Canadians are still waiting for answers on whether or not their government truly takes the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran seriously.
A little more than two years ago, the House of Commons passed a private member’s motion to condemn the brutal Iranian regime, which ended any potential chance of restoring diplomatic relations between Canada and Iran, as well as the immediate request to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in its entirety, as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code.
While the motion received bipartisan support from both the opposition and the government, the only act carried out was the list of condemnations in the text.
There is one crucial item that has not been fulfilled yet, and that is listing the IRGC—a motion item that should have been carried out from the moment it passed in 2018.
The ministry responsible for designating terrorist entities, Public Safety Canada, has had ample time to review, analyze and decide on whether or not to go forward with a part of the motion that the government agrees with based on their voting record, yet there is still no update on this matter to the Canadian public.
In 2012, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a bold and courageous move to end relations with Iran, which included closing the Canadian embassy in Tehran and list one wing of the IRGC: the Quds Force.
Canada has given no consequences in any way to the regime more than six months after the shooting down of Flight PS752—not even a simple condemnation of the gross human-rights violations the regime commits.
The horrific downing of the Ukrainian airliner is further proof that if the IRGC was listed, the families of the victims of this tragedy could file a lawsuit under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.
Essentially, had the Quds Force committed this atrocity, they could be sued. However, since the IRGC is not listed in its entirety, it could not be part of any potential lawsuit. This very disappointing fact alone should be more than enough for Public Safety Canada to classify the IRGC in the category where it belongs as a recognized terrorist organization.
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