Background
Nirusan Veerasingam, a 25-year-old Sri Lankan citizen, entered Canada in 2019 claiming refugee protection based on fear of persecution by Sri Lankan police. His refugee claim was rejected by the Refugee Protection Division, affirmed on appeal by the Refugee Appeal Division, and a subsequent application for leave for judicial review was dismissed by the Federal Court. He then applied for a Pre-Removal Risk Assessment (PRRA) on September 8, 2023.
What followed was a prolonged series of administrative errors. A negative PRRA decision was rendered on January 3, 2024, but was not communicated to Veerasingam. Unaware of the decision, he submitted updated evidence in February 2024 — including a USB drive containing a video of Sri Lankan police visiting his mother’s home in search of him — but the PRRA office returned the USB drive as non-compliant and requested resubmission by email. He resubmitted in April 2024, only for the January decision to be communicated to him the very next day. The Minister agreed to a settlement remitting the matter to a new PRRA officer.
The new officer wrote to Veerasingam in August 2024 and again in December 2024, requesting that he resubmit his materials. Veerasingam’s counsel received no response deadline in August (believing prior submissions were already on file) and denied receiving the December letter, though the respondent produced evidence of a successful fax transmission. The second PRRA officer issued a refusal based on insufficient evidence without ever having evaluated the February or April 2024 submissions. A stay of removal was granted pending this judicial review.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Grant granted the application for judicial review, finding that Veerasingam had been denied a meaningful opportunity to present his evidence — a core requirement of procedural fairness under the audi alteram partem principle. The Court declined to defer to the decision-maker’s procedural choices, instead assessing whether the process was “fair having regard to all of the circumstances,” with particular focus on the nature of the substantive rights at stake and the consequences for the individual, citing Canadian Pacific Railway Company v Canada (Attorney General), 2018 FCA 69.
The Court rejected the Minister’s argument that the December 2024 communication afforded Veerasingam a fair opportunity to participate. The officer had used an incorrect mailing address, and counsel maintained he never received the fax. More fundamentally, the Court held that even where fault is shared or unclear, an infringement of the right to be heard vitiates any decision that flows from it — regardless of who bears responsibility. The Court cited a consistent line of Federal Court authority to this effect, including Djilal v Canada, 2014 FC 812, and Laramée v Bénard, 2022 FC 1653.
The matter was remitted for reconsideration by a different decision-maker. No question was certified for appeal, and no costs were awarded.
Key Takeaways
- A PRRA applicant’s right to present evidence is a fundamental component of procedural fairness; a decision rendered without genuine engagement with the applicant’s submissions cannot stand, regardless of which party bears fault for the evidentiary gap.
- Administrative errors by IRCC officers — including using incorrect addresses and failing to engage with timely evidence — can independently ground a finding of procedural unfairness, even where the applicant or counsel also contributed to the breakdown in communication.
- Courts reviewing procedural fairness in immigration matters apply a correctness-like standard, asking whether the process was “fair and just” without deference to the decision-maker’s procedural choices.
- Evidence submitted and returned as technically non-compliant must still be meaningfully addressed, particularly where the non-compliance concerns only a portion of the submission (here, the USB drive but not the accompanying lawyer’s letter).
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that systemic administrative failures in the PRRA process can amount to a breach of procedural fairness that courts will not overlook, even when the record of errors is shared between government officers and the applicant’s own counsel. The ruling makes clear that Canada’s duty to afford PRRA applicants a genuine hearing is not discharged merely by sending correspondence — particularly where address errors and non-responses compound the failure to ever evaluate the applicant’s core evidence.
For immigration practitioners, the case is a reminder that evidence submitted during a PRRA process but never evaluated by an officer remains a live procedural fairness ground on judicial review, and that the Federal Court will grant relief where the cumulative effect of administrative missteps has left an applicant’s risk evidence unexamined after multiple proceedings spanning years.