Customs and Consequences

"The court finds that the board's implausibility finding was not adequately supported by the evidence and was not nourished by content."  Justice Richard Boivin

Just as well, isn't it, that saner heads prevail in parsing details that seem incomprehensible to some, but entirely and comprehensively believable to others.  One might think that someone whose appointment to a refugee hearing board would be adequately sensitive to the background circumstances in certain countries of origin that make for refugees, but one would be wrong, evidently.

In the past, members of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board have demonstrated a predilection to "proving" that they're too attuned to the fallibility of human nature to lie and cheat to get their way, and that they, with the IRB are not readily tricked into believing many of the tales of woe told them by aspirants to refugee status within Canada.

Someone, for example, from China claiming to be a practising Christian yet unable to give finely detailed sacramental accounts to the satisfaction of the adjudicator, only too prepared to smugly turn down the request for asylum.  On the basis that the individual pleading for asylum on the grounds of religious persecution hadn't the data at his ready recollection that many orthodox believers in Canada have scant knowledge of.

Gaston Kipa Numbi had been appointed in his home country of Republic of the Congo to head a government agency whose mandate it was to investigate issues of inappropriate financial appropriations.  His position mandated him to investigate potential impropriety and then on behalf of the state recover unpaid tax or customs payments.

Something completely infelicitous occurred when he discovered at the customs and excise office that the funds meant to be paid to customs were instead transferred to an account that was managed by the president of his country instead, to the tune of a cool $230 million U.S.  Mr. Numbi was unfortunately committed to his job, and indiscreet enough to report this event.

And soon discovered the wrath of the president had been brought down on his head when a colleague forewarned him that security forces were waiting in his office to arrest him.  He took the logical step of going into hiding, then applied for a visitor's visa to Canada, arriving in 2010 and soon declared for refugee protection.

The adjudicator hearing his case, however, found his story to be lacking plausibility and turned down his claim for asylum.  Mr. Numbi appealed to the Federal Court of Canada the result of which was that the IRB's decision was tossed out, and a fresh IRB hearing was granted to Mr. Numbi.

The judge, in reaching his conclusion noted that another whistleblower from the former Zaire, now DRC, had been murdered and his genitals sliced off, in retaliation for bringing attention to a similar financial transaction.

"The main point in the case is that you can't project Canadian values on another country and assume a dictator is going to be happy with a civil servant if they criticize or accuse him of his behaviour.  Even in Canada, I wouldn't think the head of state would be delighted with a civil servant who criticized him", commented his lawyer, Raoul Boulakia.

Canadian heads of government, however, are not in the habit, of threatening, arresting, imprisoning, maiming, and killing those who manage to somehow irritate them by revealing details of their financial corruption.