You hired an immigration consultant or lawyer to handle your file because the process is complex and the stakes are high. Then you find out your application was rejected, and not because of anything you did wrong. Your representative made a mistake, and now your path to permanent residence is in jeopardy.
A recent Federal Court decision, Green v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2026 FC 315, confirms that there is a remedy available to you, even when the mistake might seem small.
What happened in Green
The applicant was an Israeli national living and working in Edmonton. Alberta selected him as a Provincial Nominee, which put him on a clear path to permanent residence through Express Entry. He retained a registered immigration consultant to file the application for him and his family.
IRCC rejected the application as incomplete. The passport for the principal applicant had never been filed. The consultant had attached a second copy of the spouse’s passport by mistake. With the application rejected, the Express Entry profile was cancelled, and a straightforward PR matter became a crisis.
The consultant admitted full responsibility in a sworn affidavit, acknowledging that but for his “inadvertence” the applicant “could still be actively in the PR process and possibly even a Permanent Resident by now.”
The three-part test for ineffective assistance
To set aside an immigration decision on the basis of ineffective assistance or counsel, you must establish three things:
1. That the representative’s conduct constituted incompetence;
2. That but for the mistake there is a reasonable probability the outcome would have been different; and
3. That the previous representative was given notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond.
That third step is often overlooked. You cannot quietly blame a former representative in Federal Court submissions. They must be put on notice and given a chance to respond.
A “minor” mistake can still be incompetence
The Minister argued that the applicant should have to live with his consultant’s choices, and that a missing passport was too ordinary a mistake to count as incompetence. Justice Brouwer rejected both arguments. Clients are bound by their representative’s judgment calls, not their incompetence. And failing to submit the right passport could not be described as the product of reasonable professional judgment. It was, in his words, “an obvious and indisputable error and it doomed the application to fail.”
The question is not whether the mistake was dramatic. The question is whether it fell outside the range of reasonable professional conduct, and whether it changed the outcome.
A word of caution from the judge
Justice Brouwer also noted that the applicant might have been able to simply refile his PR application with the correct passport rather than going to Federal Court. That option would have been faster and cheaper. He granted the application anyway, but flagged the point: judicial review is a real remedy, but it is not always the best one. Before you spend money on Federal Court litigation, you need counsel who will ask whether a simpler fix is available first.
If this has happened to you
If your application has been refused because of a mistake by a previous representative, the worst thing you can do is nothing. Most of the remedies are time-sensitive. Federal Court judicial review has a 15-day deadline for in-Canada decisions and 60 days for decisions made abroad.
At Hummel Law we regularly handle files where a prior representative has let a client down. We will give you a straight answer about what remedies are realistically available, what they will cost, and which one actually fits your situation.
Contact us to book a consultation.
