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Canada must do more to avoid becoming a safe haven for members of Iran’s regime, Iranian Canadians warned in documents unsealed Thursday by the Foreign Interference Commission.
Documents released by the Hogue Commission summarize public consultations with the Iranian diaspora last year about foreign interference and what to do about it.
In particular, Iranian Canadians called for better screening to remove regime officials who previously served in the Islamic republic’s government. arrive in this country.
“Certain attendees spoke about the presence of Iranian government officials who were involved in criminal activities and human rights abuses in Canada,” the committee wrote.
Community members also told the inquiry that “Iranian Canadian community organizations have been infiltrated and taken over by individuals acting on behalf of the Iranian regime.”
Global News public this week that despite Ottawa’s promise to expel top regime officials, the Canada Border Services Agency had deported only one of the 18 identified so far.
Canada “is known as a safe haven for officials of the Islamic regime and their families,” Tehran-born human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay said in her presentation.
It was “very traumatizing” for Iranian Canadians to see officials of the Islamic regime in Canada, she said, recalling an incident that saw “Iranian nuclear officials” invited to the University of British Columbia.
She described “experiencing feelings of despair watching the children of Iranian regime officials driving fancy cars around Vancouver,” and claimed real estate agents were working with officials “to park their money” in B.C.
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Border agents need more awareness and training, and should use the public online database Faces of Crimes, which documents the abuses of regime officials in Iran, she said.
Another witness told the inquiry that a former Iranian police chief was spotted in Richmond Hill, Ont., and a former Iranian cabinet minister “taking a summer vacation in Montreal.”
The Iranian regime “wants to exert influence in Canada because there is a large and well-educated Iranian diaspora,” the witness, whose name was not released, told the inquiry.
Another witness suggested setting up a section within Canada’s immigration or foreign affairs departments to “investigate immigration applications from Iran.”
The Iranian regime is one of several that Canada has accused of targeting dissidents in the diaspora with threats and intimidation.
Recently murder plots linked to Iran have directly expressed critics of the clerical regime, among them Irwin Cotler, a former liberal MP.
“Iranian dissidents have been threatened in Canada and their families in Iran have been contacted by Iranian officials,” according to a summary of a presentation by Javad Soleimani.
Soleimani’s wife was on board a passenger plane that was shot down by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) in 2020. Fifty-five Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents died in the missile attack.
Three months after the tragedy, Iran’s intelligence service contacted him and told him to remove a social media post they didn’t like, he said.
When he refused, he said that they threatened his family still in Iran.
IRGC members “work and study freely here in Canada,” Soleimani said, adding Iran “has actively promoted its agenda through mosques and community groups” that should be investigated.
The Canadian government announced in November 2022 that it had banned senior regime officials from the country in response to Tehran’s crackdown on women’s rights demonstrations.
Since then, a dozen-and-a-half suspected top government officials have so far been identified by immigration enforcement investigators, but only three deportation hearings have been completed.
Two of them ended up with deportation orders, but only one of them was actually removed from Canada. In the third case the Immigration and Refugee Board refused to approve the deportation.
Meanwhile, a deportation hearing would begin next month Amin Yousefijaman Iranian who helped the Islamic republic evade sanctions, then changed his name to Ameen Cohen after he was convicted.
& copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
