Lax immigration vetting makes Canada prime target for Iranian infiltration, says Secure Canada

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OTTAWA — Canada needs real and rigorous reform of its immigration bureaucracy to deal with agents of the Iranian regime, urges a Canadian terror watchdog.

In a statement posted online this week by the Council for a Secure Canada, the organization highlighted the threat posed by infiltration of Iranian officials, and how ill-equipped Canada is to deal with them.

While the real numbers of active Iranian agents attempting to enter or already working within Canada isn’t known, a Secure Canada spokesperson told The Toronto Sun that Canada’s ineffective immigration oversight makes us a tempting target for infiltration.

“Considering the fact they figured out that Canada has a very lax vetting system, doesn’t take national security particularly seriously — at least in the past decade — I would say, or just over, and there’s a very established Iranian diaspora,” they said.

Recent news reports, however, suggest Iran has as many as 700 agents at work in Canada, with the possibility of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members fleeing here as the Iranian regime becomes less stable.

The Sun spoke with numerous Iranian-Canadians who’ve said they — and their families back home — are under constant threat based on what they say in public or to the media about Iran’s despotic government.

“(Agents) have deep ties to Hezbollah, they have ties to other expat communities that share the Shia access and an ideological worldview,” Secure Canada said.

“Combined with lax vetting standards and a reluctance to deport, and the difficulty with which the system takes even really good cases for deportation — where agents work for over a year to build a very clear case — and the way the system can be gamed by people with deep pockets, and even people without particularly deep pockets.”

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This reluctance to deport is baked into the institutional culture of Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC,), Secure Canada claimed — with sources and internal investigations suggesting career advancement for immigration caseworkers is based on keeping rejection rates low.

“The mantra (within IRCC) is ‘admit, admit, admit,'” they said.

“It’s that complex of wanting to appear PC in every step of the process.”

Automation of the immigration process also feeds into the issue, they said, saying that the chances of a human immigration agent getting a chance to thoroughly examine applications is becoming less and less common.

“There has to be a true review of what kind of system Canadians deserve, and what kind of system will allow us to retain a social fabric that is acceptable — we’ve seen in the past 2 1/2 years, especially since (Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel),” the spokesperson said.

“There’s a sense that this country is changing, in some ways that are not positive — in terms of its public conversation, in terms of normalization of certain kinds of violent rhetoric, foiled terror plots and things like that.

“There has to be a pause.”

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume