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Canada must do more to avoid becoming a safe haven for members of the Iranian regime, Iranian Canadians warned in documents unsealed Thursday by the commission on foreign interference.
Documents released by the Hogue Commission summarize public consultations held last year with the Iranian diaspora on foreign interference and what to do about it.
In particular, Iranian Canadians have called for better vetting to eliminate regime officials who previously served in the government of the Islamic Republic arriving in this country.
“Certain participants spoke of the presence of Iranian government officials who were involved in criminal activities and human rights abuses in Canada,” the commission wrote.
Community members also told the inquiry that “organizations of the Iranian-Canadian community have infiltrated and taken over individuals acting on behalf of the Iranian regime.”
Global news discovered this week that despite Ottawa’s promise to deport top regime officials, the Canada Border Services Agency has deported only one of the 18 identified so far.
Canada is “known as a safe haven for Islamic regime officials 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 Islamic regime officials in Canada, she said, recalling an incident in which “Iranian nuclear officials” were invited to the University of British Columbia.
She described “experiencing a sense of desperation when she saw 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 abuses by regime officials in Iran, she said.
Another witness told the inquest that Iran’s former police chief was seen in Richmond Hill, Ont., and a former Iranian government minister “took a summer vacation in Montreal.”
The Iranian regime “wants to influence Canada because there is a large and well-educated Iranian diaspora,” the witness, whose name has not been released, told the inquest.
Another witness suggested the creation of a department within Canada’s immigration or foreign affairs department that would “closely scrutinize immigration applications from Iran.”
The Iranian regime is one of several that Canada has accused of threats and intimidation against dissidents in the diaspora.
Recently assassination plans linked to Iran have targeted outspoken critics of the clerical regime, including 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 Javad Soleimani’s presentation.
Soleimani’s wife was on a passenger plane shot down by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 2020. Fifty-five Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents were killed in the missile attack.
Three months after the tragedy, Iranian intelligence contacted him and told him to remove a social media post they didn’t like, he said.
When he refused, he said they threatened his family, who are still in Iran.
IRGC members are “freely working and studying here in Canada,” Soleimani said, adding that Iran is “actively promoting 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 entering the country in response to Tehran’s crackdown on women’s rights protests.
Since then, immigration investigators have so far identified a dozen and a half suspected members of the top regime, but only three deportation hearings have been completed.
Two of them ended up being deported, but only one of them was actually removed from Canada. In the third case, the Committee for Immigration and Refugees refused to grant deportation.
Meanwhile, a deportation hearing was set to begin next month Amin YousefijamAn Iranian who helped the Islamic Republic evade sanctions and then changed his name to Ameen Cohen after he was convicted.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
