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The Applicant, a citizen of Ethiopia, made a claim for refugee protection in Canada on the grounds of his imputed political opinion and his Amhara ethnicity.
The Applicant participated in an Amhara student group while at university and he remained in touch with the group after graduation. He was detained by authorities in October 2019, during which his membership in the student group was raised as a concern. He was released with reporting conditions after his father paid the authorities a bribe.
The Applicant was detained for a second time in January 2020 for wearing an Amhara flag without the emblem during a public religious celebration. His father paid the authorities. After his release, the Applicant left for Canada on a study permit. Meanwhile, a summons was issued for him in Ethiopia.
His refugee claim was denied by the Refugee Protection Division (“RPD”) of the Immigration and Refugee Board (“IRB”) on the basis of credibility and internal flight alternative (“IFA”). The Refugee Appeal Division (“RAD”) upheld the RPD’s credibility and IFA finding, but disagreed with some of the RPD’s conclusions:
- The RAD did not accept that the Applicant had established a subjective fear of persecution on the basis of his ethnicity
- The RAD found that the Applicant’s arrests were in the context of public disturbance
- The RAD found that the Applicant was not a committed member of the Amhara student group or a militant
Madam Justice Azmudeh began her analysis by outlining the legal framework for credibility findings, explaining at para 11: [L]ikening the situation to puzzle pieces, individual credibility findings represent fragments of evidence. Each piece might be accurate on its own, but without assembling and examining the complete puzzle, the overall picture – the comprehensive credibility assessment – may fail to reflect the true nature of the case. It underscores the necessity of a holistic approach to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the decision-making process. Without it, the chain of reasoning is lost and the reasons are no longer intelligible (Patel v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 28 at para 24 [Patel]).
Against this backdrop, Madam Justice Azmudeh found the RAD’s decision unreasonable, writing at para 12: At the first glance, the RAD appears to focus on material evidence and the decision appears to be reasonable. However, upon further scrutiny, it is clear that in reaching its decision, the RAD misapprehended or misconstrued the material evidence that resulted in a break in the chain of reasoning between the actual material evidence and the reasons. Most importantly, the RAD member examined each piece of the evidence in a vacuum without thinking of the interplay of the various pieces. Therefore, she failed to independently engage with the bigger picture, in the context of the unequivocal evidence it accepted. This led the RAD to not engage with the Applicant’s cumulative profile that fed into the perception of the Ethiopian authorities of him.
At the judicial review hearing, counsel for the Respondent agreed that the RAD had dealt with each piece of evidence individually and argued that this was within the member’s discretion as long as each finding was dealt with reasonably.
Madam Justice Azmudeh disagreed, writing at para 18: I disagree that, generally speaking, interrelated facts can reasonably be dealt with in an airtight compartment, divorced from the larger context. As already stated, turning individual facts into a credibility assessment, irrespective of how they matter in the entire context of the refugee case, may not support an overall reasonable decision. This is tantamount to the earlier puzzle analogy where each piece might be accurate on its own, but without assembling and examining the complete puzzle, the overall picture – the comprehensive credibility assessment – may fail to reflect the true nature of the case. It underscores the necessity of a holistic approach to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the decision-making process. Without it, the chain of reasoning is lost and the reasons are no longer intelligible (Patel at para 24).
According to Madam Justice Azmudeh, the RAD member was overly fixated on scrutinizing the individual pieces of evidence without considering the broader context or the overarching narrative, and at no point did the member consider the perspective of the persecutor.
Additionally, the member did not explain why she preferred the facts she rejected over the facts she accepted, leaving the Court to speculate as to how and why the RAD reached its decision.
See: Alemayehu v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2024 FC 2011,<https://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/item/527069/index.do>.
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