jonas10 said:
I was invited to take the test on August 4th 2015 and passed. On August 10 2015 as per my inquire I wrote a letter to the Edmonton office informing them of dates I would be out of the country and to please not have my oath on that date.
I received no reply.
My spouse received a letter in September noting my citizenship oath would be on October 20th 2015. I immediately wrote a letter stating that I was out of the country returning in December requesting my oath ceremony be postponed until my return.
I received no reply.
I wrote another letter to the Edmonton office on November 4th 2015 within the 30 day period explaining why I was not at the oath ceremony noting that I was out of the country and requesting a revised oath ceremony.
I received no reply.
Today in February 2016 I have now received a letter that my reason of being out of the country was not sufficient. I even informed them before the oath date was set I would not be here and to please not setup the oath during that period!
What do I do now? I'm so frustrated. I have a young child born here and a job here and dont want to reapply all over again. I wish they just would have told me in August or September or even October that my reason was insufficient and I would have made changes accordingly. Why tell me in February 2016 that my 3 letters were in valid 7 months after my first letter?
Time is limited. I do not know even a superficial amount of the facts that are relevant to whether or not it would be worth your while to seek further recourse. To my view, a
consultation with a lawyer ASAP, to at least go over the specific details of your case, toward obtaining an opinion about what recourse you might have, what might be worth pursuing, would be the prudent thing to do.
It warrants noting that the procedures are fairly flexible, to some extent lenient, relative to missing other scheduled events, but relative to the oath ceremony the statute is more strict. See section 13.2(1)(b) in the
Citizenship Act
http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-29/page-5.html#h-7
Basically the statute calls for an application to be deemed abandoned if the applicant fails to appear without reasonable excuse. It is a one-time opportunity. Technically the statute says the Minister
may deem the application abandoned, but what that mostly means is that the Minister has broad discretion to waive the failure to appear.
My guess: the reason for being outside Canada, and the overall amount of time spent outside Canada while the application was pending, are important factors in whether it would be worth pursuing recourse. Additionally, the actual explanations you submitted in your letters is probably important. Potential avenues of recourse might include seeking a Writ of Mandamus ordering the Minister to proceed with the application, or in making an application for leave to appeal; there may be other avenues, like making a formal request to CIC/IRCC to reconsider or asking for a hearing.
I cannot say with confidence, but I would think that the fact you had notified CIC in advance of the dates you were unavailable to take the oath
should be a significant consideration in assessing whether your entitlement to fair procedure was denied. (With the caveat that the duration of time involved and extent of the notice might have been sufficient for the procedure to have met fair procedure requirements.)
Time is limited, however, so if you are going to seek recourse you need to get on this soon . . . and while technically you do not necessarily need a lawyer, practically you do.
(This aspect, about whether a lawyer is necessary, I addressed in the other topic about making an application for leave to appeal.)
Some further observations:
Regarding the procedures:
Via your letters you made an informal application that CIC/IRCC waive
your failure to appear at the time you were scheduled for the oath. It took time for CIC/IRCC to make a determination. It always takes CIC/IRCC time to make decisions. Essentially what happened is that CIC/IRCC denied your request for a waiver of the failure to appear for the oath.
It is not true that you did not receive a reply to at least two of your letters.
The reply to the first letter was the notice to schedule your oath more than two months later (after your first letter), with what appears to have been around at least a month's advance notice of the date for the oath (which is significantly more notice than many get, double the amount of notice I got for mine). From CIC's perspective, this is probably considered to be plenty of time for someone who is living and working in Canada to make arrangements to be at the oath, even if they are traveling abroad.
The reply to the letter submitted after the scheduled oath was the notice that your reason for being out of the country was not acceptable.
Regarding the substantive merits:
While the original Operational Bulletin governing the abandonment of citizenship applications is now expired, my recall is that it was still applicable as of last August (when you sent your request to not schedule the oath until you had returned from abroad). That OB is now replaced by instructions in the new format, in Program Delivery Instructions.
For reference:
-- the previously applicable OB was OB 476-B (
this should link)
-- the current PDI prescribes the procedure for abandonment (
this should link)
The PDI is less specific, and in particular does not offer examples of what is a
reasonable explanation, or an
unacceptable explanation.
OB 476-B, however, did, and its example of an
unacceptable explanation was this:
Applicant lives or continually travels abroad and wants to wait until next trip to Canada.
The OB acknowledged that on occasion the reasons offered might be difficult to assess.
While the explicit examples are not part of the current PDI, I am quite sure they nonetheless represent the general approach taken in assessing explanations for requests to reschedule or excuse absence at the oath.
This aspect is a large part of why I said, above, that the actual reasons for the travel and the duration of your time abroad while the application was pending are important factors in whether or not deeming your application abandoned would judged fair or reasonable. However, the content of your letters, the reasons you stated, also matter; this is especially true if the only recourse is an application seeking leave to appeal, since this application will be determined based on what is in the record, that is, based on whether it was unreasonable to terminate your application based on what was stated in your letter (probably no chance to further explain the reasons for the lengthy absence).
