She's the last person who should walk away from a question about the government's failure to list the IRGC as a terrorist group
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On Jan. 8, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland evaded a question about why Canada hasn’t designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) as a terrorist organization. The question was being asked on the fourth anniversary of the IRGC’s murder of 55 Canadians aboard Flight PS752, and in the middle of a war the IRGC is facilitating across the Middle East. Before the journalist could ask again, he was arrested, which was caught on film and quickly became an international incident with millions of views.
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It was another moment of evasiveness and mixed messages from a government struggling to define itself as a reliable ally during a time of war and terror overseas. The low point for Canadians was last December, when Hamas publicly thanked our government for opposing Israel and the United States by voting for a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations. A good time to start clarifying your policies on terror is when a sadistic Iran-backed terror network starts publicly thanking you for your help.
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This government plays word games that our enemies and allies see through. Freeland has called the IRGC a “terrorist organization” in the past, but it has to be formally designated as such for it to matter. Unfortunately, troubling decisions followed by evasive language is the hallmark of Freeland’s response to terror.
In 2017, Freeland, who was serving as foreign affairs minister, and then-public safety minister Ralph Goodale co-authored an apology letter to convicted al-Qaida terrorist Omar Khadr, and handed him a cheque for $10.5 million.
Khadr had been arrested in Afghanistan after killing U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer, in a battle where his own life was saved by U.S. army medics. He was held in Guantanamo Bay until the Harper government repatriated him in 2012. In 2015, the Harper government fought a court order that Khadr be released on bail, but the Liberals dropped that appeal after they came to power later that year.
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Then, instead of fighting Khadr in court, they made the decision to replace a pending court process — where a judge would have decided on Khadr’s claim — with their own ministerial discretion to voluntarily pay Khadr a huge sum of money. That extraordinary, voluntary decision — to pay a massive sum and apologize to a terrorist who fought against Canadians — and the precedent it set for terrorists in Canada, still requires an explanation.
Then, in February 2022, Freeland decided to invoke measures under a national state of emergency (a decision that was recently deemed “unreasonable” by the Federal Court) that treated the Freedom Convoy similar to terrorists and organized criminals.
Under the emergency measures, crowdfunding platforms were required to report to FINTRAC — a financial intelligence agency intended to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Banks were also authorized to freeze the accounts of anyone the government named, overriding normal legal processes.
This carried three civil rights problems. First, there were obvious alternatives: Canada has laws to deal with unruly protesters causing mischief or committing acts of violence. Second, the truckers clearly weren’t terrorists. They posed no immediate threat to fellow Canadians and, unlike some current protesters, never hid their faces or shouted hateful ethnic and religious slurs at fellow Canadians.
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Third, the application was over-broad. Banks were compelled to freeze accounts without the usual legal constraint of being innocent until proven guilty. Yet, at her press conference on Feb. 17, 2022, Freeland highlighted the fact that these rules gave her department newfound powers to threaten anyone on their list of protesters and donors with financial ruin. She punctuated this fact by showing journalists the list and stating that she and the prime minister had personally reviewed it.
The world was transfixed. A notoriously soft-on-terror minister was suddenly suspending civil rights and invoking totalitarian measures against Canadians. It worked. According to one legal expert interviewed by the CBC, several were incarcerated without bail for longer than the jail time they likely would have received from being convicted. A few are still in custody awaiting trial after more than 700 days. At this point, maybe the truckers should consider retaining Omar Khadr’s lawyer to help this government consider their Charter rights.
FINTRAC remains Freeland’s responsibility. Yet its actual purpose — to track down and eliminate terrorist and transnational criminal syndicates in Canada — has floundered on her watch. According to Garry Clement, the former head of the RCMP’s financial crimes unit, our Five Eyes intelligence allies — the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — have “expressed real frustration” with Canadian incompetence in finding and removing illicit funding networks, which has made Canada a haven for international terror and criminal syndicates.
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In a time of terror and war, it is increasingly problematic for government ministers to walk away from questions about the IRGC — or about press freedoms, Omar Khadr, protesters, FINTRAC or its use of the Emergencies Act. Chrystia Freeland is the deputy prime minister. Her decisions on terror continue to define our country in the eyes of the world. It’s past time for her to explain to Canadians and the rest of the world what she is thinking.
National Post
David Knight Legg studied law and politics at Oxford and Yale. He was principal advisor to the premier of Alberta and is chairman of Elements Advisors, an investment firm in Asia.
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