I attended at a hearing late last month where the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration made application to vacate my client's refugee claim. They allege that he failed to disclose charges (made in absentia) against him in the US and that he was aware of these charges at the time of his original refugee hearing. Further, they assert that had the RPD known, they would have excluded him from refugee protection on the basis of those (unproven) criminal charges.
My notes are attached. The Minister's evidence relied on a "stale" statutory declaration made by one of their own officers. The said statutory declaration contained triple hearsay. Further, the Minister saw fit not to make the officer available for cross examination thereby undermining the weight the RPD could assign the statutory declaration. Compounding their error, the Minister provided merely the criminal complaint; no witness statement, no victim impact statement, no investigation report etc.
Not only was the evidence proferred by the Minister shoddy, they also didn't address the so called Jayasekara factors. In essence, the crime itself (which was equivalent to s.271 of the Canadian criminal code - a 'hybrid' offence) could not be said to be a 'serious non political crime'.
Update: I am attaching a redacted transcript of the proceeding: Download Transcript redacted
Raj Sharma JD LLM
Partner
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