Law360 Canada (April 26, 2024, 11:10 AM EDT) -- Appeal by Yao and Zhang (Appellants) from their exclusion for Canada Child Benefit (CCB) eligibility as temporary residents. The Appellants argued that a textual, contextual, and purposive reading of the CCB provisions revealed that refugee claimants were included in the definition of temporary resident and were therefore eligible for the CCB. The Appellants claimed that interpreting the Income Tax Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) to exclude refugee claimants from the CCB contravened their right to security of person under s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982 (Charter) in a way that was not within the principles of fundamental justice. The Appellants also claimed that denial of the CCB contravened their right to equality under s. 15 of the Charter on the enumerated ground of race, because they were predominantly racialized women, or on analogous ground of their refugee status, on the basis that it was immutable, very difficult to change, or changeable only through unacceptable personal cost. The Minister excluded the Appellants during the relevant periods from the CCB because they were not temporary residents. The rationale was that, as refugee claimants, they were persons not clothed with a status of sufficient permanence under the IRPA to provide a nexus to Canada above a threshold embedded within the concept of a temporary resident. At the relevant times, Yao, Zhang and Zhang's children were refugee claimants. For part of that period, Yao also challenged the decision of the Immigration and Refugee Board, which rejected her refugee claim, in the Federal Court of Canada (Federal Court). Yao's son, who was born in Toronto, however, was a Canadian citizen at all times....