As you’ve probably heard by now, Maryam Monsef was born in Iran – not Afghanistan.

After being praised as the ultimate refugee success story, Canada’s first cabinet minister from Afghanistan, we learned last week that the story she had presented was not accurate.

Monsef claims that she never knew the true story about where she was born and how she spent the first decade of her life. It was only after a media investigation and questions from a journalist that she asked her mother and was told the truth.

But the journalist, Robert Fife of the Globe and Mail, was acting upon a tip. Somebody else knew the truth, and reached out to members of the national media to encourage a probe.

Once the truth was revealed, other political figures in Monsef’s hometown of Peterborough, Ontario, came forward to reveal that they, too, had heard similar stories.

The question then becomes: if rumours were spinning around Peterborough about Monsef’s life story, and if anonymous tipsters were encouraging journalists to investigate, how is it that Monsef herself was the last to know?

It’s plausible that her version of events is completely accurate, that she didn’t know the truth until last week. But common sense would tell us that Monsef had likely heard these rumours in the past. So why didn’t she ask her mother sooner?

Immigration lawyers have come forward to suggest Monsef may have committed a crime – using false information on her refugee and citizenship application – and the penalty could be as serious as citizenship revocation and deportation.

Canada has stripped citizenship away from hundreds of people for this very reason. Providing false information to citizenship officials makes a person inadmissible to Canada, a long-standing policy that predates the Harper government.

In fact, during the last election campaign, Justin Trudeau himself praised this practice.

“Revocation of citizenship can and should happen in situations of becoming a Canadian citizen under false pretences,” said Trudeau on September 28, 2015 after the Munk foreign policy debate in Toronto.

“Indeed, when people have lied on their applications, those applications get rescinded. Even years later,” said Trudeau.

In Monsef’s case, it seems that either she or her mother hid the truth when applying for Canadian citizenship. If that’s the case, then Monsef became a citizen under false pretences.

One year ago, Trudeau said we should throw the book at people who lie on their citizenship application. He has yet to say whether he thinks we should throw the book at Monsef and her mother.

In the meantime, Trudeau’s spin doctors are taking a different approach to managing this crisis. They’re suggesting that raising questions about Monsef’s birth is akin to racism.

Trudeau’s top aide Gerald Butts joined the far-left commenters from Vice and the Toronto Star in comparing Monsef’s controversy with the “birther” movement – a racially-charged conspiracy that questioned the birthplace of Barack Obama.

Butts scolded the Globe and Mail on Twitter for raising doubts about Monsef’s story, and accused them of endorsing “a homegrown Canadian birther movement.”

Calling this a “birther movement” implies racism as a motive. But there is nothing racist about demanding honesty and transparency from our politicians. Nothing racist about upholding our laws, and applying them equally.

In the case of Monsef, it isn’t even a conspiracy.

We know she was born in Iran, and it’s therefore likely her application for citizenship contained false information. We know that submitting an application with false information can be a crime.

The only question that remains is whether Trudeau’s cabinet minister and her family are above the law.