Where Officers Go Wrong: Grounds to Challenge a s.101(1)(b.1) or (b.2) Determination
The ineligibility provisions added by Bill C-12 are new, the guidance to officers is new, and the volume of determinations is high. That combination produces reviewable errors. This is an overview of the recurring places determinations can go wrong, framed by how the Federal Court actually reviews them.
The standard: reasonableness and fairness
On judicial review, most substantive aspects of an ineligibility determination are reviewed for reasonableness following Canada (MCI) v Vavilov: the decision must be transparent, intelligible, and justified in light of the facts and the law that constrain it. Questions of procedural fairness are assessed on a standard akin to correctness: either the process was fair or it wasn't. Both routes can set a determination aside.
Recurring error patterns
1. The dates (the one-year rule)
The new provisions turn heavily on timing: s.101(1)(b.1) is a one-year rule keyed to when a person first entered Canada and when the claim was made, and s.101(1)(b.2) turns on a 14-day window after crossing from the United States. Officers processing at volume make computation errors and rely on entry or claim dates that the record does not support. A determination built on a wrong date is a determination built on nothing.
2. Applying the provision to someone outside it
Every statutory ineligibility ground has elements. Where the officer's reasons do not engage with an element, or assume it rather than find it on evidence, the reasons fail the justification requirement at the heart of reasonableness review.
3. Procedural fairness letters that don't do their job
Where a procedural fairness letter is sent, the claimant is entitled to know the case to meet and to have their response genuinely considered. Reasons that never grapple with the response, boilerplate that doesn't reflect the individual's submissions, or a decision that raises grounds the letter never disclosed are classic fairness problems.
4. Minors and the designated representative
Children's claims raise their own procedural requirements. A process that treats a minor as an administrative appendage of the parents' file, without proper attention to their distinct position, invites review.
5. Boilerplate reasons
High-volume determinations produce template reasons. Where the reasons could be swapped onto any other claimant's file without change, that is evidence the individual circumstances were never engaged. That is precisely what Vavilov's "responsive justification" requirement targets.
What a successful review gets you
The Federal Court does not substitute its own eligibility decision. It quashes the determination and sends the matter back for redetermination, usually with reasons that constrain the second look. For a claimant, that means the claim's path to a hearing is back on the table.
None of this matters if the 15-day deadline passes first. If the letter arrived in the last few days, start with the first 72 hours after a Bill C-12 letter, and see how leave and judicial review work for the procedure end to end.
General legal information, not advice. The jurisprudence on these provisions is at an early stage and developing quickly.