The appellant, Mr. Zhang, had fabricated his travel documents in his Permanent residence card renewal application in 2010. In 2016, CBSA notice his case involved in the massive immigration fraud of Wang Xun during the investigation. This should have been a fairly simple and ordinary case. Yet the Supreme Court of Canada just concluded an immigration appeal, Tran vs. Canada on October 19th . Note that it is extremely rare for the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an immigration case. First of all, the appealing involves multiple appealing process. One has to file for an appeal against the decision of the Immigration Division to the Immigration Appeal Division, and then to the Federal Court, and then to Federal Court of Appeal one after another. Ultimately, one can only appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada after the Federal Court of Appeal justice certifies questions. Second, the immigration matter is not so much important in the whole Canadian justice system. Supreme Court accepts only 50 to 60 cases each year, and accepts one immigration case in every one or two years on average. As I have checked, Tran vs. Canada is the first immigration case accepted by the Supreme Court this year. It’s an honor for an ambitious lawyer to engage in a lawsuit with the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, regardless of winning or losing, as most lawyers never get such a chance in their lifetime.
To briefly introduce Tran vs. Canada, Mr. Tran was convicted of criminal offense and issued a removal order. At the time of his commission, the offence carried a maximum penalty of 7 years imprisonment. However, the criminal code was amended with the maximum penalty raised to 14 years during the course of trial. After his conviction, Mr. Tran was sentenced to a 12-month conditional sentence. Here comes two legal issues then:
First, what is the seriousness of the 12-month conditional sentence under IRPA, as it defines if his commission of offence triggers threshold of serious criminality or just criminality under section 36 of IRPA. For example, according to IRPA, a permanent resident will be deprived of his permanent resident status and issued a removal order if he’s convicted in Canada of an offence for which a term of imprisonment of more than six months has been imposed. In other words, the permanent resident faces no deprivation or removal if it’s a five-month imprisonment. But what if the permanent resident is sentenced to 6 months and then given a conditional release referred to as house arrest three months later? The nature of the 12-month conditional sentence is the same with the above question. Usually conditional sentence will be longer than imprisonment because the justice deems that serious criminals do not deserve conditional sentence. This comes to an unfair scenario that non-serious criminals could end up with longer sentence, and trigger the threshold of losing Permanent Residency under IRPA.
Second, at the time of Tran’s commission, the maximum sentence for his offence was a 7-year imprisonment. Yet at the time of conviction, the criminal code was amended with the maximum sentence raised to 14 years. As Section 36 of IRPA defines criminality and serious criminality by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years for the latter one, the increase of maximum sentence from 7 years to 14 has defined Tran’ conviction serious criminality under IRPA. The question is that the criminal code has not been amended when he committed the crime. Is the maximum term of imprisonment defined at the time of a person committing the offence, or at the time of sentencing? It is about retrospectivity. The decision at the Supreme Court yesterday was to define at the time of commission for fairness.
In 2010, the penalty for misrepresentation was an exclusion order and forbidden from entering Canada for 2 years, which used to be a 1-year bar. Yet under section 40 (2)(a) of IRPA amended last year, penalty for misrepresentation has been raised to a 5-year bar. If it follows the spirit in Tran’s case, should the penalty be a 2-year bar rather than 5 years defined at the time of fabricating PR renewal application?
Here are the opinions of the Member of Immigration Division. Penalty in the criminal law is a punishment (such as imprisonment), while penalty in the immigration law is a sanction instead of a punishment according to the Federal Court. There are differences in these legal terms. Thus, to be given a 1-year, 2-year or 5-year bar and to be punished based on the criminal law are two different matters, and should be carefully examined if the Tran case applies.
My opinion is similar to the Member of the hearing today, like why misrepresentation is not fraud but a different term? The essential element of fraud is knowingly done with an aim of deceiving others for profits, which means an act with willfulness. But misrepresentation is different. For example, many applicants have no awareness of declaring their common law partners in their immigration applications since they don’t know what a common law marriage is, because many countries don’t recognize the de facto marriage. This is an unintentional act but already meets the definition of misrepresentation under section 40 (1) in IRPA.
(The name of the appellant is de-identified)
上诉人张某，在2010年的时候申请renew枫叶卡时伪造出入境记录，2016年时被Wang Xun造假案牵连追查，CBSA最终查到张某的案子。本来应该是个平淡无奇的案子，结果就在19日，最高法院刚审了个移民上诉案子，Tran vs. Canada。需要说明的是，移民案子能打到高院去的几率极低，第一是因为程序很复杂，Immigration Division审完上诉到Immigration Appeal Division, 然后上诉到Federal Court，然后到Federal Court of Appeal，最后FDA的法官再给你certify question，你就可以到最高法院了。第二，移民事务在加拿大整个法律体系里不是那么重要，高院一年也就能审理五六十个案子。一般来说，移民案子平均一两年才会有一个能到高院去，比如我查了一下，这个Tran v. Canada是今年第一个上到高院的移民案件。对于有理想的律师，去高院跟九个大法官一起打官司是一种荣耀，输赢无所谓，大部人律师一辈子也没机会去一次高院。
Tran的基本案情非常简单，Tran这个人犯了刑事罪，吃了个removal order，犯罪的时候，该罪的法定最高刑是7年，但是在审判的过程中，criminal code改了，这个罪的法定最高刑变成14年了。定罪之后，法官给的刑罚是12‑month conditional sentence。因此legal issue就两个：
第一，12‑month conditional sentence从移民法角度来看到底是算何种刑罚，因为刑罚的内容决定了这个人是否触犯了移民法里的条款。举例，移民法规定一个移民在加拿大被判刑并判6个月或者以上的监禁，那你会被剥夺移民身份，吃一个removal order。换句话说判了5个月就不用。那接下来的问题是，要是法官判你6个月，但是3个月之后给了你假释，剩下3个月你在家呆着，但也算服刑，只是在家服刑而已，那怎么办？12‑month conditional sentence跟这个问题本质是一样的。通常来说conditional sentence的刑期要比监禁长，因为法官认为犯罪情节严重的罪犯是不值得给conditional sentence的。这就有可能导致一个不公平的情况，即法官认为犯罪情节轻微的人从时间上反而获得了较长的刑罚，从而导致其按照移民法36条被剥夺移民身份。这是纯刑罚论里的内容，跟移民法没关系，我就不写了。
第二，Tran犯罪的时候这个罪最高刑是7年，判决的时候最高刑变14年了，criminal code的改动对移民法的影响是，移民法36条规定了什么样的罪是serious criminality，什么样的罪是criminality，临界线就是法定最高刑够不够10年，所以7年变成14年的结果就是trans犯的罪在移民法看来变成了重罪。问题就是trans犯罪的时候，criminal code还没改呢，那到底应该按照commit的时间的法律，还是按照判决时候的法律，也就说这是一个法律追溯力的问题（retrospectivity)。昨天高院的判决是，应该按照犯罪时的法律，否则是不公平的。
2010年的时候Misrep的penalty是吃一个exclusion order然后2年不得入境加拿大，之前更轻，是1年不得入境加拿大。但是去年的时候，移民法40条2款a项，也就是关于misrep的penalty的条款又改了，改成5年不得入境了，那按照tran案子的精神，renew枫叶卡造假的时候是2年不得入境，后来才改成5年的，那是不是应该按照之前的标准？
今天的Member对这个问题的看法是这样，刑法里的刑罚属于punishment（比如监禁），但移民法里的penalty，联邦法院并不认为这是punishment，而是sanction，这些法律用词都有区别。给你一年还是两年还是五年不得入境的决定，跟你触犯了刑法然后刑法给你定的罪，两者不一样。
我的观点跟今天的 member相似，比如misrepresentaion为什么不直接叫fraud，还整这么个词，因为fraud的要件必须是knowingly欺骗对方以获利，也就是主观上要有willfulness。Misrep就不一样，比如有很多中国人不知道什么是事实婚姻（common-law），因为中国法律不承认，所以移民的时候很多人不知道要declare他的事实婚姻伴侣，这不是有意的，但这已经符合了移民法第40条1款对于Misrep的定义了。
（本案当事人名字为化名）