IRCC admitted to Charbonneau it had committed a privacy breach when it lost the physical file
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OTTAWA – A Quebec man is threatening to sue Immigration Minister Marc Miller because the federal department lost his Cuban wife and her son’s sponsorship application file that included copies of passports, tax filings and even birth certificates.
“These errors and boondoggles at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada are causing not only stress and anxiety to my clients but are also a waste of money, energy and time for Mr. (Yves) Charbonneau and his wife, Mrs. Vega Suarez. The couple lives separately while the sponsorship file is being processed,” reads a letter of demand sent to Miller by lawyer Stéphane Handfield.
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The letter comes as Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (IRCC) admitted to Charbonneau shortly after National Post reported his story in May that it had committed a privacy breach when it had lost the physical file he submitted on behalf of his wife and her son to bring them to Canada.
“We are not able to locate the application file. It is possible that your personal information has been received by an individual outside of this office,” IRCC executive Mary Ann Snow wrote to Charbonneau in a letter dated May 24.
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Snow’s notice is the latest in a comedy of errors by IRCC that has left Charbonneau and his wife wondering who has a voluminous file of private information containing copies of sensitive documents such as passports, banking statements, social insurance numbers and photos of the family.
In early May, National Post revealed the Kafkaesque saga of Yves Charbonneau’s efforts to bring his Cuban wife Elbis Vega Suarez and her 13-year-old son to Canada.
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After the department made the unusual request months later that he refile his application by mail to its Sydney, N.S., office, Charbonneau and his lawyer Stéphane Handfield sent in the documents in November 2023.
That is the last known location of the documents. In her letter, Snow wrote that the application was received on Nov. 20, 2023, but that the department was since unable to find it.
To make matters worse, Snow told Charbonneau that the department made a mistake when it told him to refile the application by paper last year, as the department requires applications be submitted online.
“Unfortunately, the return letter that was sent to you was a template that is not currently in use and contained obsolete instructions,” she wrote.
In a letter of demand sent to Miller in early August, Handfield said that his clients’ file “deserves a special attention” and should be treated urgently.
If the minister doesn’t respond within 30 days of receiving the Aug. 6 letter, Handfield wrote that his client might sue.
“We want the minister to investigate, we want him to inform us where the file is, and if it’s been sent to the wrong address,” lawyer Stéphane Handfield said in an interview. “The minister needs to intervene to ensure that there aren’t any further errors.”
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“We’re also asking the minister to instruct his bureaucrats to prioritize this file urgently considering the lost time and energy due to errors they committed over the last year.”
His client also wants the government to inform credit monitoring firm Equifax of the data breach and pay for two-years’ worth of identity and credit monitoring.
Miller’s office and IRCC declined to comment on Charbonneau’s case, citing privacy limitations despite Charbonneau and Handfield providing written consent for the department to discuss the file with National Post.
IRCC insisted that Suarez also needed to sign a consent form, which her lawyer said was virtually impossible as her access to internet in Cuba is extremely limited.
Charbonneau also filed a complained to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada over IRCC’s mishandling of his personal information.
In May, Charbonneau told National Post that he’s spent over $10,000 in travel to Cuba, paperwork and legal fees to submit the application for his wife and stepson.
“I did everything I needed to do to make sure the application was complete,” he said at the time. “I’m not asking for charity from the government. All I asked for was for the permission to bring my wife here so we can live as a family, to get her (and her son) out of the misery over there.”
cnardi@postmedia.com
National Post
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