Eight Iranian community figures attended the event, including Nazanin Afshin-Jam, who is married to Harper’s defense minister.
Farrokh Zandi, who is the president of the Iranian-Canadian Congress and a professor of business at York University in Ontario, said, “The prime minister indicated that they have washed their hands of the [Iranian] regime, but not the people of Iran and they stand by us.”
Zandi said the majority of attendees supported the decision to shut down the Canadian embassy in Tehran and the Iranian embassy in Ottawa.
The closure was received with mixed sentiments by the Iranian community, with many concerned about the loss of consular services such as passport renewals and birth registrations.
Zandi said Harper stated that his main reason in closing the Canadian embassy was for the safety of Canadian diplomats and that he said Canada was taking steps to find a way to restore consular services in Canada.
Afshin-Jam said in a statement: “I am pleased that the government consistently differentiates regime officials in power versus freedom-loving Iranians. They do not want by any means to penalize regular Iranians.”
She said the group visiting Harper felt their own security was threatened in Canada by Iranians loyal to the regime.
Zandi said the Iranian-Canadians brought up their concerns over the continued operations of the Iranian Cultural Centre and the Carleton Iranian Culture student group, which had strong embassy ties and intimidated some Iranian-Canadians in the past.
Zandi said they also discussed the sanctions that led TD Bank to shut down some Iranian-Canadian accounts and prevented some from sending earthquake relief money. TD is the only Canadian bank known to have interpreted the new Canadian sanctions as requiring the bank to close some accounts held by Iranian-Canadians. The Canadian government has never issued a statement saying whether TD is correct and all other Canadian banks wrong in interpreting the new rules.
The group also discussed the cases of three Iranian-Canadians imprisoned in Iran. Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird issued a warning to all Iranian-Canadians urging them not to travel to Iran.
Zandi said the meeting did not yield any definite answers, but he felt the discussion was a good starting point. “We all left quite happy, we made some suggestions, the government took note very seriously.”
The attendees also included Merhdad Rahbar, president of Vernacular Design and Neda for Freedom Society in Vancouver; Moe Eskandarpour, CEO of Vanguard Mortgage Investment Corp. in Vancouver; Ahmad Tabrizi, founder of the Parya Trillium Foundation in Toronto; Michael Parsa, former Iranian-Canadian Congress director from Toronto; Merhdad Amiri, president of Lambda General Contractors and an activist in Montreal; and Farid Rohani, chair of the Laurier Institution and member of the Nowruz Commission in Vancouver.