Proscribing Elite Members of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps Entry to Canada

"By officially designating the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization, Canada can join the United States in once again contributing to the global fight against terrorism, demonstrating a strong commitment to ensuring peace and stability."

"In both words and deeds, the IRGC as an entity is ideologically committed to destroying Israel and undermining U.S.-Canadian security interests in the Middle East and around the world."

"The October 7, 2023 terrorist massacre by Hamas killed Israeli, American and Canadian citizens, and it was made possible by Iran and the IRGC, which have supported Canadian-designated Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas with arms, training and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for years."

U.S. Republican and Democratic Congressional Representatives 

"Canada is well known for not being able to actually implement the sanctions that it announces. Our allies know this and it annoys them, and the bad guys know this and it makes them smile."

"You're talking about hundreds of thousands of IRGC veterans. You are talking about a lot of conscripts among those IRGC vets, some of whom would have been cooks in 1996 or something like that."

Thomas Juneau, associate professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa

"When drafting our terrorism laws we made a choice that we would not deal with the conduct of militaries or parties to a conflict under the criminal law, but would instead look to international law to sanction or punish unlawful conduct."

Leah West, assistant professor, national security law, Carleton University

Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attend a military drill in the Aras area, East Azerbaijan province, Iran, October 19, 2022. The European Union is considering whether to join United States and officially designate the militia group as a terrorist organization. So far, Canada has refused. (IRGC/WANA/Reuters)

 

Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau was directly asked by fourteen American Congressmen through a group-signatured letter to officially designate the Islamic Republic Guard Corps of Iran as a terrorist group. Canadian parliamentarians beat them to it by a long shot, having much earlier demanded that their government commit to such a move, only to be ignored by the Trudeau Liberals. 

The House of Commons was joined by the Senate in passing resolutions in recent years, both calling for the IRGC to receive terrorist designation. The United States, Sweden, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia list the group as a terrorist entity. On Canada's list of terrorists, 73 in number, the IRGC remains absent, although its al-Quds arm is on the list.

Not to be forgotten is the tragic loss of Iranian-Canadian lives when a member of the IRGC shot down a Ukraine Airlines passenger jet, Flight 752 over Tehran just as it left the airport, on a flight from Tehran to Kyiv, en route to Canada, believing it to be an incoming U.S. missile although a missile would have been coming from a direction opposite to the flight path. Iran denied for days that two missiles destroyed the plane and all the lives within it, passengers and crew.

 

Protesters in Toronto organized by the Association of Families of Flight PS752 join others across Canada in solidarity with Iranians' continued protests against the regime. (Tyler Cheese/CBC)

As an arm of the Iranian military the IRGC is a major supporter of terrorist groups including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shia terrorist militias, and Hamas. As a state sponsor of terrorism Iran is directly responsible for the Hamas attack on October 7 slaughtering over 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel, taking 240 hostage, along with foreign farm workers. The members of Congress emphasized in their letter that the IRGC facilitated the attack and needed to be stopped.

Canada's terrorist list dates from 2003. Any group on the list makes it illegal in Canada for anyone to do business with the named group or to join or participate in its actions. Which hasn't stopped 'pro-Palestinian' mobs from hoisting Hamas flags alongside Palestinian flags and signalling their support for the Hamas death-cult's heinous sadistic savagery in raping Israeli girls and women, mutilating and murdering them, along with men, the elderly and Israeli children and infants. Touting the atrocities as being in a 'just cause' of 'freedom from the occupation'.

According to an associate professor at University of Toronto, Thomas Juneau, it would merely become a  symbolic gesture to add the IRGC, achieving little in the way of consequences. Yet there are times when even symbolic gestures have their place when civilized societies have an obligation to some kind of action, even symbolically, that they unequivocally abhor and denounce such unspeakable atrocities.  It would even obligate the Canadian government to take the steps required to deny entrance to members of the IRGC into Canada.

Iranian-Canadians have complained for years to the federal government that elite members of the IRGC seem to feel free to own property in Canada, and to visit their families who live in Canada with no government authority denying them that privilege. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made some conciliatory overtures to the demands of Iranian Canadians that members of the IRGC should be forbidden entry to Canada, yet a year later, nothing has been done.

On top of adding more Iranian officials and entities to its sanctions list, the federal government is pursuing measures that would block members of the Iranian regime from entering Canada and potentially kick their family members out of the county. CBCNews