MPs Questions: Ottawa cites privacy, won’t say why Iranian soccer official reached Pearson
MPs Questions: Ottawa cites privacy, won’t say why Iranian soccer official reached Pearson
Publish Date: 2026-06-19 15:29:00
Source Domain: thehub.ca
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada declined to answer any of the specific questions Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill) posed about how Iranian Football Federation president Mehdi Taj came to board a flight to Canada in April 2026 before being denied entry, citing privacy law and offering instead a general statement of policy.
The response was one of three tabled June 17 that turned on the same friction point: the gap between high-profile federal decisions—a denied visa, a wave of citizenship-by-descent approvals, and a shifting military recruiting pool—and the volume of detail the government says it is able or willing to disclose.
On a denied visa, Ottawa cites privacy and offers no timeline
Rempel Garner’s question ran to ten parts, asking for the date Taj’s application was received, who made the initial decision, when the deputy minister’s and minister’s offices first saw the file, whether the minister signed off, and on what date the government decided to revoke the visa and notified the Canada Border Services Agency. She also asked for the department’s internal timeline and a list of all related documents.
The department answered none of the specifics. “While Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada cannot comment on individual cases due to privacy laws, Canada applies robust legislative and regulatory measures to address security concerns,” the reply states, signed by Peter Fragiskatos. It noted that Canada designated the Iranian regime in 2003, rendering senior officials inadmissible, and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is listed as a terrorist entity, rendering its members inadmissible.
The response says “determinations of admissibility may be made at any stage of the travel process,” but offers no account of how Taj reached Pearson Airport, who handled the file, or when any revocation occurred. The response gives no timeline. You can read the question and the…
