Commissioner Marie-Josee Hogue makes an opening statement as public hearings begin for an independent commission probing alleged foreign interference in Canadian elections in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada January 29, 2024.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
The Conservative Party has formally asked the public inquiry on foreign interference to examine Iran’s harassment and influence activities in Canada.
Party lawyer Nando De Luca wrote to Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue Tuesday to request that the inquiry include Tehran and “its campaign of intimidation, repression and interference” in its scrutiny of the activities of China, Russia and India.
“Iranian foreign interference is an active, present threat in Canada, and one that the current government has not taken appropriate action on,” Mr. De Luca wrote.
Over the weekend, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden, who also served as a national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former prime minister Stephen Harper, recommended that the scope of the inquiry be expanded to include Iran.
On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department alleged that it had charged one Iranian national and two Canadian members of the Hells Angels with a murder-for-hire scheme to assassinate individuals in the United States who had fled Iran.
“These are just the latest in a series of warning signs and reports concerning examples of Iranian activity and interference in Canada, including the intimidation and repression of Canadians on Canadian soil,” Mr. De Luca said in his letter.
In November, an Iranian-Canadian human-rights activist said Iran has at least 700 operatives in Canada, and there are reports that at least 300 properties across British Columbia are owned by individuals linked to the Iranian regime.
In 2022, CSIS confirmed that it was investigating reports of “credible” death threats from Iran against people living in Canada, which the spy agency said were “designed to silence those who speak out publicly” against Tehran.
Foreign interference FAQs: What to expect from the public inquiry and how we got here
“With the many high-profile examples of Iranian interference in Canada, both in relation to our democratic processes and attempts to repress political expression in Canada, it is of the utmost importance that Iran be a subject of interest in the Commission’s work,” Mr. De Luca wrote.
Ali Ehsassi, the Liberal MP who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, said he too wants the inquiry to look at foreign interference by Iran. He said he assumed this was already part of the plan.
“This has been an issue that has been a grave concern to members of the Iranian-Canadian community,” he said Tuesday.
Asked about the Conservatives’ request, commission spokesperson Michael Tansey would only say the inquiry has a wide mandate to explore foreign interference from “China, Russia and other foreign state and or non-state actors.” Last week, Justice Hogue announced that she had requested information and documents from the government involving any alleged interference by India during the 2019 and 2021 elections.
On the second day of the inquiry, the commission heard from national security experts about what classified information could be released and what must be withheld.
Michael Nesbitt, a University of Calgary law professor, told the commission Tuesday that the government has tended to favour secrecy over disclosure in past inquiries and national security court cases. “There’s tendency as a matter of practice for the balance between secrecy and transparency to skew, at least in the first instances,” toward secrecy, Prof. Nesbitt said.
He said public faith in the proceedings will be affected by whether Ottawa overreaches in trying to shield information from release – what it claims must be kept secret.
“The single most important factor in trying to ensure public accountability and fairness is for the government to limit from the outset the breadth of those claims to what is truly necessary,” he said.
“Although government agencies may be tempted to make such claims to shield certain information from public scrutiny and avoid potential embarrassment, that temptation should always be resisted.”
Leah West, a former lawyer in the Department of Justice’s national-security division and now a Carleton University professor, laid out the many types of information the government will seek to avoid disclosing during the inquiry.
The list includes anything that can identify or tend to identify CSIS’s interest in individuals, groups or issues, including the existence or non-existence of past or present files or investigations; anything that can identify or tend to identify methods of operation or investigative techniques; relationships the service maintains with police, security and intelligence agencies; or information that would tend to identify individuals co-operating with the service or the information they provided.
The Conservatives have long called on the government to follow the lead of the United States and designate as a terrorist entity the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the armed forces of Iran. Canada currently considers just the Quds Force, one branch of the IRGC, a terrorist entity.
In December, a bipartisan group of U.S. members of Congress urged Canada to designate the entire IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. In a letter to Mr. Trudeau, the 14 members of the House of Representatives emphasized the urgency of the matter, citing Iran’s alleged involvement in the funding, training and support of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants.
The U.S. designated the IRGC a terrorist organization in 2019. Canada’s Senate passed a non-binding motion in 2018 calling on the government to do the same, building on a similar resolution passed that year by the House of Commons.
Last year, then-justice minister David Lametti argued that military service in Iran is mandatory, so designating the IRGC as a terrorist entity could target innocent people, not just its leaders.
Canada has been using its immigration laws to deny entry to senior Iranian officials, including many members of the IRGC, and is investigating others in Canada for potential ties to Tehran. In November, 2022, Ottawa designated Iran a “regime that has engaged in terrorism and systematic and gross human-rights violations” under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.