Docket: IMM-12279-23
Citation: 2025 FC 374
Toronto, Ontario, February 27, 2025
PRESENT: The Honourable Justice Battista
BETWEEN: |
IFFAT ZABIR MRINMOY |
Applicant |
and |
THE MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION |
Respondent |
JUDGMENT AND REASONS
I. Overview
[1] The Applicant challenges the Refugee Appeal Division’s (RAD) decision confirming the Refugee Protection Division’s (RPD) determination that he was not a Convention refugee nor a person in need of protection. The Applicant states that the decision contains unreasonable findings regarding the credibility of documents supporting his protection claim and the reasons for his delay in making a claim for refugee protection.
[2] For the reasons below, the RAD decision is reasonable and the application for judicial review is dismissed.
II. Background
[3] The Applicant is a citizen of Bangladesh who claimed that he was persecuted by the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and the Awami League (AL). He alleged that after his refusal to print merchandise for the JMB in October 2016, they assaulted him and vandalized his father’s shop the following month as retaliation. He also stated that the AL targeted him because he joined the Liberal Democratic Party in November 2016, and that he was kidnapped in September 2017 after relocating to Sylhet.
[4] The Applicant arrived in Canada in December 2017 on a student visa. He claims to have stopped studying in 2019 because his father could no longer support his studies due to the AL’s seizure of his father’s business. Based on this event, as well as the alleged kidnapping of his younger brother in August 2020, the Applicant sought refugee protection in December 2020.
[5] Credibility was determinative for the RPD when it rejected the Applicant’s claim:
-First, the RPD found that the Applicant did not reasonably explain his omission of the threats made by the JMB against his father;
-Second, the RPD noted that the Applicant failed to explain the absence of a support letter from his father;
-Third, the RPD could not understand why supporting documents had been notarized in Sylhet, the place of his abduction and the place from which he and his father allegedly fled; and
-Finally, the RPD was not satisfied with the Applicant’s explanation for his delay in filing a refugee protection claim.
[6] The RAD confirmed the RPD’s dismissal based on credibility and refused the Applicant’s appeal. Moreover, the RAD determined that the Applicant’s abduction and the kidnapping of his brother likely did not occur.
III. Issue
[7] The sole issue is whether the decision is reasonable pursuant to the Supreme Court decisions in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] and Mason v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 21.
IV. Analysis
[8] The Applicant challenges the RAD’s decision first, for the illogic of its rejection of documents notarized in Sylhet in one part of its decision, but reliance upon documents from Sylhet for the purpose of believing the Applicant’s problems with AL supporters in another part of its decision. Second, the Applicant states that the RAD unreasonably found that the Applicant had not explained his delay in making a refugee claim in 2020, given his explanation that his brother’s kidnapping in 2019 was the trigger for the claim.
[9] However, the RAD’s findings on both issues are reasonable.
A. The documents from Sylhet
[10] The RAD questioned the credibility of the Applicant’s testimony and documentary evidence due to his failure to explain why certain documents were notarized in Sylhet; however, it did not assign those documents no weight. Moreover, among the documents relied upon by the RAD were medical documents. None of them appear to have been conclusively notarized in Sylhet, and there is no illogic or internal contradiction in the RAD’s reliance upon them.
[11] It is true that the RAD appeared to rely upon diary requests that were notarized in Sylhet as supporting the Applicant’s evidence. However, the RAD did not ever dismiss these documents entirely, assigning them no weight. It looked to the Applicant for an explanation for the place of notarization given that the place of notarization was the place from which his family fled and where he had allegedly been abducted. The RAD then made an adverse credibility finding when no explanation resolved this concern.
[12] The RAD also did not state that the documents conclusively established the Applicant’s claims. The RAD used qualified language that the October diary request “serves” to corroborate a “one-time criminal occurrence by the JMB”. The RAD found that even if the documents could be relied upon to establish problems the Applicant faced, their usefulness was limited to issues in October and November 2016, rather than establishing “a pattern of persecution”.
[13] The RAD therefore appears to have engaged with this evidence despite its initial credibility concerns. While its reasoning on this point is not perfect, perfection is not the standard in judicial review for reasonableness (Vavilov at para 91).
B. The Applicant’s delay in claiming protection
[14] The RAD acknowledged that the Applicant’s brother’s kidnapping was the trigger for his claim to refugee protection. The RAD reasonably responded to this evidence when it found that the Applicant had not acceptably explained his delay in waiting until the end of 2020 to claim protection despite arriving in Canada in 2017 (Mokoko v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 815 at para 25; Vavilov at paras 127-128).
[15] The Applicant points to the potential of permanent residence pathways as an explanation for the delay. However, this explanation was not made to the RAD. Rather, the Applicant explained the delay by the fact that he had run out of money to continue his studies, and his brother’s kidnapping. The only other explanation for the delay was the pandemic, which the RAD did not accept given the sequence of events identified as the trigger for the claim.
[16] The Applicant has not established that the RAD’s determination regarding the lack of reasonable explanation for delay is unreasonable, and this determination is justified in fact and law (Vavilov at paras 99-100).
V. Conclusion
[17] The RAD did not commit sufficiently serious errors regarding the Applicant’s notarized evidence to undermine the reasonableness of its decision (Vavilov at para 100). It also made reasonable findings related to his delay in making a claim for refugee protection. The application for judicial review is dismissed.
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