Border agency investigating dozens of cases of potential Iranian officials allowed into Canada

Former CBSA officer Kelly Sundberg says he is ‘not optimistic’ about the Strong Borders Act and it doesn’t necessarily improve public safety for Canadians.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirms it is investigating how dozens of suspected Iranian officials have been allowed to enter Canada, while three individuals have been issued deportation orders and another removed from the country.

Some experts, meanwhile, are warning more should be done to prosecute former Iranian government and military officials living in Canada.

In a statement to CTV News, CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy says all Iranian nationals must apply for a visa to enter Canada, at which point they are “carefully assessed” by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

“Our strong response to suspected senior officials in the Iranian regime remains in place and the CBSA continues to take action to stop them from seeking or finding safe haven in Canada,” Purdy wrote.

In 2022, Canada designated the Iranian government one that “engages in terrorism and systematic or gross human rights violations,” barring any senior government official from entering Canada. According to CBSA, those include senior officials from the government, security and intelligence agencies, as well as members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Under that designation, the CBSA says 131 visas have been cancelled by IRCC. The CBSA has also opened 115 investigations.

Of those, Purdy wrote, 49 investigations have been concluded, and the remaining are ongoing. A concluded investigation means “the individuals in question were either not in Canada or determined not to be a senior official in the Iranian regime and therefore not inadmissible for this reason.”

The remaining 66 investigations are ongoing.

Meanwhile, 20 people have been “reported inadmissible” by the CBSA for being an Iranian regime senior official, 19 of which either have or will be sent for an admissibility hearing. Following admissibility hearings, three “individuals were found inadmissible for being prescribed senior officials and issued deportation orders.”

One individual has been removed from Canada, according to Purdy.

Following the designation, Purdy wrote, CBSA has cancelled visas, launched investigations, and conducted admissibility hearings. In addition to Canada’s designation of the Iranian regime under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, it has also listed the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.

In an interview with CTV News, former CSIS director Ward Elcock said the process for investigating inadmissibility is “not a delicate situation, but it can be difficult.”

“People don’t arrive in Canada with a stamp on their forehead saying, ‘I am a spy,’ or ‘I am a former Iranian official, and I tortured people,’” Elcock said. “So, do you know that? How do you know that information? You don’t necessarily know it.”

“It may take investigation to actually determine whether the individual is who they say they are, or whether they have connections that they haven’t disclosed or not,” he added. “All of that is subject to investigation and can take time.”

Iran a ‘leading architect of transnational repression’: Cotler

There’s been a heightened focus on the Iranian regime amid the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict.

Irwin Cotler — a former federal justice minister and former special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism — said there have long been IRGC members operating in Canada, and one can expect them to increase activities.

“We always see the confluence of domestic repression on the one hand and transnational repression, and even assassination, on the other,” Cotler said in an interview with CTV News. “So, while we have the intensified domestic repression, we can expect, as well the transnational repression, to be equally intensified.”

He added that Iran being a “leading architect of transnational repression and assassination” causes “reason for apprehension.”

Cotler, who is also the founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, was the target of an alleged foiled assassination plot by agents of Iran last November.

He has been under 24-hour security protection since 2023, though neither he nor the RCMP have confirmed “what organization or country poses the threat.”

“They are responsible for threats, intimidation, harassment of both Iranian Canadians and their families back in Iran,” Cotler said. “They are also allegedly complicit in trafficking, in money laundering, and the like.”

“All these things would be matters that would have to be investigated,” he added. “But the main determination having been made that the IRGC is a terrorist organization means, number one, the exclusion IRGC officials to begin with — and that’s why the CBSA is investigating these things — and as I said, I recommended prosecution of those here where the evidence can show a complicity in criminality.”

According to the final report from the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference released in January, while Iran is not a “significant” actor when it comes to foreign interference in Canada, its regime does engage in transnational repression.

“Iran relies on criminal groups to carry out its activities and conducts psychological harassment online,” the report states. “Such tactics may very well prevent people from participating in Canadian democratic processes, but this is difficult to determine with certainty.”

“The government assesses Iran as a considerable transnational threat because it is likely monitoring, influencing, collecting information on, harassing and intimidating the Iranian diaspora community to prevent criticism of Iran,” the report also states.

Cotler said he wants to see more prosecutions of Iranian officials and IRGC members living in Canada, and for a separate agency to be set up to investigate transnational repression.

Investigations number ‘extremely low’: lawyer

Mojdeh Shahriari, a Vancouver-based lawyer and volunteer with the group StopIRGC, said in an interview with CTV News there should have been more deportations sooner, calling the number of ongoing CBSA investigations “extremely low.”

She wants to see former IRGC members who have since obtained Canadian citizenship to be prosecuted.

“Any member of the IRGC is complicit, according to the law, in crimes of terroristic nature, whether directly or indirectly,” Shahriari said, pointing to the Canadian government’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist entity in the Criminal Code.

She is calling on the federal government to increase investigations into the potentially hundreds of individuals who’ve already settled in Canada, beyond just those hoping to enter now.

“I think no Canadian should feel safe when we have people who have been involved in crimes against humanity, in terrorism, in trafficking, in money laundering, living amongst us as if that’s normal,” she said. “That is not normal.”

With files from CTV News’ Stephanie Ha and Judy Trinh