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The controversy over Maryam Monsef’s birthplace seems to be dying down, and if current trends continue it will go down as something of a classic in Canadian politics: some of us will have had great fun accusing others, ludicrously, of “birtherism” — Barack Obama was in fact born in Hawaii, as he claimed; Monsef was not in fact born in Afghanistan, as she claimed; ergo, not birtherism — while paying little to no attention to the important issues the case raised and accomplishing, at time of writing, nothing.

To be clear, the question of her birthplace was totally onside. When a cabinet minister answers a question like “You were born in Afghanistan, correct?” with “I believe I was,” and a question like “Did you find out you might not have been born in Afghanistan only when The Globe and Mail called?” with “mostly,” any half-awake journalist is going to follow up — not because her being born in Iran would change anything, necessarily, but because cabinet ministers saying things that aren’t true, however plausible and understandable the reason, is news.