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Appeals - SOE - Remedies. Vetrici v. Canada (Attorney General)
In Vetrici v. Canada (Attorney General) (Fed CA, 2025) the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal from a JR of a CRB-CERB matter.
The court considered the SOR for discretionary decisions, here the choice of remedies:[8] With respect, this argument denotes a misconception of the applicable legal principles. Determining what remedy is the proper remedy on judicial review is a matter of discretion for the Federal Court (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, at para. 139 (Vavilov); Canadian Pacific Railway Company v. Sauvé, 2024 FCA 171 at para. 54 (Sauvé)). The only relevant standard of review for such decisions is the one we apply on appeal (Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority Inc. v. Yang, 2023 FCA 47 at para. 47; Canada v. Long Plain First Nation, 2015 FCA 177 at paras. 88–89 (Long Plain First Nation); Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v. Tennant, 2018 FCA 132 at para. 27). As this Court stated in Long Plain First Nation at paragraph 88, those decisions are not about what the administrative decision-maker has decided, a realm where the administrative law standards of review apply, but rather what the Court should do in terms of remedy. Under the appellate standard of review, questions of law are reviewed on a standard of correctness, whereas findings of fact and questions of mixed fact and law, from which no question of law is extricable, are not reversed absent a palpable and overriding error (Housen v. Nikolaisen, 2002 SCC 33).
[9] Here, we see no such errors. The Federal Court correctly directed itself on the law, noting that directing a specific outcome is a discretion that should be exercised in rare cases only. This would be the case, for instance, where a particular outcome is inevitable or where it is necessary to avoid "“an endless merry-go-round of judicial reviews and subsequent considerations”" (Federal Court’s decision at paras. 8–10; see also Vavilov at para. 142; Sauvé at para. 54). The Federal Court concluded that the outcome sought by the appellant was not inevitable as the evidence before it did not unequivocally establish income. Further, the appellant had identified additional proof of income. According to the Federal Court, the Agency had to be given an opportunity to consider that evidence. The Federal Court concluded as well that there was nothing on record suggesting that the appellant was caught in an endless merry-go-round. These conclusions raise questions of mixed fact and law subject to the highly deferential standard of palpable and overriding error (Canada v. South Yukon Forest Corporation, 2012 FCA 145, at para. 46). We see no basis to interfere with them.
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