Date: 19980416
Docket: IMM-4803-97
BETWEEN:
SHAHRZAD ARIA,
Applicant,
- and -
MINISTER OF CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION,
Respondent.
REASONS FOR LEAVE
MULDOON, J.
[1] There is an "Alice in Wonderland" aspect to the impugned decision dated October 24, 1997, file # 3708-31103405, and to the respondent's counsel's captivated support of that decision. The decision is perverse, as if the decision-maker were unable to grasp the meaning of the words "humanitarian" and "compassionate". The respondent's attitude toward the applicant and treatment of her are neither humanitarian nor compassionate.
[2] The respondent's counsel argues at p. 5, para. 20 of his memorandum by means of the following statement of the Supreme Court of Canada:
| The criteria by which the exercise of a statutory discretion must be judged have been defined in many authoritative cases, and it is well settled that if the discretion has been exercised bona fide, uninfluenced by irrelevant considerations and not arbitrarily or illegally, no court is entitled to interfere even if the court, had the discretion been theirs, might have exercised it otherwise. |
| Boulis v. M.M.I., [1974] S.C.R. 875 at 876, 26 D.L.R. (3d) 216 (S.C.C.) |
| Bell Canada v. Canada (CRTC), [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1722 at 1745-1746, 38 Admin.L.R. 1 (S.C.C.). |
[3] The trouble is that the decision and supporting argument exhibit all those faults and the decision flies in the face of right reasoning, common sense and compassion.
[4] This Court adopts and ratifies all of that which the applicant's counsel states in the applicant's memorandum of law and argument. What is of lethal risk to the applicant is shari'a, the Islamic code of law which is applied with fanatic strictness in the applicant's country of origin, a matter on which the respondent's decision-makers should take notice and be well informed. They should also know that this is the code which prescribes harsh punishments of amputations, decapitation and lapidation (or stoning to death); and which makes the word of a man twice as weighty as the word of a woman.
[5] The maker of the impugned decision apparently failed to take note of the warning inscribed in the Iranian passport issued to the applicant:
| ATTENTION: |
| IN CASE THE BEARER OF THIS PASSPORT OR THE COMPANION(S) CONDUCT ANY ACT OUTSIDE IRAN WHICH IS AGAINST THE PRINCIPLES OF THIS ISLAMIC REPUBLIC, HE OR SHE WILL NOT BE PERMITTED TO DEPART THE COUNTRY IN THE FUTURE. |
| (Applicant's Record, p. 38) |
In view of the applicant's husband's malicious allegations, the fact that she has been alone in the company of men not her husband, father or brother, (a matter of no importance in the secular State which is Canada) and the fact that two of three writers of reference letters in her favour are men (and the paranoid inferences which may be drawn therefrom) are all matters which could lead to her lapidation by order of some run-of-the-mill fanatic mullah if she be returned to Iran, quite apart from her pro-monarchy opinions. These transcend the marital relationship, and demonstrate a real chance of persecution by the theocratic State. All of this, which should be known to an immigration officer worth her salt, was clearly ignored. It is neither humanitarian nor compassionate to send this woman to probable imprisonment, more torture or lapidation in her theocratic country of origin.
[6] Leave is granted.
Judge
Ottawa, Ontario
April 16, 1998