Date: 19980525
Docket: IMM-3958-97
Between :
Cesar Pedro GUERRA ESPINO
Ma de Jesus ROMO DE GUERRA
(aka Maria Chuy OMO DE GUERRA)
Applicants
- and -
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP
AND IMMIGRATION
Respondent
REASONS FOR ORDER
PINARD, J. :
[1] This is an application for judicial review whereby the applicants are seeking an order setting aside the decision of the Convention Refugee Determination Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (the Board) dated August 25, 1997, whereby Kurt Neuenfeldt and E.G. Robles determined that the applicants were not Convention refugees.
[2] The Board concluded on the balance of probabilities that the automobile accident in which the applicants were involved was not staged by their political enemies, and that the applicants were not receiving all of the threats they claimed from a fraction of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. The Board also found numerous implausible aspects to the particulars of the allegedly staged automobile accident:
| While I accept that the claimants were in a serious car accident, the evidence does not prove on the balance of probabilities that it was caused by political opponents. I reach this conclusion because of the implausibility of what is asserted. I do not accept that the claimants' political enemies could have known a) where the claimants would be the evening of the conference, b) which car they would all be using, c) the route the automobile was going to take, d) the fact that it was going to pass a road work site, and e) the time when it was to pass the work site so that the barricades could be removed. In regard to the brakes, I do not accept that they could have been tampered with in such a way as not to be noticed beforehand but fail only at a predetermined location. Finally, I do not accept that a falsified story was planted in the local newspapers as the claimants suggest. To suggest such a complex scenario strains credulity well past the breaking point. |
[3] I am unable to accept the applicants' claim that the Board failed to allow them an opportunity to respond to its concerns as to the plausibility of their story. As evidenced by the transcript, at pages 38 to 40, presiding member Neuenfeldt questioned the principal applicant in some detail with respect to the accident. I cannot accept that it was incumbent on the Board to question the applicant any more than it did in this respect. In my view, presiding member Neuenfeldt put forth to the applicant each and every concern that was canvassed in the Board's decision.
[4] I am also of the opinion, in light of the evidence, that the Board's credibility findings based on implausibilities in the applicants' story are not so unreasonable as to warrant intervention. Justice Décary described the standard of review for credibility findings based on implausibilities in the oft-quoted passage from Aguebor v. Minister of Employment and Immigration (1993), 160 N.R. 315 (F.C.A.), at pages 316 and 317:
| It is correct, as the court said in Giron, that it may be easier to have a finding of implausibility review where it results from inferences than to have a finding of non-credibility review where it results from the conduct of the witness and from inconsistencies in the testimony. The court did not, in saying this, exclude the issue of the plausibility of an account from the Board's field of expertise, nor did it lay down a different test for intervention depending on whether the issue is "plausibility" or "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] For all the above reasons, the application for judicial review is dismissed.
[6] The matter raises no question of general importance for the purpose of certification.
JUDGE
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
May 25, 1998