In PRRA Risk Assessment, Diaz Bravo v. Canada, 2026 FC 1164, the Federal Court dismissed a judicial review of a pre-removal risk assessment refusal. Although the applicants had been removed to Chile before the hearing, Justice Southcott exercised the Court’s discretion to decide the moot application on its merits and found the decision reasonable.
PRRA application followed unsuccessful refugee proceedings
The applicants, a mother and her son who are citizens of Chile, came to Canada in November 2018 and made refugee claims in November 2020. Their claims were based on alleged threats connected with the death of the principal applicant’s husband in a motor vehicle accident in Chile.
The Refugee Protection Division rejected the claims in September 2022. While it found the principal applicant credible regarding the events, it concluded that she had not established an absence of state protection or that a viable internal flight alternative was unavailable. The Refugee Appeal Division dismissed their appeal in March 2023, and a subsequent application for judicial review was also dismissed.
In October 2024, the applicants applied for a PRRA. They relied on further allegations involving continued inquiries about the principal applicant’s whereabouts, an injury suffered by her grandmother, and alleged risk connected with the principal applicant’s mother, an activist in a women’s organization in Chile.
Court decided the moot application on its merits
The applicants were removed from Canada on August 18, 2026. The parties agreed that the judicial review application was moot, but they disagreed on whether the Court should nevertheless decide it.
Justice Southcott applied the discretionary mootness considerations identified in Borowski v Canada (Attorney General), including whether an adversarial context remained, judicial economy and the Court’s lawmaking role. He found that an adversarial context continued because both sides were represented and prepared to argue the merits.
The Court also accepted that the advanced stage of the matter supported deciding it, despite the absence of allegations that the removal itself was unlawful. Justice Southcott concluded that it was appropriate to determine the PRRA challenge on its merits.
State protection finding was determinative
The PRRA officer had declined to consider some proposed evidence because it predated the Refugee Appeal Division decision, was undated, or was not connected in the applicants’ submissions to a personalized and forward-looking risk. The applicants argued that the officer should have inferred the timing and relevance of some of that evidence.
The Court accepted that it was arguable the officer could have drawn those inferences in context. However, Justice Southcott found that the excluded material was not sufficiently material to the officer’s determinative findings for its exclusion to amount to a reviewable error.
Regarding the alleged risk from the taxi driver, the officer was not satisfied that the evidence established the driver’s involvement in the incident in which the grandmother was injured. The officer also found that the applicants had not provided clear and convincing evidence that state protection in Chile would be unavailable.
The applicants referred to country-condition evidence concerning violence against women and police protection. The Court found that the cited material related to domestic violence, rather than the risk alleged by the applicants. In light of the Refugee Protection Division’s earlier state-protection finding, the Court found no reviewable error in the PRRA officer’s assessment.
Because state protection was determinative of the risk alleged from the driver, the Court did not need to address the applicants’ arguments about the internal flight alternative finding.
Mother’s refugee outcome did not determine applicants’ PRRA
The applicants also argued that they should receive protection because the principal applicant’s mother had succeeded in her own refugee claim based on activism in Chile. The PRRA officer found that each claim had to be assessed on its own merits.
Justice Southcott found nothing unreasonable in that approach. The Court held that the officer could reasonably conclude that evidence concerning an alleged police raid did not support a finding that the applicants themselves faced risk, as the evidence appeared to indicate that those seeking harm were looking for the mother.
Judicial review dismissed
Applying the reasonableness standard of review, as informed by Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, the Court found no basis to interfere with the PRRA decision.
Justice Southcott dismissed the application for judicial review. No question was certified for appeal.
Source: Federal Court Decisions