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The tale of Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef’s citizenship may be one of the more curious stories of the year.

The news — if we can call it that — broke last month when it was revealed Monsef wasn’t actually born in war-torn Afghanistan, as she believed, but just across the border in Iran. She had been misled by her mother. The thing is, as others have detailed at length, many people born in war zones aren’t sure of their exact birthdate, let alone location. Afghanistan did not even issue birth certificates until years after Monsef’s family immigrated to Montreal.

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There’s a certain wilful blindness among those who refuse to believe Monsef was unaware of the truth. That her mother shielded her three daughters from the facts of their youngest years, before she brought them to Canada to start anew, makes sense to many people whose families came here as refugees or immigrants from troubled nations.