2. Prepare for your hearing
Question and answer
Can I lose my refugee status because I gave untrue information?Get help from a lawyer or other licensed representative to defend yourself in a vacation case. Vacation cases are difficult and usually end with the losing their status.
You need help to prepare and to answer questions at your hearing. Your representative can also make submissions for you.
How the RPD decides
The two key questions in a vacation case are:
- Did you really misrepresent in your original refugee case?
- If the misrepresentation is corrected, is there still enough reliable evidence left from your original refugee case to justify your refugee protection?
Misrepresentation means giving untrue or incorrect information or leaving out important information.
If there is still enough other reliable evidence from the original refugee process to justify refugee protection, then you can keep your refugee protection.
If there is not, then your refugee protection will be vacated.
Evidence
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) usually files evidence from your original refugee matter. They also usually file new evidence that explains why they think you misrepresented.
You can file evidence that addresses the two questions above. For example, you can file:
- parts of your original evidence from your refugee claim if CBSA left some of it out
- new evidence that challenges the strength of CBSA's new evidence or that shows that some or all your original evidence was genuine and trustworthy
But you cannot give new evidence just to make your original refugee case stronger. The decision maker can only look at whether there was enough reliable evidence left from your original refugee case to still justify refugee protection.
If you have a vacation hearing, you might be asked about topics including:
- What was true and false in your original refugee case?
- Did you leave out any important information in your original refugee case?
- If there were misrepresentations, did you know about the misrepresentations? Or were you honest, but mistaken?
- If you misrepresented, why did you misrepresent?