Refugee Law 101: A person will be found to be a ‘Convention refugee’ if they face a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country, based on a nexus ground, like race, religion, or political opinion, under s. 96 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The “well-founded fear” standard lies below a balance of [...]
By Will Tao In the recent decision of Ouansa v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2020 FC 632 (CanLII), Justice Favel allowed the judicial review of Mr. Ouansa, an Algerian national, on the basis that the refusal of his Temporary Resident Permit (“TRP”) Application was not reasonable. The Applicant (as commonly done in the course [...]
By Efrat Arbel and Molly Joeck* This blog post was originally posted on the University of Oxford Law Faculty’s Border Criminologies website as part of a themed series on border control and Covid-19. Please click here to be redirected to the original post. Mission Institution, a medium security federal correctional facility in British Columbia [...]
By Erin C. Roth In criminal law, a well-founded defence will absolve criminal liability. A defence is not an element of the offence, but rather excuses the defendant’s conduct as “morally involuntary”. As the Supreme Court explained in R. v. Ruzic, 2001 SCC 24: “It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct [...]
By Will Tao The Lo Decision In Lo v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) 2020 FC 684, Justice Elliot heard the judicial review of a Sponsor who received a negative decision from the Immigration Appeal Division relating to his sponsorship. The IAD found that the Applicant did not demonstrate on a balance of probabilities that his marriage was genuine and [...]
By Erica Olmstead Section 7 of the Charter guarantees that “everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” The s. 7 analysis is concerned with capturing inherently bad laws: that is, laws that take [...]
By Will Tao Five Immigration Tips for Coming Out of the Pandemic (Part 1) As the first wave of COVID-19 comes to an end in Canada, and immigration processes start resuming, albeit at a slower pace, we should be prepared for a new normal. I want to point out at the outset that it is [...]
Photo credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS / Graham Hughes By Molly Joeck While COVID-19 has wreaked havoc around the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people and bringing the world’s economy to a screeching halt, the pandemic has done something refugee lawyers and migrant rights advocates in Canada had thus far failed to [...]
By Randall Cohn Getting (and interpreting) US criminal records can be surprisingly difficult If you are a foreign national applying to live, study, or work in Canada, you will likely be asked to provide ‘police certificates’ from countries in which you have lived prior to making your application. These records help the authorities to [...]
By Will Tao COVID and Migrant Workers as a Starting Point While we rush to seal our loosely-defined borders and legal exceptions, let us not lose sight of the reality of who it is ‘doing the work‘ as low-paid essential service workers in Canada – temporary foreign workers (TFWs). Accordingly to a Government of Canada [...]