The Canadian House of Commons on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group and expel an estimated 700 Iranian agents operating in the country.
Parliament members voted 327-0 to accept the non-binding motion recommended by a recent Justice Committee report and initially backed by lawmakers of Canada’s main opposition parties, CBC News reported.
“Parliament just voted UNANIMOUSLY to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and shut down their operations in Canada. Hypocritical liberals vote to do it and then refuse to do it. Let’s see if this time is different,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis tweeted after the vote.
In 2018, lawmakers passed a similar motion to condemn Iran and blacklist the IRGC. While the measure received bipartisan support, the only act carried out was the list of condemnations in the text.
In January of this year, Trudeau stated that his government was looking “for ways to responsibly list the IRGC as a terrorist organization.”
Trudeau’s government has been under mounting pressure to declare the IRGC as a terrorist group under Canada’s Criminal Code following Tehran’s unprecedented direct attacks on Israel last month.
Canada signed on to a statement on April 17 condemning “the fact that the weapons launched at Israel violated the airspace of several regional states, putting at risk the lives of innocent people in those countries, and appeared to traverse airspace near holy sites in Jerusalem.”
Family members of the 55 Canadians who died aboard Ukrainian Flight PS752, which was shot down by the IRGC shortly after taking off from Tehran on Jan. 8, 2020, have also been urging Trudeau to designate the group as a terrorist organization.
