Northern Ont. man denied Canadian residency because he worked for Ukrainian secret police

While denying him permanent residency, immigration officials said there 'is no evidence that Oleksandr Zahrebelnyi personally engaged in acts of subversion.' (File)

A man who came from Ukraine to North Bay, Ont., in 2017 has been denied permanent residency in Canada because he was a former member of the Ukrainian Secret Service, known as the SBU.

Oleksandr Zahrebelnyi was open about his role with the SBU when he applied for permanent residency, the Federal Court said in a decision dated July 29.

Zahrebelnyi left the SBU and opened a meat processing plant in Ukraine in 2016.

“As conditions in Ukraine deteriorated, he opened a meat processing plant in North Bay … with two business partners and obtained a Canadian work permit in the entrepreneur/self-employed category,” said the court’s decision.

“His spouse and three children eventually joined him in Canada.”

The Federal Court ruling made it clear that Zahrebelnyi “is not alleged to carry personal responsibility for committing acts of subversion or any other bases for inadmissibility to Canada.”

“His inadmissibility results from his admitted service and employment with the … SBU between 1998 and 2011,” the decision said.

“The officer who refused his application acknowledged at several points in the decision that there is no evidence that (Zahrebelnyi) personally engaged in acts of subversion or had any knowledge of such acts perpetrated by the SBU.”

In a statement to CTV News, Zahrebelnyi said the decision to reject his application was “unfair and unjustified.”

“It is very difficult to maintain and make any strategic decisions for the business, when the life of my family is in ‘limbo,’” he said in an email.

His business was thriving

Zahrebelnyi employed 20 people at Canada Meat Group in North Bay, and had plans to hire as many as 150 people in an expanded operation, as reported by CTV News in 2022.

But those plans were shelved in 2024. The decision to deny him permanent residency in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was made on April 10, 2024.

The immigration official denied his application on the basis that Zahrebelnyi had been a member of the SBU, which had been “engaging in an act of subversion against a democratic government, institution or process as they are understood in Canada.”

He appealed that decision and said that the denial had a major negative impact on his family and his business. The appeal said the official misinterpreted the meaning of “subversion” and the more than four years it took to make a decision was an abuse of process.

However, the immigration official handling the case ruled that membership in an organization “that has engaged in subversion against a democratic government, institution or process” was sufficient grounds to deny the application.

‘Subversive’ actions

“After a detailed analysis, the officer concluded that the SBU was engaged in political repression, obstruction of the media, and election fraud throughout the period of (Zahrebelnyi’s) involvement with the SBU,” the court decision said.

A central issue of the appeal was the interpretation of the word “subversive.” The immigration officer interpreted the word as including actions to maintain the status quo in Ukraine, as opposed to actions that accomplish change.

The goal of the law is “the protection of Canadian democracy through the denial of admission to those who have posed a threat anywhere to democratic governments, institutions or processes as they are understood in Canada,” the court said.

“This goal is served by including organizations which may not be internally democratic but are democratic in function, as understood in Canada.”

Those organizations include the free media, the electoral process and opposition parties. The intent of the SBU was, in part, to actively repress these groups.

The immigration officer provided internet links that showed the SBU “illegally surveilled and interfered with Ukrainian parliamentarians in the early 2000s.”

Other links showed that agents were hired to collect information on investigative journalists “that threatened the interest of the political and economic elites.”

The appeal also argued that the length it took to get a decision was unreasonable -- more than four years after Zahrebelnyi made the application in 2020 -- and amounted to an abuse of process.

But the Federal Court ruled that there was “insufficient evidence that it was characterized by the disruption to family life, loss of work, business opportunities or severe psychological harm that would amount to an abuse of process.”

“In the present case, while there is evidence of anxiety caused by the delay, the other consequences are the result of the unfavourable result of the investigation into the principal applicant’s inadmissibility rather than the delay itself,” the decision said.

Read the full decision here.