Quebec (Attorney General) v. Kanyinda
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The Facts
Bijou Cibuabua Kanyinda fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo and arrived in Quebec in October 2018 with her three young children, where she made a refugee protection claim. While the claim was pending she held a work permit and looked for work, but she had no relatives or other informal childcare and was refused the subsidized daycare rate because of her status. Section 3 of Quebec's Reduced Contribution Regulation lists who may receive the subsidy. It includes citizens, permanent residents, international students and people on various temporary permits, and it covers recognized refugees, but it did not include refugee claimants. In 2019 she asked the court to review the exclusion under the Charter's equality guarantee, arguing discrimination based on sex, citizenship and immigration status. The Superior Court of Quebec dismissed the claims. The Quebec Court of Appeal found discrimination based on sex and extended eligibility to claimants holding work permits. The Attorney General of Quebec appealed to the Supreme Court, which heard the case in May 2025.
What the Court Decided
Justice Karakatsanis wrote for a majority of six, Chief Justice Wagner and Justice Rowe agreed in the result for different reasons, and Justice Côté dissented. The appeal was allowed in part. The majority held that section 3, although neutral in wording, falls harder on women who are refugee claimants, because women carry more of the childcare burden and the record showed that every claimant with a young child who said missing daycare kept them from working was a woman. It then held that the exclusion deepens the economic disadvantage women already face, so it breaches the equality guarantee. Quebec's goal of tying the benefit to people with a real connection to the province was accepted as important, but the majority found no rational link between that goal and shutting out refugee claimants, particularly when other people without permanent status, such as international students, remained eligible. As a remedy, the regulation was read to include all parents residing in Quebec who are refugee claimants, whether or not they hold a work permit, which goes further than the Court of Appeal. The majority did not need to decide whether immigration status should be a protected ground; the Chief Justice would have resolved the case on that footing, recognizing refugee-claimant status as one. Justice Rowe saw a rational connection between the rule and its aim but still found the discrimination unjustified.
This is a leading recent statement on how equality rights apply to people at the earliest stage of the refugee process, and it will be cited far beyond childcare whenever a benefit rule leaves out refugee claimants or burdens women in practice. It concerns a provincial program, not the federal system that decides refugee claims, and it does not make claimants eligible for every benefit.
Does This Affect You?
- ✓You are a refugee claimant with children in Quebec who was refused subsidized childcare because your claim is still pending.
- ✓You are a claimant elsewhere in Canada facing a provincial benefit or program that lists only certain immigration statuses.
- ✓You are an advocate, service provider or lawyer assessing whether a benefit rule that leaves out refugee claimants can be defended.
Key Takeaways
- A rule that is neutral on its face can still be discriminatory if it hits women harder in practice, and evidence about who carries childcare duties can prove it.
- Excluding refugee claimants while including other people with temporary or uncertain status made the rule hard for the government to justify.
- The order covers all refugee-claimant parents living in Quebec, not only those with work permits, but it deals with this one regulation, not every benefit.