Federal Court Decisions

     Date: 19971205

     Docket: IMM-3717-96

Between :

                 Gurmail Singh KALIA

     Applicant

     - and -

                 The Minister of Citizenship and

                 Immigration , Canada

                 c\o      Mtre George Thomson, Q.C.

                     Sous-procureur du Canada

                     Ministère fédéral de la Justice

                     Complexe Guy-Favreau

                     200 René Lévesque ouest

                     East Tower, 9th floor

                     Montreal, Quebec

     Respondent

     REASONS FOR ORDER

PINARD, J. :

[1]      The applicant seeks judicial review of a decision of the Refugee Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board dated October 2, 1996, in which the Refugee Division determined he was not a Convention refugee.

[2]      It appears that the Board's decision is based entirely on findings of credibility:

After thoroughly analyzing the totality of the evidence, the Panel adjudges that the claimant's lack of credibility with regards to the pivotal or central areas of his claim is determinative. The lack of credibility and trustworthiness radiates to all aspects of the claim.

The evidence adduced is improbable, implausible and/or inconsistent with his affirmation that he fled India due to a fear of persecution.

[. . .]

Given the claimant's overall lack of credibility, the Panel ascribes very little weight to the Medico-Legal expertise tendered by Drs. Kornacki and Yee.

[3]      Indeed, the Board observed various implausibilities and/or inconsistencies regarding (1) the confusion surrounding the applicant's use of his family name, (2) the use of notarial seals on various documentation, (3) the applicant's failure to comment in his PIF on the numerous incidents with the police between 1993 and 1995, (4) the applicant's failure to recount the cigarette burns in his PIF, (5) the discrepancies between his testimony and PIF regarding his itinerary, and (6) the fact that it was unlikely that he would have included his return address on his letter to his father.

[4]      Upon reviewing the evidence, while it is true that I might not have arrived at some of these conclusions, there was nevertheless a sufficient basis upon which the Board could arrive at its finding of lack of credibility. As held in Aguebor v. Canada (M.C.I.) (1993), 160 N.R. 315 (F.C.A.) at page 316, the Refugee Division, which is a specialized tribunal, is in the best position to evaluate a claimant's credibility:

There is no longer any doubt that the Refugee Division, which is a specialized tribunal, has complete jurisdiction to determine the plausibility of testimony: who is in a better position than the Refugee Division to gauge the credibility of an account and to draw the necessary inferences? As long as the inferences drawn by the tribunal are not so unreasonable as to warrant our intervention, its findings are not open to judicial review. In Giron, the Court merely observed that in the area of plausibility, the unreasonableness of a decision may be more palpable, and so more easily identifiable, since the account appears on the face of the record. In our opinion, Giron in no way reduces the burden that rests on an appellant, of showing that the inferences drawn by the Refugee Division could not reasonably have been drawn. In this case, the appellant has not discharged this burden.

[5]      It has also been held that a negative finding of credibility can be extended to all relevant evidence drawn from the testimony (see Sheikh v. Canada (M.E.I.) (1990), 11 Imm.L.R. (2d) 81 (F.C.A.)).

[6]      While the above is sufficient to dismiss this application, I also wish to address the Board's dismissal of the applicant's medical evidence. In my view, it was open to the Board to reject this medical evidence, given that the facts underlying the reports were found not to be credible. Madam Justice Reed expounded the following in Danailov v. M.E.I. (October 6, 1993), T-273-93, at pages 1 and 2:

. . . With respect to the assessment of the doctor's evidence, to find that that opinion evidence is only as valid as the truth of the facts on which it is based, is always a valid way of evaluating opinion evidence. If the panel does not believe the underlying facts it is entirely open to it to assess the opinion evidence as it did.

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[7]      Based on the foregoing reasons, the application for judicial review must be dismissed.

                            

                                     JUDGE

OTTAWA, ONTARIO

December 5, 1997