Section 63(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (“IRPA“) provides that:
A foreign national who holds a permanent resident visa may appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division against a decision to make a removal order against them made under subsection 44(2) or made at an admissibility hearing.
The jurisprudence around this section has seemingly been to narrow it.
Jurisprudence
Ismail v. Canada
On June 5, 2015, the appellants in Elham Fathy Elsayed Ismail et al v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, A-203-15, discontinued their appeal of the Federal Court’s decision in Ismail v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2015 FC 338 (“Ismail“). That question was:
For the purposes of determining its jurisdiction to hear an appeal pursuant to subsection 63(2) of the IRPA, shall the validity of the permanent resident visa be assessed by the IAD at the time of arrival in Canada or at the time the exclusion order is made?
The question is important because it addresses a growing tendency of the Canada Border Services Agency (“CBSA“) to defer the examination of foreign nationals possessing permanent resident visas seeking to become permanent residents where CBSA suspects that the foreign nationals may not be admissible to Canada, rather than preparing an inadmissibility report. During the deferral period, the CBSA will then contact Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (“IRCC“), who, often without providing the prospective permanent resident with any notice, cancel the permanent resident visa. CBSA can then deny entry to Canada on the basis that the person does not have a valid permanent resident visa rather than for the underlying possible inadmissibility. Many immigration practitioners have suspected that the reason for this is to prevent the prospective permanent resident from having a right of appeal to the Immigration Appeal Division (the “IAD“).
Paraphrasing the Federal Court’s decision, the facts in Ismail, which are common and illustrative of the legal issue at dispute, were:
Ms. Ismail applied to come to Canada under the skilled workers program. She submitted a language testing certificate and was granted a permanent resident visa, along with her family.
The family arrived at the Lester B. Pearson Airport on October 30, 2011. They presented their permanent resident visas and were examined by an immigration officer. During an interview with the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA officer checked a computer database and noticed that a visa officer in Cairo had determined that Ms. Ismail’s language test results were fraudulent but that for some reason Citizenship and Immigration Canada nonetheless issued the visas.
The family were not landed as immigrants at the airport, but were permitted to enter Canada under section 23 of the IRPA for the purpose of attending an examination at a later date. Prior to the examination, on November 23, 2011, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada visa officer revoked the family’s permanent resident visas. They then attended an examination on December 2, 2011 and exclusion orders were issued against all three, given that they did not have valid visas. The family sought to appeal the exclusion orders to the Immigration Appeal Division (the “IAD“), pursuant to subsection 63(2) of the IRPA.
A plain reading of IRPA s. 63(2) would have suggested that the family could have appealed to the IAD. IAD panel members have previously interpreted IRPA to give them this jurisdiction. In Khan v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), for example, the IAD stated that:
I am of the view that the Immigration Appeal Division has specifically been given the jurisdiction to consider humanitarian and compassionate grounds where reports are written with respect to permanent resident visa holders in order to deal with situations where a change in circumstances has been identified by the examining officer and landing does not take place. The validity of the already presented visa may become questionable, however, in my view; the appellant by virtue of having presented that visa has already passed the threshold of being eligible to appeal any decision flowing from their examination. I find that everything that occurred post presentation of the visa becomes irrelevant with respect to the appellant’s right to appeal.
In Ismail, however, the Federal Court disagreed. Justice de Montigny stated:
The examination process is not completed until a determination is made that a person has a right or is entitled to enter Canada as a temporary or permanent resident, and the visa can be revoked until that determination is made. The fact that a person has entered Canada and triggered the examination process has no bearing on the power to revoke the visa.
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It is clear from a textual, contextual and purposive analysis of both section 63(2) and the IRPA as a whole that a right of appeal is granted only to a person who “holds” a valid permanent resident visa at the time the exclusion report is issued. Parliament could have drafted that section differently, to include for example, persons who hold “or have held” a valid permanent resident visa. Parliament chose otherwise, and courts must enforce clear legislative intention.
I agree, therefore, with the IAD that foreign nationals who are found to be inadmissible at the port-of-entry or at a deferred examination will have a right of appeal to that tribunal only when their inadmissibility does not relate to the absence of a permanent resident visa. Such will be the case where there has been a change in circumstances since the visa was issued, for example, as a result of a criminal conviction or of a new medical condition. In those circumstances, an exclusion order will be appealable before the IAD, and humanitarian and compassionate factors may then be taken into consideration. When the inadmissibility relates to the absence of a permanent resident visa (whether a permanent resident visa has never been issued or has been revoked), however, the only recourse will be an application for judicial review in this Court.
This interpretation of IRPA does not appear to prevent the CBSA from simply deferring examination for any possible inadmissibility and IRCC subsequently cancelling a visa. This would render the protections afforded in IRPA s. 63(a) meaningless. Justice de Montigny somewhat addressed this issue by stating:
It goes without saying that visa and immigration officers are presumed to act in good faith. In the unlikely event that a visa was revoked to thwart Parliament’s intention and to preclude the possibility of a legitimate appeal pursuant to subsection 63(2), this Court could be called upon to intervene on judicial review and could quash the decision to revoke a visa for improper or impermissible motives.
This, however, is even more confusing. What is a legitimate appeal and what is not? What grounds of inadmissibility will warrant a deferral of examination, and what will not? When must CBSA issue the inadmissibility report, and when can it defer examination? If intention is the determining factor, will the onus be on applicants to figure out whether the intention of CBSA officers were to legitimately thwart Parliament or to legitimately defer examination?
Pepa v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration)
Pepa v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FCA 102, involved the following certified question:
Is it reasonable for the Immigration Appeal Division to find that it does not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal pursuant to subsection 63(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27 if the permanent resident visa is expired at the time the removal order is issued?
Here, Ms. Pepa came to Canada with a valid permanent resident visa in March 2018. Her permanent resident visa expired on September 16, 2018.
When Ms. Pepa arrived in Canada she disclosed that she had gotten married. The CBSA prepared an admissibility report against her, which were issued to her on April 6, 2018. The Immigration Division hearing was scheduled on September 25, 2018, and a further hearing was held on October 16, 2018. At the conclusion of the Immigration Division hearing she was issued an Exclusion Order for not having disclosed her marriage to IRCC. Ms. Pepa then tried to appeal to the IAD. The IAD determined that it lacked jurisdiction, citing Ismail, because when the removal order was issued, her visa had expired and so was no longer valid.
The Federal Court of Appeal upheld this decision, in part citing Zhang v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2007 FC 593, where the Court stated:
If subsection 63(2) applied to “invalid” visas, like those that have been revoked, would it also apply to ones that have expired? This logic defies common sense. From reading Ms. Zhang’s submissions, it appears that any foreign national holding a visa in his hand would be entitled to an appeal under subsection 63(2), regardless of whether the Canadian government intended to give that document any legal effect. The fact that Ms. Zhang still held the physical copy of her visa did not change the legal consequence of its revocation. Rather than pursuing an appeal of the immigration officer’s removal order before the Board, she should have sought judicial review of the officer’s decision in this Court. That option was still open to her, despite the fact that she did not qualify for an appeal under subsection 63(2).
On June 27, 2025, the Surpeme Court of Canada set aside the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision, finding that the IAD’s interpretation led to absurd consequences. Some of the key passages include:
Reviewing courts should not ask how they themselves would have resolved an issue, but should instead focus on whether the decision made by the administrative decision maker — including both the rationale for the decision and the outcome to which it led — was unreasonable (Vavilov, at paras. 75 and 83). A reviewing court should not create its “own yardstick and then use [it] to measure what the [administrative decision maker] did” (para. 83, and Canada Post Corp., at para. 40, both quoting Delios v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 FCA 117, 100 Admin. L.R. (5th) 301, at para. 28). Nor should a reviewing court ask “what decision it would have made in place of that of the administrative decision maker, attempt to ascertain the ‘range’ of possible conclusions that would have been open to the decision maker, conduct a de novo analysis or seek to determine the ‘correct’ solution to the problem” (Vavilov, at para. 83; see also Canada Post Corp., at para. 40).
[..]
On its face, the purpose and object of s. 63(2) is to enable holders of permanent resident visas an opportunity to challenge the legal validity of a removal order (which may include an exclusion order) issued against them by way of an appeal to the IAD. It creates a statutory right of appeal intended to operate as a procedural and substantive safeguard, a check and balance as it were, on administrative decision making in favour of people who successfully obtained a permanent resident visa, but are ordered to leave the country. Parliament obviously understood that a defining and inherent characteristic of an appeal is that it arises as part of a process of decision making, and is a second step after the initial decision has been made. The desired oversight occurs in a well-established sequence, such that the appeal will necessarily be based on the decision which is its subject matter, and arise only after that decision has been made.
This purpose must be kept in mind when interpreting s. 63(2) to determine when the person must hold the required visa. The legislative history of s. 63(2) provides limited guidance. Notably, s. 63(2) does not prescribe the time at which the individual must hold that visa, or whether a visa which has since expired is still considered to have been “held” at the relevant time. By way of comparison, the former s. 70(2)(b) required the visa to be “valid”, set out a specific point in time for when the person had to be in possession of the valid visa, and allowed for a visitor’s visa to count. The current s. 63(2) shares none of these features and instead provides a right of appeal that is less limited and more open-ended. No clear rationale emerges with respect to why this section was enacted to replace the former provision and why Parliament chose not to prescribe when the requisite visa must be held.
[..]
The IAD’s approach and outcome renders a visa holder’s appeal eligibility contingent on how quickly any post-arrival inadmissibility case brought against them moves through the system, a result that is particularly problematic for visa holders whose visa expires within a short period of time. The IAD’s interpretation results in the possibility that a visa holder can lose their right to appeal before the decision is taken — in Ms. Pepa’s case, before the hearing has even begun. The question is whether it is reasonable to assume that Parliament intended that result. Based on the provision’s wording, purpose, and legislative history, Parliament could not have intended a result which is both absurd and arbitrary.
[..]
The only interpretation that does not face these same grave disqualifications is the one put forward by Ms. Pepa: that the validity of the permanent resident visa, for an appeal under s. 63(2), is assessed by the IAD at the time of arrival in Canada.