Derek Achong

A Cana­di­an court has re­ject­ed a bid by a fam­i­ly of three dou­bles ven­dors to block their de­por­ta­tion from that coun­try.

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten judge­ment last Tues­day, Cana­di­an Fed­er­al Court Judge Michael Man­son re­ject­ed Ku­mar, Yo­gi­nee and Ka­reena De­op­er­sads’ le­gal chal­lenge against Cana­da’s Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Safe­ty and Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness, in which they claimed they would suf­fer hard­ship if they were de­port­ed to T&T.

Jus­tice Man­son said: “The re­moval of ap­pli­cants from this coun­try al­most al­ways has hard­ship is­sues as a con­se­quence of re­moval, but those in­her­ent con­se­quences, in this case, do not amount to ir­repara­ble harm.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the De­op­er­sads en­tered Cana­da in Ju­ly 2019 and be­gan re­sid­ing with fam­i­ly mem­bers, who are Cana­di­an cit­i­zens.

The fam­i­ly ap­plied for refugee pro­tec­tion, as they claimed they were vic­tims of in­creas­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in this coun­try. They claimed they were fol­lowed to their home af­ter work and robbed at gun­point.

“The Ap­pli­cants sub­mit that there is crime be­ing com­mit­ted dai­ly against dou­bles ven­dors, in­clud­ing mur­der, and there is no so­lu­tion in place to pro­tect them, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the ris­ing crime rate and the num­ber of il­le­gal guns on the streets,” Jus­tice Man­son said.

Their ap­pli­ca­tion was re­ject­ed by both the Refugee Pro­tec­tion Di­vi­sion and the Refugee Ap­peal Di­vi­sion.

In Feb­ru­ary last year, the fam­i­ly ap­plied for per­ma­nent res­i­dence on hu­man­i­tar­i­an and com­pas­sion­ate grounds. How­ev­er, their ap­pli­ca­tion was al­so re­ject­ed.

In the case be­fore Jus­tice Man­son, the fam­i­ly chal­lenged the re­fusal to grant them a de­fer­ral on their de­por­ta­tions.

Jus­tice Man­son ruled they had failed to es­tab­lish a clear and con­vinc­ing like­li­hood of ir­repara­ble harm.

“The Ap­pli­cants’ al­leged hard­ship re­lies on a gen­er­alised risk of harm, which is not ir­repara­ble, in terms of any like­li­hood of se­ri­ous harm to the ap­pli­cants,” he said, as he or­dered that they be de­port­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.