Fired for Cause, not Discriminatory

"When he used his title in a letter supporting a friend's, client's, or potential client's immigration application, [Kalisa] did so in an effort to increase the chances that it would be approved."

"If it was approved, and the client or potential client became able to travel to Canada to view properties, [Kalisa] could gain a personal and business advantage, whether in the short or long term."

It seems unlikely to me that that trend would continue for 13 years ... if the grievor was merely confirming to those concerned that their applications were  being processed."

"I find that it is more likely than not that he shared additional information not available to the public about the status of the applications in question."

Labour Tribunal

Photo: Bohao Zhao

 A recently published online February decision of the federal labour tribunal confirmed the firing in 2017 of a longtime Canada Border Services Agency employee, while Placide Kalisa, who was contesting  his dismissal, characterized it as discriminatory, given his ethnicity. He plans to contest his firing confirmation by filing discrimination lawsuits against the CBSA and  his former union which had refused to represent his grievance against his firing.

Placide Kalisa was found, for 13 years of his employment with the federal border services, to have accessed government databases improperly, passing confidential information on to immigration applicants, among them some who would become his clients as an after-work real estate agent. Kalisa was a senior program officer, his job was to recommend whether the agency could safely remove inadmissible foreign nationals to certain countries. 

 

Deeply connected to the Rwandan community in Canada, Kalisa had emigrated decades earlier from Rwanda, and worked as a part-time real estate agent and manager. The tribunal had found that Kalisa had committed dozens pf "worrisome" unauthorized searches of  sensitive CBSA and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada databases from 2003 to his suspension in 2016. Some of those who benefited from his illegal intervention later became his real estate clients.

 

Canada Border Services Agency patch

In the space of two months, Kalisa had searched an IRCC database on 32 occasions after a Rwandan identified in the decision as "A.K." contacted him to ask why it was that his visa application had been denied.  Once he confirmed that A.K.'s background cleared any suspicion of having been involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Kalisa undertook an invitation letter for the man and his spouse, asking a colleague to sign in his stead. 

 

Kalisa was aware that A.K.'s purpose in coming to Canada was to acquire a condominium, and his invitation letter would support the visa applicant persuasively. Indeed, Kalisa had admitted he had written invitation letters and had conducted database searches for some seven individuals at the very least; each letter identified him as a CBSA employee which his agency title made clear.

 

While Kalisa denied wrongdoing throughout the grievance process, the tribunal dismissed his explanations for his actions, terming his testimony "implausible or unpersuasive". Kalisa, who required a top-secret security clearance for his CBSA work, had somehow forgotten to inform his employer that one of his friends happened to be a suspected criminal. The Rwandan embassy had given Kalisa a list of suspected war criminals with his friend's name on it.

 

Placide Kalisa, Realtor

Because Kalisa said he was certain his friend was not a war criminal, he failed to disclose his relationship, he explained to an unimpressed tribunal. "It was not for [Kalisa] to decide whether the embassy was right or wrong to include D.N.'s name on a list of suspected war criminals ... He was obligated to inform his manager of his association with D.N. He did not", the tribunal wrote. 

 

A series of trips that Kalisa took to Rwanda booked by D.N. led the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to begin an investigation that motivated CBSA to look into the work activities of its employee, in 2014. Two years on, CBSA reviewed Kalisa's security clearance, and his unauthorized searches in CBSA and IRCC databases were revealed, leading to his suspension and finally, his firing. 

"Since 2015, database usage -- including all adds/moves/changes/deletes -- are captured, logged, and stored to a repository which is accessible for internal auditing functions."

"Any new or updated systems are required to record to this system for auditing purposes."

Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson Rebecca Purdy