Taking the role of Minister's counsel, craft a submission based on the narrative in the next tab, which you can presume have been proven on a balance of probabilities, also drawing on the references under the assessment criteria below.

Steps

1. Carefully review Andriy Koval's narrative, and the materials under the assessment criteria below, identifying the critical issues for further research.
2. Conduct additional research. This should include additional cases presenting similar issues and facts to  Andriy Koval's case. Consider carefully the most appropriate strategy to achieve your research goals.
3. Assuming the role of Minister's Counsel, craft a submission based on the attached testimony and drawing on the references under the assessment criteria below, please submissions on why Andriy Koval should be excluded from refugee protection.  
   
   You may assume that you, as Minister's counsel, have complied with the notice requirements in rule 29 of the RPD Rules.
   
   Your submission must:
   1. Present a clear legal argument which incorporates case facts;
   2. Support your arguments with relevant cases, as well as anticipate and address cases that may militate against the result you are seeking. This must include discussion of other cases identified by your own research;
   3. Be properly cited and written in a formal legal style, form and language consistent with the rules and practices of the Division.

 

As a teenager in Munol, in the eastern reaches of his native country, Kuntry, Andriy Koval was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother Yura raised Andriy on her own. She grew alarmed after an incident in which Andriy followed a girl home from school, spitting insults at her the whole way. After that, and having noticed other signs, she sought treatment for her son. With the help of medication, Andriy kept his condition under control and flourished in school. At university, he was taken underwing by an elderly professor, Claes Kiski. Andriy developed a passion for the study of ancient languages and history that bordered on the sensual.  

The three of them - Professor Kiski, Yura, and Andriy - were overjoyed when Andriy received an email accepting him into a Ph.D. program in classics at a Canadian university, starting in September 2019. Andriy was planning to study the transformation of Egyptian ideas of magic under Roman and Byzantine rule.  

Unfortunately, it was more challenging than anticipated for Andriy to adapt to a new country and a new university. 

Andriy threw himself into researching his subject in his first year. He was disappointed, though, when he came to realize that his supervisor, a young and brilliant rising star in the field, was often away from campus. When they could meet, she was rushed and gave the impression of not having read Andriy's work. And when she had read it, she was dismissive or, at times, scathing. After one particularly harsh session, Andriy found it hard not to become bitter. He wrote Professor Kiski explaining how discouraging he had found his first year and complaining about his supervisor. The old man urged him to stick with it. His mother, Yura, said the same thing when they spoke. Andriy listened to them, as always.  

By his second year, though, Andriy came to feel real despair. Having spent too much time on his own research, he had not done well in his coursework. Further, Andriy - never good at making friends - had not managed to establish any close relationships in Canada. He had come to feel isolated in the small Canadian city where he lived and studied. He had no one to ask for advice. No one to complain to. No one to laugh with over beers. Desperately lonely and disheartened, he decided to give up and return home at the end of the year.  

But then tragedy struck.  

In February 2021, Kuntry was invaded by a large neighbouring state, Kolonizia. The Kolonizian army swept in. It reduced Munol to rubble. Munolians took shelter in their basements or in the city's sewers and subways. Andriy reached his mother by phone. She was sheltering with Professor Kiski, and hundreds of others, in the university's underground parking garage. Andriy said he would come home. She urged him not to. Here you will starve or be killed, she said. At her insistence, he filed a refugee protection claim. It was deemed eligible and referred to the Refugee Protection Division (RPD). One month later, Andriy received word that both his mother and Professor Kiski contracted Covid-19. Weakened and unable to seek medical help during the invasion, both died.  

It is no exaggeration to say that, with the deaths of his mother and his mentor, Andriy lost his only anchors in the world. He stopped researching and studying. He spent his days in his basement apartment, ragged curtains drawn, venturing out only at night to buy ramen, cheerios, and milk. He rarely slept. His skin grew pale. He developed the gait of an older man. He stopped taking his medication. 

Like so many of us, Andriy found his only solace on the Internet. He spent more and more time on so-called "incel" ("involuntary celibate") online forums, finding himself drawn to the messages he saw there. The incel worldview is described in the following terms by Hoffman, Ware and Shapiro ("Assessing the Threat of Incel Violence"): 

The incel worldview is grounded in two ineluctably intertwined beliefs: their understanding of society as a hierarchy where one's place is determined mostly by physical characteristics, and their identification of women as the primary culprit for this hierarchy. Accordingly, at the top of this structure are the idealized men and women respectively referred to as "Chads" and "Stacys." So-called "normies" are in the middle, with the lowly incels languishing at the bottom. In incel lore, a small number of Chads attracts the majority of women, leaving only the apparently unattractive women for the normies, and none for incels. Incels significantly also distinguish themselves from normies not just by their supposedly inferior physical appearance, but by their belief that they have gained privileged insights that normies do not see: that most women are attracted only to Chads, and that if one did not "win" the genetic lottery, they are destined for mediocrity, social isolation, and abject loneliness. 

This stratification leads to the second core incel belief: that women are intrinsically shallow and make dating decisions based largely on physical attractiveness, height, weight, and race. Women are thus reflexively drawn to men with the "right" features, the incel ideology maintains, regardless of personality or integrity. And, they are therefore repulsed by men who do not conform to this image—even if they are the "supreme gentlemen" described by Elliot Rodger, who perpetrated the first attack claimed in the name of incels. Incels further believe that because women make judgements about dating based on superficial criteria, they have created an unbalanced, exclusive dating pool, to which incels will never gain access. To the incels' minds, it is women, then, who are responsible for their isolation and rejection—and women are therefore the primary targets of incels' anger and violence.   

Andriy spent most of his time on one of two sites, Incels.co or Incels.net. At first, he only read along. Then he began contributing under the name "diocleTIan", posting messages that, over time, became increasingly misogynistic. He began to see his fate - alone and unloved in a foreign city - as the result of a conspiracy of women against him, along with other incels. He posted a long entry blaming the war against Kuntry on the women in Kolonizia. In September 2021, Andriy was kicked out of his program for sending a string of sexually explicit and disturbing messages to his supervisor. Having been expelled, Andriy also lost all his funding. 

Then in October 2021, a male undergraduate student - Todd Rains - ran into a yoga class at the campus athletic centre with a knife. Mr. Rains attacked four female students before two of them tackled and disarmed him. One victim later died. Mr. Rains was charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts each of assault and attempted murder. During his trial, the Crown (that is, the lawyers representing the government) put into evidence the fact that the accused had spent hours each day on Incels.net.  Although Mr. Rains admitted at trial that many of the posts on incel.net had influenced his world-view, Mr. Rains did not specifically name Andriy or his posts.

One post he replied to was an eight hundred word contribution written by diocleTIan. In it, Andriy glorified the perpetrator of an infamous mass shooting in 2018 at a yoga studio in Florida, which resulted in the death of two women. Andriy explained why that attack was "better conceived" than the van attack by another "incel" that had killed 11 people in downtown Toronto. In the post, Andriy encouraged others to copy the two attacks. He gave suggestions on possible targets and methods of attacks. However, he did not suggest an attack on a yoga class at a campus athletic centre. That post was placed in Incel.net's "Must Read" section, the only time that happened with any of Andriy's posts. The Crown also put into evidence that Mr. Rains had responded to Andriy's posts, writing, "You're a genius, bro. But too scared to do that." Andriy replied "Be brave. Take up the cause and act."  

An investigative report connected to the trial revealed the names of many of the anonymous posters to Incels.net, including Andriy's. When it emerged that Andriy was a native of Kuntry who had made a refugee claim, a huge controversy erupted. How, an editorial demanded, can Canada provide refuge to people like this? 

You are Minister's counsel. You have developed a file with all the information on Andriy described above, including his writings for Incels.net. You and your supervisor have been batting around ideas on ways to intervene in Andriy's claim before the RPD. Andriy has been subject to no criminal investigations in Canada, and you should presume prosecutors have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to charge him with any criminal offense. You and your supervisor also conclude that it is unlikely you would succeed in arguing that Andriy is inadmissible. Your supervisor, therefore, instructs you to write an argument under Article 1F(c) on the grounds that there are serious reasons for considering that Andriy is guilty of acts or is complicit in acts contrary to the principles and purposes of the United Nations, under one or more of "terrorism" or "advocating violence against women".

 

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

Your Name Ministers Counsel Date Refugee Protection Division Address Re Refugee Protection Claim of Andriy Koval Dear SirMadam I am writing to present the case for excluding Andriy Koval from refugee ... View the full answer