Application by Wang for judicial review of a decision by the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board refusing his application for refugee or protection status. The applicant was a recent convert to Christianity. He attended an underground church that was raided by the P.S.B. The applicant went into hiding during which time the PSB visited his home and left a summons with his wife. The applicant fled to Canada using a fraudulent passport and claimed refugee protection. The Board rejected the claim on the basis that the applicant failed to establish his identity through acceptable documents. The Division had concerns about the applicant’s school certificate and marriage license and did not find the applicant’s explanation for the non-delivery of other documents from China plausible. The Division accepted the applicant’s driver’s license as genuine, but found that its concerns with the other identity documents meant that the evidence as a whole was not sufficiently credible or trustworthy. The Division also found that the applicant failed to establish he was a restaurant owner in China. The applicant sought judicial review on the grounds that the Board made irreconcilable and contradictory findings of fact.

Application allowed. The assessment of the evidence involved material errors. The conclusion that the applicant had not established nationality was inconsistent with its finding that the applicant established nationality through his passport even though the personal information form indicated the claimant had never used his own passport. The conclusion that the applicant did not establish his personal identity failed to reconcile that finding with the question of the applicant’s nationality. The conclusion that the applicant provided no evidence of restaurant ownership was contradicted by a business license, which the applicant did produce which evidence contradicted the Board’s finding that the applicant had failed to establish he was a restaurant owner. The Panel’s implausibility findings were therefore not reasonable.

Counsel for Applicant: Shelley Levine

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