Federal Court of Appeal Decisions

Date: 20001003

Docket: A-390-99

CORAM:      LINDEN J.A.

         EVANS J.A.

         SHARLOW J.A.

BETWEEN:

     OLEG KOROZ

     Appellant

     (Applicant in the Trial Division)

     - and -

     THE MINISTER

     Respondent

     (Respondent in the Trial Division)

     REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

     (Delivered from the Bench at Ottawa, Ontario on

     Tuesday, October 3, 2000)

LINDEN J.A.

[1]      The appellant, Oleg Koroz, was born in Moldova. He came to Canada in 1997 and claimed to be a Convention refugee on the basis of alleged persecution he suffered there because his mother is Jewish. In a decision dated May 1, 1998, a two member panel of the Convention Refugee Determination Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (CRDD) denied his claim on the basis of the existence of an internal flight alternative in Moldova. An application for judicial review of that decision was dismissed at (1999), 170 F.T.R. 308, [1999] F.C.J. No. 951 (QL). The Motions Judge, however, certified a question to permit an appeal to this Court.

[2]      A number of issues were initially raised in the appeal, but at the outset of the hearing, counsel for the appellant abandoned all the issues, except for the one raised in the certified question, which slightly amended on the recommendation of counsel, is as follows:

May a panel of the Board "adopt the same reasoning as another panel" faced with the same documentary evidence as a basis for finding the existence of an internal flight alternative in the same country?

[3]      In our view, the question must be answered in the affirmative, where the documentary evidence is virtually the same in both cases as it was here. This does not mean that a panel can blindly adopt factual findings of other panels. Where the question is one of fact-finding concerning general country conditions at approximately the same time, however, a panel may rely on the reasoning of an earlier panel on the same documentary evidence. Where the analysis of one panel on the same evidence on such a question commends itself to a later panel, there is no legal bar to the second panel relying on it.

[4]      The technique used in this case, however, of appending part of the reasons of the first panel to the reasons of the second one was correctly described as "unusual" by the Motions Judge; we would add that it is a shortcut practice that should not be used. In our view, to adopt the reasoning of another panel, in the circumstances of this case, does not signify a failure by the panel to exercise independent judgment.

[5]      Despite the able argument of counsel for the appellant, the appeal will be dismissed.

     "A.M. Linden"

     J.A.