. . . in my opinion if you could be little short and sweet with your replies you be more effective and reach a vast majority of people on this forum.
Perhaps. But I do the best I can do. I am no expert. I am typically addressing more complicated aspects of the process, often dealing with thorny tangents, which often also tend to be clouded by confusion, misunderstanding, or outright misinformation.
The lawyer quoted, for example, basically stated two propositions, short at least, even if not so sweet:
-- 2.9 years "is not enough" to get a Writ of Mandamus, and
-- better to stop bugging IRCC with unnecessary requests
True and good advice.
The response: "
Baseless" was one response. Time to get a new lawyer was another.
This dichotomy plays again and again here, like a broken record. Like so many "
discussions" in all sorts of venues these days, the trend and tendency is to take sides. One side, sometimes both, largely in disregard of the truth.
I make an effort to illuminate the reasons and rationale, to provide information which can enable those who want to know how to better evaluate the propositions, to figure out how things work and how that affects their own situations, their own cases. That tends to get weedy. And the combination of a weedy subject and wordy writer (yes, I tend to be wordy, one of my many flaws) makes for a long read. But that's the best I got.
Note that just yesterday alone the subject of mandamus took center stage in at least three citizenship topics (one apparently has been deleted), all oriented to talking about mandamus as a remedy for how long the process is taking. Two of those discussions bring up a recent Federal Court decision that is NOT about processing citizenship applications, focused on the ruling in that decision there was an "unreasonable delay" in processing a refugee PR application, warranting the grant of a Writ of Mandamus. The most common take-away, the highlights, focused on the length of the delay, overlooking or failing to understand that the length of the delay was merely a factor, and not the key factor.
The nature of the Minister's decision-making, most notably the nature and scope of the Minister's discretion, at issue in the FC ruling by Justice Ahmed in regards to the Abdulrhman Taskia PR application (see
https://canlii.ca/t/jgv01 ), is different from the Minister's decision-making and discretion in processing a grant citizenship application. This alone dilutes if not precludes any direct application of Justice Ahmed's conclusions to citizenship applications. Explaining that is complicated. I do not intend to explain it here, now, but will say there are a number of older Mandamus cases cited in Justice Ahmed's decision which offer a detailed outline of the key elements in a Mandamus case and how, in particular, the type of discretion involved can make a big difference in what influence the length of a delay might have. There is no way to even describe this let alone explain it sufficiently to document how it works without, well, going long. Especially for me.
And that is just one aspect of the Taskia case which makes drawing any conclusions about the availability of Mandamus in citizenship application processing complicated,
weedy, prone to the long read. Others include the very limited role that Federal Court decisions have in establishing precedent. (Takes a decision at least at the Federal Court of Appeal level to formally establish precedent in law governing grant citizenship and in regards to many if not most immigration issues.)
And mostly there is the fact that length of time itself does not determine what is "reasonable" or "unreasonable," or as Justice Ahmed phrased it "
There is no uniform length of time for the limit of what is reasonable."
As I noted in my previous post, "
This is not to say time is irrelevant. It can be an important factor in weighing other elements of the case for asserting the Minister has failed to do something the law clearly mandates the Minister do."
For the continuing discussion about the possibility of mandamus relief because how long the process is taking, trying to explain just how time factors into the calculation, and sufficiently recognizing the extent to which it is NOT about how long it has been, that gets even more complicated.
The short answer is that, for the vast majority of applicants, it is best to forget seeking mandamus just because it has been two going on three years, or even more. It is an answer that has been posted here dozens if not hundreds of times. Yet the discussion goes on. Just this morning, the same individual who reported the lawyer saying 33 months is not a basis for getting mandamus, who appeared to get it, to get that what the lawyer said is indeed how it is, how it works, that same individual has just this morning reported talking to additional lawyers . . . AND getting the same answer. Reporting this in one of those ongoing discussions here about the remedy of mandamus for citizenship application delays. The beat goes on.
So I make an effort to explain things in more depth, hoping it helps some even if the ongoing discussion in the forum tends to remain focused on sound bites people want to hear rather than get a good grasp of how things really do work.
For those actually interested, the Abdulrhman Taskia case (see
https://canlii.ca/t/jgv01 ) itself is way more informative than the Star article about it, and there are some other decisions cited in the Taskia decision which offer a lot more context and analysis.
