissions and brief oral submissions.
[3] The Applicant retained new counsel on October 17, 2023, to represent him in the appeal. At that time, a deadline of December 4, 2023, had already been set by the IAD for receipt of the Applicant’s disclosure.
[4] In the absence of receiving disclosure or any communication from the Applicant after the passage of the deadline for disclosure, the IAD determined his appeal to be abandoned on January 9, 2024.
[5] The Applicant alleges that he was denied procedural fairness because there was a duty of fairness on the IAD to proactively advise his new counsel of previous deadlines and previous correspondence in the appeal.
[6] The content of the duty of fairness in administrative proceedings is determined by examining the factors described by the Supreme Court of Canada in Baker v Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), [1999] 2 S.C.R. 817. Applying those factors to the IAD’s decision to abandon the Applicant’s appeal, I find that the participatory rights owed to the Applicant were satisfied by the IAD’s communication to the Applicant using the means identified by the Applicant, and by the transmission of the appeal record to his new counsel, which it started to do on October 20, 2023.
[7] It was the responsibility of newly retained counsel to discover the stage of the appeal as well as upcoming deadlines from the Applicant, previous counsel, or by proactively contacting the IAD for this information.
[8] While I have sympathy for the Applicant’s health issues and limited language and technological skills, he hired counsel for the purpose of assisting him in pursuing his appeal and it was the responsibility of his counsel to apprise himself fully of the circumstances of the appeal.
[9] For these reasons, there was no breach of procedural fairness, and the application is dismissed.
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