A judge said the error undermined the decision involving a man who has lived in Canada since 2016
The Federal Court ruled last week that a division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada had relied on a “phantom” citation to strip a man of his refugee status, stating that it was “completely unclear” how the citation came into existence and that the error had undermined the board’s decision.
The Refugee Protection Division of the IRB vacated the man’s refugee status in 2024, after the federal government was tipped off that he had been charged and convicted of harassing his ex-partner in Hungary between 2015 and 2017. The man, who is 37, had been living in Canada since he was granted refugee protection in 2016.
However, the man said he had not known about the charge or conviction until the Canadian government sought to strip away his refugee status. He argued that the Hungarian police force he previously worked for had invented the charges to retaliate against him.
In his Nov. 3 ruling in Horvath v. Canada, Federal Court Judge Angus Grant said the RPD made several errors in its vacation decision. One of these errors was an assertion that the Federal Court had stated, in a previous ruling, that “Canadian Courts have consistently held that criminal harassment is a serious non-political crime.”
The RPD did not identify the Federal Court case that included this alleged quote, Grant noted, adding that the quote did not exist at all in its body of rulings.
If the RPD member who wrote the decision “simply forgot to provide a citation for valid Federal Court authority, I would agree that this would be an inconsequential error,” Grant said. “Similarly, if the RPD omitted a citation, but accurately paraphrased established judicial authority, I would not be particularly concerned.”
But this was not the case, Grant continued.
“Rather, the RPD quoted directly from what appears to be a ‘phantom’ Federal Court decision as authority for the pivotal question that it had to determine,” the judge said, clarifying that the question was whether the offence of harassment is a “serious” one for the purpose of applying Article 1F(b) of the Refugee Convention.
Article 1F, which is set out in the schedule to Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, states that refugee status cannot be granted to people who have committed “a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee.”
In addition to citing a nonexistent authority, the alleged quote “appears to provide a definitive answer to this question, i.e., that Canadian courts have ‘consistently held that criminal harassment is a serious non-political crime,’” Grant said.
The judge sent the case back to the RPD for reconsideration.
AI not a factor
Peter Ivanyi, a partner at Rochon Genova who represented the applicant in the case, told Canadian Lawyer on Monday that the question of whether the RPD’s decision had been prepared with artificial intelligence did not come up in proceedings for the case. He does not personally believe an AI tool was involved.
The lawyer notes that the RPD was given a large volume of case law by the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the federal body that sought to remove the man’s refugee status. “I think it misunderstood what the case law said about whether criminal harassment was serious or not in the context of what it was assessing,” Ivanyi says, adding that the RPD’s citation of a nonexistent authority was likely due to carelessness.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Immigration and Refugee Board, the tribunal that encompasses the RPD, said that “IRB members are directed not to use artificial intelligence tools in carrying out their adjudicative functions, including when writing their decisions.”
Will Tao, founder of immigration, refugee, citizenship, and administrative law boutique Heron Law Offices, says IRB representatives presented the same information at an Oct. 16 meeting with stakeholders in downtown Vancouver.
Tao, who was at the meeting, said an IRB representative also shared that a specific incident involving AI prompted the tribunal’s stance on AI tools. However, Tao did not learn the details of the incident, and the IRB spokesperson communicating with Canadian Lawyer could not immediately confirm that a specific incident precipitated the tribunal’s AI policy.
Tao says errors like the one Grant identified in Horvath are not uncommon in Canada’s immigration system, due to the use of templates, automated tools, or genAI tools across various parts of the system, as well as pressure on decision-makers to produce decisions quickly in the face of rising caseloads. According to IRB data, the board had 17,537 pending claims by the end of 2016; as of June 30, 2026, that number had risen to 276,099.
But the lawyer has also seen mistakes made by IRB divisions like the RPD, where decisions are made by trained human adjudicators.
“I’ve talked to some members of these divisions, and they’re stressed beyond measure right now – they’re overworked,” Tao says. “If you have [fewer] humans in the room and too many decisions, you’re going to render mistakes like this.” He argued that an AI auditing tool could potentially help decision-makers avoid mistakes.
Ivanyi says the case has been very stressful for his client, who has a family and has “built a life and business in Canada.
“He was dreading the prospect of being returned to the place he fled. He continues to fear the agents of persecution, which include the police. He has no connections there. His life is in Canada,” Ivanyi says.
“He has now been given some hope that his life can resume as it was before the Minister [of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness] brought its application in 2024.”
