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Immigration - Pre-Removal Risk Assessments (PRRA). Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v. Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers
In Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v. Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (Fed CA, 2024) the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal of a JR, here where the successful JR applicant argued that immigration inadmissibility [under IRPA, s.34(1)(a) and (f) - 'Inadmissibility - Security'] required that the applicant was a member of an organization that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages, has engaged or will engage in espionage "contrary to Canada’s interests", and that such espionage have a Canadian nexus.
Here the court considers 'pre-removal risk assessments' (PRRA):[100] There are other provisions of IRPA that constrain the interpretation of paragraph 34(1)(a) that were not considered by the ID. An example is the criteria that come into play when the Minister is conducting a pre-removal risk assessment (PRRA). A PRRA is a process whereby an individual subject to a removal order may apply to the Minister for protection, resulting in refugee protection or a stay of the removal order: see IRPA, subsection. 112 and 114(1).
[101] As the Supreme Court observed at paragraph 93 of Mason, the Minister must ordinarily consider the danger that a PRRA applicant would be subjected to torture, the risk to their life, and a risk they would be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment or punishment in a PRRA application.
[102] However, the PRRA process for persons found inadmissible on security grounds under subsection 34(1) of IRPA does not permit consideration of whether they meet the criteria for protection under the Refugee Convention. The Minister does, however, have to consider "“whether the application should be refused because of the nature and severity of acts committed by the applicant or because of the danger that the applicant constitutes to the security of Canada”" [my emphasis]: IRPA, s. 113(d)(ii).
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