A former KGB agent has renewed hope he will be reunited with his wife and son in Canada after the Federal Court quashed a government decision denying him permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds.

Mikhail Lennikov, 55, joined the youth division of the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union in 1974 and worked for the KGB after he graduated from university in 1982 until 1988.

He came to Canada with his family on a student visa in 1997 to pursue graduate studies at the University of British Columbia and applied for permanent residency with his wife and son two years later.

His application was denied because he is deemed inadmissible to Canada due to his work for the now defunct Soviet security and intelligence agency.

In 2009, Lennikov took refuge in the First Lutheran Church in Vancouver after then-Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan refused to grant him relief from the inadmissibility finding.

His humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) application for permanent residence was subsequently rejected, and he voluntarily left Canada for Russia in early 2015 after six years in church sanctuary.

However, his departure did not stop him from appealing the minister’s decision to the Federal Court of Canada.

In a confidential ruling rendered in November that has just been unsealed, Justice Elizabeth Heneghan criticized the minister and his case management director for overstepping their responsibility when assessing Lennikov’s humanitarian applications by weighing inadmissible factors.

“The inadmissibility finding is a barrier to obtain status in Canada, which can be overcome by a positive H&C application,” Heneghan wrote in a 10-page decision.

“The director erred in law in conducting an inadmissibility analysis, while deciding the applicant’s H&C application. The conduct of a new inadmissibility analysis was beyond the jurisdiction of the director. The mandate to conduct such analysis lies with” a different tribunal.

In rejecting the humanitarian application, the minister’s director first focused on the issue of the inadmissibility finding against Lennikov before looking into other humanitarian considerations such as his wife’s mental health and the interest of their now grown son.

“He also noted that as Russian citizens, it was open to (Lennikov’s) wife and son to return to Russia, and there was insufficient evidence to show that they would be unable to establish themselves there,” Heneghan wrote in reference to the government’s reasoning in refusing the man’s humanitarian request.

“Although Russia is not considered to be an elected democracy and there are severe restrictions on civil liberties, on a balance of probabilities (Lennikov) would not face undue, undeserved or disproportionate hardship.”

The key error the director made lies in his conclusion, where he said: the H&C factors in favour of Lennikov did not outweigh the serious nature of his inadmissibility.

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“The dispositive issue is the director’s conduct of a new inadmissibility analysis,” Heneghan wrote. “This is an error of law and could be reviewed on the standard of correctness.”

She ordered a different decision-maker to reassess the humanitarian application of Lennikov, whose wife and son are both legal immigrants in Canada.

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