The complainant was counsel for refugee claimants whose claims were decided by a member at the Refugee Protection Division.
The complainant alleged that the member failed to comply with the Code of Conduct for Members of the IRB (the Code) as they became unnecessarily agitated and cast aspersions on the complainant's professionalism when the member raised the question of missing information on a document.
Pursuant to the Procedures for Making a Complaint about a Member, and consistent with the recommendation of the Ombudsperson, the Chairperson referred the complaint for investigation by the Office of the Ombudsperson. The final investigation report came to the following conclusions:
- A review of the audio and video recording of the hearing did not provide any evidence of the member becoming agitated nor displaying any inappropriate facial expressions. There was no evidence to support this aspect of the allegation.
- The conversation between the member and the complainant was a frank discussion of the complainant's failure to disclose the document according to RPD rules. The complainant provided several reasons why the documents were not disclosed. The member expressed concern that the complainant had not made the proper applications to have the document admitted. The complainant claimed that this was sufficient to constitute an attack on the complainant's professionalism. However, the member was only re-stating the facts that were before them. For these reasons, there was no evidence to support this aspect of the allegation.
The investigation report was provided to the Chairperson. He was satisfied that the investigation was thorough and fair. The Chairperson accepted the conclusions in the report and found that there were no breaches of the Code.
The complaint was unfounded and the file was closed.