Monsef witch hunt pointless, nasty

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2016 (2764 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Maryam Monsef was a shining star when she was elected last year as the MP for Peterborough-Kawartha.

She, her mother and two sisters came to Canada in 1996 as Afghan refugees when Monsef was 11 years old. Her story was compelling, particularly at a time when Canada was opening its doors to 25,000 Syrian refugees.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed her to his cabinet as the minister for democratic institutions last November, the appointment was rife with symbolism. 

Monsef’s inexperience has been clear as she attempts to manage this file, but her performance as a minister has nothing to do with why there are people now asking for her head — and her passport — on a platter.

That is because somehow the Globe and Mail found out Monsef was not born in Afghanistan. She was born in Iran.

Every other detail of her life story seems on point. Her family moved back and forth between Mashhad, Iran and Herat, Afghanistan as the civil war raged. Her father was killed when she was four years old. In 1996, when the Taliban took over the government of Afghanistan, Monsef’s mother took her three young daughters and fled. Their journey — via donkey and camel, across Iran, Pakistan and Jordan, before finally securing passage on a plane to Canada — is the stuff of movies.

They claimed refugee status. They moved to Peterborough, Ont. She flourished.

This is a story and a person to be celebrated. While Canadian-born kids were dancing to the Spice Girls and trading Pokemon cards, Monsef was fleeing for her life, arrived in Canada with almost nothing and built herself into a community leader.

Why does it matter now that she was born 400 kilometres away from where she thought?

Anyone who has knowledge of that part of the world has pointed out her lack of knowledge of her birthplace is not impossible or even unusual. The laws in Iran and Afghanistan at the time of her birth meant even though she was born in Iran, she was born as an Afghan citizen. She was not and has never been an Iranian.

Monsef’s mother always told her kids they were born in Afghanistan, and Monsef told of an emotional scene with her mother and sisters after she was approached by a reporter asking about her birthplace. The main part of the story that is not yet clear is whether her mother lied to Canadian officials when the family arrived in this country. There are many who seem to think it’s impossible Monsef could not have known the truth.

An even better question is why on earth Monsef would lie about her birthplace at all? Being born in Iran, as her family tried to stay alive in a part of the world devastated by civil war and totalitarian governments, does nothing to diminish her life story. It would have not affected her refugee claim or her application for citizenship. 

Monsef is now potentially facing the loss of her citizenship because the previous government passed Bill C-24 in 2014, which allows Canada, without a hearing, to strip the citizenship from naturalized Canadians if they obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means. 

Citizenship laws have always allowed for the removal of citizenship for fraud, but C-24 and its aftermath leave the decision entirely in the hands of the minister. The Liberals had a chance to fix this last February when they introduced legislation to eliminate the component of C-24 that strips citizenship from convicted terrorists. They didn’t. When the NDP attempted an amendment to that bill to reintroduce due process, it was ruled out of order.

An independent senator is trying to do it with a bill she introduced in the Senate, and Immigration Minister John McCallum’s office said they would support it. Their lack of action on this, however, is going to come back to haunt them with the Monsef situation.

More than 200 people have been stripped of their citizenship under C-24; some of them arrived in Canada as child refugees, just like Monsef. Like her, they did nothing wrong, yet they are paying the price for politically motivated legislation the B.C. Civil Liberties Association argues is unconstitutional. It filed a legal challenge over the entire bill earlier this week.

The witch hunt against Monsef over her birthplace is downright nasty. Her own government’s inaction on this file has left her in limbo as she works every day to try to improve a democratic system she may soon be no longer eligible to vote in.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca