NEWS RELEASE: REMOVAL OF PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS PROTECTIONS BY IRCC AND AGAIN BY THE
WARSAW VISA POST WAS DELIBERATE AND UNLAWFUL
July 25, 2022, Toronto: Jafari Law is pleased to announce the success of a 4-year
battle to prove that IRCC’s mass refusal of self-employed applications transferred to the
Warsaw visa post was unlawful. While the 107 self-employed artists, athletes, and
farmers argued that the reasons alleged for refusals were also unreasonable in many
ways, the Court granted the applications in each of the 8 lead cases based on violations
of procedural fairness. The Court ruled that IRCC’s practice of affording certain
procedural fairness rights in the 8 years before its sudden removal of the same in its
instructions to officers was deliberate and in breach of the applicants’ legitimate
expectation, as was the decision of senior managers at the Warsaw visa post to not
adhere to the procedures followed by the Ankara visa post whom they inherited the
inventory from. Both violations deprived applicants of the right to know the case to be
met, the Court ruled on Friday.
Given the applicants have been trying to bring these issues to IRCC’s attention for
years, with communications to successive Ministers of Immigration, Citizenship and
Refugees, Members of Parliament, the officers, and even the program managers, to no
avail, in an unprecedented move, the Court granted a whopping $25,000 in costs
against the Minister and almost $25,000 in disbursements.
Ms. Pantea Jafari, counsel for the 107 applicants, notes, “We are very pleased with the
decision but still have a lot of work ahead of us. We hope the cost award against
the Minister serves as a wake-up call that playing with people’s lives for expediency is
not only illegal and morally reprehensible, but also compensable. We hope to see many
more cost awards against the Minister when it is acting unreasonably and illegally as the need for efficiency is coming at the
cost of applicants’ rights more and more by the day.”
CONTACTS:
Jafari Law
Email: fse@jafarilaw.ca
Toronto: (416) 825-0650
Tehran: 09422089091 ext:3
Web: www.jafarilaw.ca
45 Sheppard Avenue East Suite 900
Toronto, Ontario M2N 5W9
