There continues to be plenty of ongoing activity at the
https://www.canlii.org/en/ site, including publication of ten Federal Court decisions this year, just two business days into the year, and IRCC was a party in seven of those decisions (mostly refugee appeals); but it appears the site has not published any IAD decisions since August.
So CanII is still operational in most regards but, it appears, it has not been publishing IAD decisions since August. And yeah, this is a big deal, the published IAD decisions has constituted one of the most useful resources for figuring out a lot about things like how the Residency Obligation is enforced in actual cases.
The operational manual for appeals before the IAD, that is ENF 19 Appeals before the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), was updated in August. The summary of changes says there are updates regarding "
directions on recording final decisions in GCMS."
But I do not see where the changes to ENF 19 would affect CanII access to and publication of decisions. It might be hard to dismiss the concurrence of the update and the subsequent absence of IAD decision in CanII (last IAD decision published in CanII was August 19, and this manual was updated August 22), but actually it was in mid-May when the steady publication of IAD decisions in CanII abruptly ended, there being only two heavily redacted decisions published since then.
Demands further research. The IAD decisions are an important resource.
The only thing I see that has changed much is CanII not publishing IAD decisions, as discussed above. Asylum cases have long dominated the immigration related "
cases" published by CanII, recognizing that in response to a search of CanII it lists decisions in multiple forums under "
cases," thus including both Federal Court and IAD decisions, as well as published decisions in other forums, including the Federal Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of Canada, and numerous adjudicatory bodies throughout the Canadian government. For decisions specifically by a particular forum, CanII facilitates a search of just that particular forum or, alternatively, use the filter provided to just show a particular forum's decisions.
The majority of published Federal Court decisions have long been refugee appeals, followed by appeals in regards to denied visa or permit applications and appeals in regards to inadmissibility for criminality (including both PRs and FNs). Very few RO enforcement cases reach the Federal Court (but those that do are important sources of information about how the law is applied in actual cases).
Until mid-May last year, a lot of the cases published at CanII were IAD decisions, and a large percentage of these were about RO enforcement, mostly about whether the PR should be allowed to keep PR status despite a breach of the RO based on H&C considerations. If we have lost easy access to these decisions that will really hamper efforts to stay well informed about RO enforcement. Not only did those decisions articulate the reasons why, or why not, the PR kept or lost status, but they often described many of the underlying facts and procedures, and typically described the position the Minister takes. It was in the IAD decisions we saw a dramatic increase, during the last five or so years, in the extent to which the Minister was arguing who-accompanied-whom issues in regards to some PRs living outside Canada with a Canadian citizen spouse.
There is nothing in any of this which appears likely to influence RO enforcement at the Port-of-Entry. So, in regards to "
How will this affect reporting of PRs who're in RO beach," if by "reporting" you are referring to the formal preparation of a 44(1) Report for RO breaches, there is no indication it will have any effect.
Please delete the misquote attributed to me.
The content you purport to have quoted from me was posted by another forum participant who is among a number here making a concerted effort to be informative.
"I asked a simple question for the very simple statement made, and these messages explaining existing discretion doesn't answer how it will be manifest for these specific cases to become more or less lenient."
No one here is answering what confidential criteria border officials are applying. That's confidential. We don't have access to that information.
That said, it is not as if the Minister is issuing a directive to be "
more or less lenient." That's not how it works. The directives almost certainly identify various factors and how those factors should be weighed, which in turn will have an impact that is more lenient, or less lenient. Thus, even though neither CBSA or IRCC publicly disclosed how officers were to handle returning PRs in RO breach following the Covid pandemic, it was clear from anecdotal reporting that both CBSA and IRCC were giving the impact of Covid a good deal of weight and generally, overall, approaching RO enforcement more leniently during that time . . . not because there was a directive to be more, or less, lenient, but almost certainly because there was a directive to take the impact of Covid into consideration and give that considerable weight. And that direction has almost certainly been modified if not withdrawn, probably some time ago, so that the guidelines for officers no longer direct them to give Covid reasons the weight they were given in the wake of the pandemic.
Bottom-line: if your complaint or criticism is contesting the statement by
@canuck78 that the probability of a PR in breach of the RO being subject to inadmissibility proceedings also "
depends on directives from gvt about whether they should enforce or show leniency," that's parsing the language used in search of a reason to challenge, to criticize, rather than trying to understand the gist of it, which is true, and that is that the way officers exercise their discretion is subject to and directed by rules and guidelines adopted by the Minister, which will in turn affect how lenient or strict the enforcement of the RO is.
Again, the period of rather obviously lenient enforcement in the wake of Covid is a prime example. In contrast, another example is the increased strictness in how the accompanying a Canadian citizen spouse RO credit is applied, which is interesting because this was well evident in decisions by IRCC officers (mostly those denying PR TD applications) but NOT in decisions made by CBSA officers -- it is not certain but it appears that the Minister of IRCC approved or adopted a more strict approach (as mostly evidenced by the arguments made by the IRCC Minister's representatives before the IAD and Federal Court), whereas there has been no indication that the Minister of PSEP (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, which administers CBSA) has directed border officials in this way.
