4. Give your evidence
In most cases, a (PRRA) is decided using the written information and you provide. So it’s important to be detailed and truthful in your application, and to provide strong evidence to support your PRRA.
After you submit your application form, you usually have another 15 days to send evidence and written submissions to support your application. You can also continue to send in more evidence after the 15 days until you get a decision.
You can provide written documents of any kind that help to explain why you’re afraid, including:
- your own affidavit
- human rights reports, magazine or newspaper articles
- legal documents
- police documents
- medical documents
- personal letters or affidavits from friends or others who can help explain your fear
PRRA hearings are rare. But a hearing must take place for people who are not eligible to make a refugee claim because they arrived from a country that has an information sharing agreement with Canada and they already made a claim in that country. And in some cases, your lawyer or legal representative can request a hearing if the immigration officer has concerns about the truthfulness of the evidence you’ve provided.
Affidavits
Your affidavit is your chance to explain in detail what you fear will happen to you if you return to your country. You must promise or swear that the information in your affidavit is true in front of a notary or a commissioner of oaths.
And if you also have an interview or oral hearing, the affidavit helps the immigration officer decide what questions to ask.
The “new” evidence rule
If you made a refugee claim, an appeal to the RAD, or a PRRA application that was rejected, your PRRA can only include “new” evidence.
Evidence is new if it describes:
- relevant events that happened after the previous refugee claim or PRRA application was decided,
- information that was only discovered after the previous refugee claim or PRRA application was decided, or
- information that existed when the previous refugee claim or PRRA application was decided, but that you could not provide at that time. You will need to have a good reason why the information was not provided earlier.
All evidence that you include in your PRRA is considered new if you’ve never made a refugee claim or PRRA.
The date of a document doesn’t always mean that the evidence is new.
Written submissions
Your lawyer or legal representative will also write a summary of the evidence and the reasons you fear being removed to your country. These “written submissions” will explain how:
- the evidence supports your case, and
- why the evidence should be considered new even if you made a refugee claim, appeal, or PRRA that was already rejected.
Updating your PRRA
After you provide your evidence and submissions, or you have a hearing with an immigration officer, you might not receive a decision for some time. You can continue to provide any new evidence about the human rights situation in your country or about your particular situation until a decision is made.
