A man convicted of his role in a scheme of immigration fraud has remained the charges because an agent of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) who works in the case was accused of intimidating the witnesses, and then allowed himself to investigate and clarify.
On July 23, Saskatoon Court of King Bench, Naheed Bardai, the decision of 106 pages, issued on July 23, discovered that despite the fact that it is “quite likely”, the accusations of intimidation were false, the self -investigation violated the rights of the letter of section 7 of section 7 of life, freedom and security of the person.
The ruling is the last in a legal process that began in 2018, when Gurreet Singh was arrested as part of an investigation by CBSA.
Singh would eventually face 12 positions, all related to their preparation of false jobs that promised jobs from foreign citizens such as religious workers in Gurdwars, houses of worship for members of the SIJ faith.
Bardai supervised Singh’s 2022 trial and condemned Singh for 10 of the 12 charges, but before the sentence he could take place, Singh’s defense lawyers filed a request for a null trial.
They alleged that the crown did not reveal information about the CBSA and the crown accused of intimidating witnesses, and that the nature of the relationship between the crown and the CBSA resulted in a loss of objectivity and independence.
The defense argued that this was a reason for the conviction to be reviewed, the charges will be suspended or the trial to be reopened or declared a null trial.
The crown did not agree, saying that Singh received a fair trial.
‘Lapse of judgment
Bardai discovered that there had been problems with dissemination, but they were not unnoticed and did not affect the result of the trial. He also ruled that he did not satisfy “that the evidence establishes any type of real intimidation.”
The problem was that Teban Tisdale, the main researcher of CBSA in the case of Singh, was accused of intimidating the witnesses, and then allowed to investigate those accusations himself.
“The Officer’s decision to get involved in an investigation that referred to his own behavior represents a serious period of the trial,” Bardai wrote in his decision.
Bardai said we cannot simply trust the results of an investigation carried out by the person accused of irregularities.
“Problems with this type of abuse of power and self -investigation are obvious,” the decision said.
“This type of conduct undermines the integrity of the justice system.”
The judge concluded that “there is now a way to retreat the clock to address this problem”, since many of the witnesses who testified in the trial had now been contaminated by Toban’s investigations about the alleged intimidation.
Bardai ruled that, therefore, he was not prepared to govern about Singh’s innocence. Instead, he said that these were the “clearest cases” in which a stay had to be issued.
A stay is a “remedy of the last resort” and stops the legal process, but does not determine guilt or innocence.
Tavengwa Runyowa was part of Singh’s legal team and agreed that the stay was the right decision.
“A police officer and an agency cannot investigate and exonerate for irregularities,” Runyowa said.
‘This was not a single period in the trial’
Bardai spent part of the decision making the CBSA for tasks to allow Toban to investigate himself. He said that the crown could have stopped Teban, other officers of the CBSA office in Regina could have intervened, or CBSA managers could have ordered Toban to retire.
None decided to do it, said Bardai.
“This was not a single period in the judgment of a single individual. This was a systemic collapse,” Bardai wrote.
Runyowa said his client is euphoric about Bardai’s decision. He said that this is not only the error of a single officer, but a system that is so dysfunctional that people within it “do not recognize that it is broken.”
“That should bother the public, that an organization as large and powerful as the CBSA, which deals with all kinds of problems, national security, border security, immigration application, can have such a defective and defective structure that something like this could allow to happen,” said Runyowa.
The CBSA did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
