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Photo by Fred Chartrand / Canadian Press

If the government is going to not revoke the citizenship of individuals whose fraud or misrepresentation is relatively trivial, it should be required to be consistent about it. Currently, it’s not clear that it is. A young woman of Egyptian origins, for instance, is reportedly facing revocation years after becoming a Canadian because her parents provided false (but relatively trivial) information on her application when she was a child. Her circumstances sound an awful lot like Monsef’s.

And if the government is willing to revoke the citizenship of very bad men or women—such as Orantes—it is nonsensical that the government would not also be willing to revoke the citizenship of individuals who are found guilty of terrorism or treason. These are society’s worst crimes.

If the government is going to revoke citizenship for trivial fraud or misrepresentation, it should be consistent about it

Consider the case of the June 21 attack by Canadian citizen and Tunisian native Amor Ftouhi on Lt. Jeff Neville at the Bishop International Airport in Flint, Mich. Ftouhi snuck up behind Neville, stabbed him in the neck with a 12-inch knife while yelling “Allahu akbar!,” and was only prevented from killing him thanks to the heroic intervention of a maintenance worker. It’s impossible to justify a man like Ftouhi being allowed to remain in the country, while a woman whose parents committed minor fraud is removed.

Or at least it’s impossible to justify if you do not entertain bleeding heart notions about terrorists. Following the Boston Bombing attack in 2013, Trudeau tried to justify the attackers’ actions in an interview with CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, noting, “But there’s no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded, completely at war with innocence, at war with a society, and our approach has to be … where do those tensions come from?” It later turned out that the Tsarnaev brothers were young, middle-class men with bright futures ahead of them.

Canadians should ask why the Liberals are willing to treat a terrorist’s citizenship as sacrosanct, yet also willing to strip individuals of their citizenship for a range of infractions, both serious and trivial. This double standard cannot be logically explained. Dual nationals who commit society’s worst offences should not be permitted to remain Canadian.