Iranian Canadians Protest Chrystia Freeland For Enabling IRGC Terrorism

On Friday, January 13th, 2023 a group of Iranian Canadian activists stood outside in the cold at Chrystia Freeland’s constituent office in Toronto, to protest the inaction of the Liberal party on their Iran policy. In particular, their failure to follow through on their promise to list the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) under the criminal code of Canada.

The promise was made in 2018 when the Liberals voted for a Conservative motion to list the IRGC as an FTO, but Trudeau’s Liberals have not taken any substantive action against the group, even after they conducted a terrorist attack killing 176 people when they shot down flight PS752 three years ago. Most of the victims had some connection to Canada, yet the Liberals still refuse to act.

In fact, right after the attack, Justin Trudeau bowed to Javad Zarif, Iran’s former Foriegn Minister and the Liberals have gone on to use Canadian taxpayer dollars to defend the IRGC in court against the families of the victims, not once but twice.

In the time since the promise to the Canadian people was made Freeland has occupied the office of Foreign Affairs Minister and is currently Trudeau’s deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. She, like many of the Liberals, has only offered empty words to the people.

The protests were organized by a former political prisoner, Salman Sima, and they have two demands. First, to finally list the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under the criminal code so the government can take solid action against the money laundering and terrorism that threatens the Canadian people. The second is to put Magnitsky sanctions on human rights abusers in Iran. Of all the people that the Liberals are claiming to sanction, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is not one of them.

There have been some Liberal MPs who have attempted to attend anti-regime protests to support the Iranian Canadian community, but all have eventually separated from the movement once confronted about the failure of their government to properly list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.