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Ontario tribunal restores social assistance to stateless senior facing deportation
A stateless man who was ordered deported a year ago is still in Canada and has won back the income support Ontario had cut.
The Ontario Social Benefits Tribunal granted his appeal in a decision issued April 15, finding he qualified for a narrow exception to provincial rules that bar income support for people under deportation orders.
His Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) payments were stopped July 30, 2025, after an ODSP caseworker received a deportation notice saying he no longer had legal status in Canada and was under an enforceable removal order. An internal review upheld the cutoff, and he appealed to the tribunal.
The man had received ODSP income support since July 2021. He qualified not on disability grounds but as a member of a prescribed class, people 65 or older who are not eligible for Old Age Security.
The decision does not name him and identifies the three countries in his case only as A (his birth country), B (the country that occupied A) and C (the country he fled to).
“The order referenced was anonymized in accordance with the Social Benefit Tribunal (SBT)’s standard practices. In SBT decisions, place names are generally avoided. If required, then the name(s) are replaced with an initial,” the tribunal said in a statement to National Post, adding that hearings are heard in private.
According to his testimony, his homeland was occupied and his father was taken away, never to be seen again. He fled the country with his mother but she died before they reached the third country. He had lived in that country on a renewable registration certificate but was never a citizen there. The tribunal heard that people who share the man’s religion and national background have stateless status in Country C. “He testified that when he left Country C to come to Canada he no longer had a valid registration as he was required to renew it through a specific office which solicited bribes he could not afford,” the decision said. He said he came to Canada on a visa for grandparents, using a fraudulent passport he was instructed to throw away on arrival.
He has two grandchildren in Canada, sees them at least three times a week and volunteers with four cultural non-profit organizations, the tribunal heard.
He applied for refugee status in 2021. The claim and a request to appeal were refused in April 2025. He received a removal order around June 2025 and was told he would be sent to the country that had occupied his homeland. He reports regularly to an immigration officer but has been given no removal date and no travel documents.
“The Appellant testified he does not have a passport from any country and did not know if he could renew his registration certificate from Country C,” the decision said. “He stated he will not be able to get a passport from Country C and would likely be imprisoned if returned to Country B.”
Provincial regulations under the ODSP Act make people ineligible for income support if they are under a deportation order or an enforceable removal order. The rules carve out exceptions, including when, “for reasons wholly beyond the control of the person, the person is unable to leave the country.”
The tribunal found the man met that test. He did not have citizenship in his country of birth or in either of the other two countries in his case, and had no passport or way to obtain one, adjudicator Tuğba Karademir wrote, so he could not have left Canada when his support was cut off.
The man also relied on a second exception, for people who have applied for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The tribunal rejected that, finding no such application had been filed. A letter from his immigration lawyer said one was being prepared.
The tribunal declined to rule on whether the removal order is enforceable, or on what would happen to the man if he were deported, saying both fall outside its authority. It is an administrative tribunal, not a court.
Arguing for the director of the ODSP, who cut off the support, case presenting officer Gary Charvis said the program is governed strictly by statute and that hardship alone cannot create eligibility. The man was represented by Lindsay Holder, a supervising lawyer, and Miha Sanjida, a student-at-law.
His representatives pointed the tribunal to two earlier decisions, from 2024 and 2025, in which it reached similar conclusions.
For now, the man remains in Canada with no date for his removal, reporting to an immigration officer who has given him no travel documents and, he told the tribunal, nowhere to go.
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Unpublished Newswire
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