It is a crapshoot whether refugee claimants can get a second chance from the Federal Court to review and appeal a decision that potentially determines their life and death, according to a new study.âOutcomes in Federal Court applications for judicial review of refugee determinations depended all too often on the luck of the draw â on which judge decided the case,â said York University law professor Sean Rehaag, author of the report released by the Social Sciences Research Network this month.âRefugee claimants whose applications for judicial review are denied continue to have good reason to wonder whether this was because of the facts of their case and the law, or whether they simply lost the luck of the draw.âBoth failed refugees and the federal government can appeal a refugee board decision to the court but must first get a nod â or leave â from a judge before the case can proceed to a full hearing. If the first judge denies leave, the appeal will not be heard. Sometimes, the court is the last resort before a failed refugee claimant is deported from Canada to face potential risks back home.Federal Court Chief Justice Paul Crampton acknowledged Rehaagâs study raises some important questions.âThere is a very real fairness dimension to the wide variation in the rates at which individual judges grant leave,â Crampton told the Star in a statement. âThis is so despite the element of subjectivity in making judicial determinations, especially on judicial review, where the standard that the court is called upon to apply in most cases is whether the decision under review was âunreasonable.ââBased on 33,920 Federal Court leave applications involving refugees, the study found only 16.8 per cent of the requests were granted to proceed to an appeal hearing and just 7.8 per cent of them were ultimately successful in getting an asylum decision stayed and having the cases reopened. The study is ...
|