Former MP knew Monsef family was from Iran years ago
A former Liberal MP and MPP who supported the campaign of Peterborough-Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef said he’s known since Monsef was in high school that her family was from Iran.
Peter Adams said he knew the family fled Iran to Afghanistan before leaving for Canada as refugees.
“I knew the family was from Iran – I did,” he said.
“I think anybody who knows anything about them knows the family speaks Farsi,” Adams said. “It was clear, given the language they spoke, that they’d lived in Iran.”
The democratic institutions minister revealed last week that she was born in Iran, not Afghanistan as she’d long believed.
She said her mother, who fled Afghanistan with her daughters when Monsef was 11, didn’t think it mattered where the minister was born since she was still legally considered an Afghan citizen.
Both her parents were Afghan citizens, she said, and that made her an Afghan citizen too. (In Iran, it’s the parents’ nationality that determines the child’s, she explained – not the birthplace.)
Adams said he hadn’t ever asked about Monsef ’s birthplace.
What mattered more to him was that the Monsefs were forced to flee Iran to war-ravaged Afghanistan – ostensibly for safety – before seeking refuge in Canada.
Never mind where she was born, Adams said: “She was a refugee from Afghanistan – that’s who she was.”
But this week, civil liberties and refugee lawyers said this new information about her birthplace could cost Monsef her Canadian citizenship. Lorne Waldman, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, told The Canadian Press that if Monsef ’s birthplace was misrepresented on her refugee claim and was relevant to the ruling on her case, her citizenship could be revoked, regardless of whether it was an innocent mistake or the fault of her mother.
Waldman said Monsef’s citizenship could be revoked without a hearing, and she could even be deported.
But Tamara Hoogerdyk, the director of front-line services at the New Canadians Centre in Peterborough, said she’s never seen anyone’s citizenship revoked under these circumstances.
“It would not be a common case,” she said.
Ann Farquharson, a lawyer and a friend of Monsef ’s, said she can’t see how the birthplace would be relevant to her ruling, given she is an Afghan citizen.
The revelations don’ t detract from Monsef’s story, in Farquharson’s estimation.
“The courage her mother showed in getting her daughters to safety – I really commend her on that,” she said.
“Who among us would exchange our childhood for hers? I can’t even imagine .... This family is exactly the kind of people we cherish, in this country.”
Local activist Roy Brady said it doesn’t matter where Monsef was born.
“It only matters if she did know she was born in Iran, before last week,” he said. “If she knew, and campaigned as an Afghan-born person, that’s not good.”
One of Monsef ’s political competitors, Patti Peeters, thinks Monsef did know all along that her birthplace was Iran. Peeters ran against Monsef for mayor in the municipal election in 2014. She said she received several anonymous notes at home, during the campaign, from someone who wanted her to know that Monsef had been born in Iran.
That’s why Peeters doesn’t believe Monsef’s mother has just revealed this information to her daughter.
“I think she’s using her mother as a scapegoat,” Peeters said.
She said she and other candidates knew of Monsef’s birthplace but didn’t use it against her in the campaign because it would make them seem mean-spirited.
Although to some voters, Monsef ’s birthplace might not have mattered.
“For me, it’s a non-issue,” said Peterborough MPP and Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister Jeff Leal.
“The real test is that she’s workign extremely hard as a minister - that’s the benchmark by which she should be judged.”