The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to twist itself into a pretzel over the Maryam Monsef affair.

The CBC reported Sunday that the Liberals are revoking the Canadian citizenship of people who lied to immigration and refugee authorities to obtain it at a record pace, far more frequently than the previous Stephen Harper Conservative government, which passed the law.

Between November 2015 and August 2016, the Liberal government made 184 revocation decisions, about 90% of them resulting in people being stripped of their citizenship.

The CBC found these proceedings are now occurring at a rate of about 13 per month, compared to 2.4 per month under Harper.

Despite public musings by Immigration Minister John McCallum last Tuesday that the Liberals might put a moratorium on citizenship revocations — which now occur without the right to an appeal hearing — the Trudeau government said in court filings Friday it has no intention of imposing a moratorium.

That’s consistent with Trudeau’s comment in last year’s federal election that, “revocation of citizenship can and should happen in situations of becoming a Canadian citizen under false pretences.”

In its court filing, the Trudeau government dismissed as speculative complaints from civil liberties lawyers that many people are now having their citizenship stripped by the Liberals, including cases of individuals admitted to the country as children, because their parents misrepresented information on their immigration applications.

This is precisely the issue that has been raised in the case of Monsef, Trudeau’s minister of democratic institutions, who said she only found out recently from her mother that she was born in Iran, not Afghanistan, as she had been led to believe.

That raises the question of whether her family misrepresented information to immigration and refugee officials when they came to Canada when Monsef was a child, that could lead to a loss of her citizenship.

There are also questions about when Monsef knew her birthplace was Iran and not Afghanistan, since politicians and journalists in her Peterborough-Kawartha riding say questions about this were being raised long before the issue became public.

Finally, the rapid pace at which the Liberals are conducting revocation proceedings, raises the question of whether Monsef’s case is being treated differently because she’s a Liberal cabinet minister and government insider.