In Adams v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2021 FC 1104, an applicant alleged that they had sent Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC“) e-mail correspondence. IRCC maintained that they had never received it and questioned whether it had been sent.
The Federal Court of Canada determined that the onus was on the applicant to show that a document was sent.
The Applicant as proof attached an affidavit stating that an extension request letter was sent as an attachment to an e-mail on January 2, 2020. They also included as an exhibit a printout from the Applicant’s spouse’s Gmail account, showing an unlabelled message from January 2, 2020 at 08:42 to an IRCC e-mail address.
The Federal Court held that there were several deficiencies with this, including:
- The e-mail was not accompanied by an acknowledgement of receipt or confirmation of read receipt;
- There was no printout from the e-mail inbox to show that there was no bounce-back to the message;
- The printout did not show that the e-mail was not in the e-mail sent box.
- That other e-mails that the Applicant sent to IRCC were received.
- That the Applicant in an e-mail on January 6, 2020 did not reference the previous extension request.
- That the Applicant did not follow-up with IRCC.
These all should serve as useful tips to applicants sending correspondence to IRCC.