The 'Unnoticed' Presence of Islamist Terror Groups in Canada

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre

"Those allegations [accusations of paramilitary group Kata'ib Hezbollah linked to the IRGC] include two attacks here in Canada; the March 10 shooting at the United States consulate in Toronto and an attack against a Canadian synagogue."

"He [Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi] also allegedly said he was running multiple teams and sought help carrying out further attacks against Jewish and other targets in Canada and the United States." 

"There is no justification for the delay [in placing the group with Canada's terrorist list]."

"Jewish Canadians have watched their synagogues, schools and businesses targeted by shootings, vandalism, firebombings and threats."

"Iranian Canadians who escaped the brutality of the Islamic Republic have faced surveillance, harassment and intimidation from the same regime on Canadian soil." 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Parliamentary opposition

Counter-rally against the Al-Quds day event in Toronto  The Hub

 

The Liberal government of Canada -- under both prime ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney -- has failed to stem the duress under which Canadian Jews have found themselves over the past three years, assailed verbally and physically, threatened and slandered by 'pro-Palestinian' groups in Canadian society led by Palestinian student groups supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran and funded by Qatar. Led by the fundamentalist Islamist focus on jihad. This is a jihad that penetrates Western society through sanctimoniously disingenuous diplomacy that government cannot see through, and the violent jihad of the terrorist battlefield. 

 

While moderate Islamic governments in the Middle East recognize the Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots and associates for the threat they represent not only to the West but to their own governance and security, and have taken steps to outlaw it, the West is amenable to its presence, its infiltration through ingratiating itself as a reasonable, moderate representative of Islam to be respected and heeded as a portal to understanding and welcoming the presence of inordinate numbers of Muslims through immigration, refugee intake and migrant presence. 

 

The little-recognized presence of terrorist groups within Western society working to undermine democracy and to silence critics and opponents present the other side of penetrative jihad. These groups, like the members of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps whose presence in Canada affront and concern Canadian Iranians who fled their brutal dictatorial rule in Iran, operate with impunity, with little-to-no 'notice' taken of the menace they represent, by Canada's Liberal government.

 

Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pointed out to Canada's Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree through a letter, that American authorities arrested Mohammad Baqer Saad Daewood Al-Saadi, senior commander of Kata'ib Hezbollah, accused of coordinating dozens of attempted and completed terrorist attacks in Europe and North America. 

 

Founded in 2007, Kata'ib Hezbollah, according to the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, has some 7,000 to 10,000 members. They operate primarily in Iraq with a purported presence in Bahrain, Iran, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. They were listed in 2009 as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Mr. Poilievre asked the Minister of Safety to investigate whether operatives for the group have established networks in Canada. To further investigate linkages between Iranian terrorist proxies and organized crime. 

 

Further, that it be disclosed the number of operatives connected to the Iranian regime and its proxies that have been identified, denied entry, investigated, detained or removed from Canada. Previously Minister Anandasangaree, pressed by the opposition why the government had deported only one Iranian official from among the dozens known to be present in Canada, the minister cited a requirement to follow due process, to explain the delay. The reality is that of 24 individuals identified as former IRGC officials, one only has been deported.

 

Iran-Inspired Al-Quds Day rally in Toronto    The Hub

 

The Liberals have failed to enforce Canada’s terrorist laws with the urgency and strength Canadians expect. Parliament did not list terrorist entities merely to put their names on a government website. Canadians expect their laws to be enforced to the fullest extent: terrorist assets frozen and seized, financing networks dismantled, and operatives stopped at the border or removed from the country. Yet Canadians have seen little evidence of serious enforcement against the IRGC and other listed terrorist groups threatening our people, our communities and our national interests. A terrorist listing is only as strong as the action that follows it.

Jewish Canadians have watched their synagogues, schools and businesses targeted by shootings, vandalism, firebombings and threats. Iranian Canadians who escaped the brutality of the Islamic Republic have faced surveillance, harassment and intimidation from the same regime on Canadian soil.

A year-long Global News investigation reported that upwards of 700 Iranian regime-linked associates were operating in Canada and threatening the lives of Canadians. The RCMP subsequently acknowledged receiving reports of foreign interference committed by, or at the direction of, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Canadians deserve to know who these individuals are, how they entered Canada and what your government is doing to remove those who pose a threat.

The IRGC was finally listed as a terrorist entity only after years of pressure from Conservatives. Even now, your government has been unable to tell Canadians how many IRGC operatives have been identified, denied entry or removed from the country.

Listing the parent organization means little if its commanders, proxies, financiers and hired criminals remain free to operate here.

You must therefore:

• Immediately list Kata’ib Hezbollah as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code;
• Investigate whether its members, operatives, facilitators or financial networks are operating in Canada;
• Disclose how many individuals connected to the Iranian regime and its proxies have been identified, denied entry, investigated, detained or removed;
• Investigate and disclose any known links between Iranian terrorist proxies and organized crime in Canada; and
• Explain what action Canadian authorities are taking in response to the alleged Kata’ib Hezbollah-directed attacks in Toronto.

Canada must be a safe haven for Canadians, not for the terrorists, agents and proxies sent to silence the victims of the Iranian regime.

Canadians must be free to worship without fear of gunfire. Iranian Canadians must be free to oppose the regime without facing its enforcers here at home. All Canadians deserve a government that stops terrorists before they attack rather than making excuses after the damage is done.

Conservative Party of Canada  

Protesters and counter-protesters demonstrate by the U.S. Consulate during a rally for Al-Quds Day in Toronto, on Saturday, March 14, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sammy Kogan

 

Iranian Regime Officials 'Packing Their Bags' for Canada

"We know that over the last several years, many, many senior officials of the Iranian regime, despite inadmissibility laws, have already made it in here."

"[If the Islamic Republic's ruling class finds itself sent into exile, they] know how to get into Canada." 

Security Analyst Casey Babb, senior fellow, MacDonald Laurier Institute think-tank

 

"Canada is known as a safe haven for Islamic regime officials and their families."

"It is very traumatizing for Iranian Canadians to see officials from the Islamic regime in Canada.

Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay

A handout picture provided by the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's office shows him greeting the crowd before addressing the nation on the first anniversary of the death of Iran's former president Ebrahim Raisi, on May 20, 2025 in Tehran.  Photo-/KHAMENEI.IR/AFP via Getty Images

 

Canada has a record of hosting Iranian regime officials in a covert mutual 'understanding', never publicly expressed, but fairly well known, given the fact that Iranian-Canadians -- who emigrated from Iran following the downfall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi and the ascension of Ayatollah Khomeini when Persia was transformed from a moderate Islamic kingdom to a fundamentalist Islamist regime -- have been calling out the presence of members of the regime entering Canada to live unmolested with their families in the safety and obscurity of an under-the-radar 'friendly' Western nation.

 

This, even though Canada has officially recognized the Islamic Republic of Iran as a supporter of terrorist groups, and a theocracy that maltreats and oppresses its population, while fomenting hatred and discrimination against the West and particularly the United States and Israel. According to the Government of Canada: In 2024, Canada listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code, in response to its terrorist acts both, on its own and in knowing association with listed terrorist entities, such as Hizballah and Hamas. 

 

So it is puzzling that given this reality, the Liberal government of Canada appears singularly unperturbed that a regime known for its support of Islamist terrorism can have a presence, however unacknowledged, by the casual and covert residency permitted members of the repressively dangerous regime. Now that Israel has launched an aerial campaign to destroy Iran's nuclear designs nearing the completion of atomic warheads, Iran is bleeding its top officials and IRGC members as they leave for safer environs.

 

And Canada appears to be the destination of many, although Russia has indicated its willingness to give safe haven to those fleeing the aerial bombardment the Ayatollahs have brought about by their adamant refusal to completely surrender all intentions to build nuclear armaments to match its rhetorical promises to attack and demolish Israel.  

 

The Canada Border Services Agency in April reported that twenty Iranians living in Canada had served in high-level positions with the government in Tehran, one of whom has been deported, the others having left voluntarily. Since 2022, Canada has barred Iranian officials from entering the country, part of a measure "to keep war criminals out of Canada". That order barred any "senior officials" who served the regime since 2003, when Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was detained, imprisoned and tortured to death in Iran.

 

Seyed Salman Samani, when he was spokesperson for Iran’s ministry of interior. Global News

 

A former Tehran police chief, Morteza Talael, active in deadly crackdowns against anti-regime protests was seen and reported in 2021 while working out at a Toronto gym. Iran's former deputy interior minister, Seyed Salman Samani, was subject to a Canadian removal order. One of the world's largest expatriate Iranian populations exists in Canada, representing opponents of the regime. From that community have come warnings to the government by activists, that the regime was embedding officials in Canada.

 

Volunteer lawyers founded a group -- Stop IRGC in 2022 -- collecting dossiers on Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members along with other regime figures, present in Canada. They have reported 91 such instances to Canadian law enforcement. Investigator Casey Babb spoke in an interview, of regime officials living illegally in Canada, who claiming asylum, can become legal residents. A former director general of an Iranian government department claimed asylum in 2022 when he arrived to Canada.

 

Asylum claimants in Canada seeking eligibility for permanent resident status are disproportionately comprised of Iranian nationals. Iran was the second-largest source for Canadian asylum claimants in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Association for Canadian Studies.  

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

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