(Ottawa) The Canadian government is punishing the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for their “barbarism”, including by decreeing a permanent ban on more than 10,000 officers and senior officers in Tehran. However, it will take a while before the sanctions are applied, predicts a specialist.
Updated yesterday at 5:53 p.m.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Friday, along with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, this measure taken under the “most stringent” provision of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Concretely, this means that “50% of the top leaders of the IRGC, therefore more than 10,000 officers and senior officers will be banned from Canada forever”, explained the Prime Minister during a press conference, insisting on the severity of punishment.
“It is a measure that has been used only in the most serious circumstances against regimes that have perpetrated war crimes and genocides, such as in Bosnia and Rwanda,” he argued.
Speaking after him in the foyer of the House of Commons, the Deputy Prime Minister called the Iranian state “repressive, theocratic and misogynistic”, senior IRGC officials “terrorists”, and the group -even “terrorist organization”, weighing each of the words she dropped into the microphone.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland
In addition to this flagship sanction, Ottawa intends “to massively expand the sanctions imposed under the Special Economic Measures Act and to strengthen its capacity “to combat money laundering and illicit financial activities”, said Justin Trudeau.
The dissatisfied Conservative Party
Friday’s announcement does not respond to the specific request of the Conservative Party, which is crying out for the inclusion of the IRGC on Canada’s list of terrorist entities. The team has been doing it for years, but the events of the past few weeks in Iran have pushed them to raise their voices.
“Today the Liberals announced that they still refuse to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. It is reprehensible that they refuse to take this step,” denounced MP Pierre Paul-Hus in a written statement.
Prime Minister Trudeau argued that this was the way to go. The Canadian Criminal Code, he argued, is not “the best tool” for punishing states and state entities. He added that Ottawa would continue to look at other options, and that none were ruled out.
The government is due to give more details on the mechanism next week. With respect to inadmissibility on the grounds of “violation of human or international rights”, he invokes section 35 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
This is aimed at anyone who “occupies a position of higher rank […] within a government which, in the opinion of the minister, is engaged or has engaged in terrorism, serious or repeated violations of human rights or is committing or has committed genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime”.
“It will not be easy”, concedes Trudeau
Political scientist Thomas Juneau, specialist in Iran, believes that the government made the right decision by choosing not to register the armed wing of the regime on the list of terrorist entities. “To do that, from a symbolic point of view, it would be powerful, but in practice, we would not be able to implement that,” he reacted.
It will still require personnel to apply the sanctions, and not just any personnel, insisted the Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa: “We cannot hire students and expect what they know how to do job in two weeks “.
By reserving an envelope of 76 million to recruit and train them, the Liberals are putting the odds in their favor, but “it will take several months to hire people” and give them a fairly high security clearance, and “at the moment , there is a huge delay in the allocation,” added Mr. Juneau.
In this regard, Justin Trudeau seemed to want to play the franchise card.
“It won’t be easy,” he said. These are measures rarely used by Canada, but we will get the job done, because it is important […] that their government is there to [contrer] this barbaric regime and support Iranian women. »
In the New Democratic camp, the measures unveiled Friday by Ottawa were received with satisfaction. MP Heather McPherson, however, criticized the Liberals for being slow to move forward, and urged them to “make sure it starts now, not months from now”.
The Bloc Québécois did not provide a reaction on Friday.
A protest movement has been raging in Iran since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was beaten to death in Tehran for exposing locks of her hair in public. It made a splash on the planet: French artists expressed their solidarity with Iranian women by cutting locks of hair.
Swedish MP Abir Al-Sahlani also took part in the movement by cutting off one of her locks of hair in the middle of a speech in the European Parliament.