A middle power, but actually

What Canada can do to strengthen civil society in Iran

Folks in the West rarely appreciate the depth and complexity of Iranian civil society. Even after a half-century of outmigration and brutal theocracy (and decades of the Shah’s repression before that), Iran still has a trade union movement, intellectual and artistic life, and active civil society.

Over the weekend, Canadians’ reaction to the Prime Minister’s statement on Iran was predictable and parochial. Sure, it’s important to fully understand Canadian foreign policy in this moment. But the “Carney meant this” vs “of course he meant something else” discourse on the PM’s Davos speech was frankly tedious and eye-rolling because it let Canada off the hook. It allowed us to use the situation in Iran to hide behind the Americans as a strategic play to curry favour with the Trump Administration, instead of assigning any kind of action to Canada to help build the world we want.

If we leave our foreign policy to a facile shrug of “take the world as it is, not as we want it to be,” we shirk our historic role as a middle power. We have a responsibility to promote and protect liberal democratic values, especially now that the Americans are the opposite of even symbolically interested in such work.

There’s a lot we have historically done to promote those values abroad, and this moment should be no different. Of course, it is different because we used to do pro-democracy work in the context of the Cold War or a multipolar world, and we did it with the participation of the United States. But even as the USA turns it back on democratic values, Canada can – and should – step in to help fill that void.

The dominant view in the West tends to treat Iran as a place where democracy is somehow foreign, where civil society is thin, where the population must be led to freedom from the outside. This is wrong.

Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1907 was the first popular democratic uprising in the Islamic world, predating Turkey’s by three years. Bazaar merchants, clergy, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens forced a dying Shah to sign a liberal constitution modeled on Belgium and Great Britain. They established a parliament that represented the principle that citizens, not monarchs, held sovereign authority. That experiment was crushed, in the end, by foreign powers and domestic reaction.

Mohammad Mosaddegh, elected Prime Minister in 1951, nationalized Iran’s oil industry and governed through constitutional means until the CIA and MI6 overthrew him in 1953. The Green Movement of 2009 filled the streets with millions protesting a stolen election. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement of 2022 mobilized an entire generation. Iranian labour - teachers, oil workers, bus drivers, nurses - have struck repeatedly as a form of uprising against the regime.

What Canada does to support Iranian pro-democracy movements matters far more than what the Prime Minister may or may not have said or meant when he made a speech to rich people in Switzerland.

We have done this before. During Poland’s darkest years under martial law in the 1980s, Canada, Norway, and other middle powers channeled support to Solidarity through quiet union-to-union networks, funded independent media, and sustained civil society organizations.

There is also a strategic dimension that Canada’s foreign policy establishment should take seriously. The regime in Tehran has been deepening its alignment with Beijing and Moscow, providing Russia with Shahed drones for use in Ukraine and cooperating with China on sanctions evasion. Supporting Iranian democracy is consistent with our commitments in NATO, at the UN, and in every multilateral forum where we claim to defend the rules-based international order.

A democratic Iran would transform the security architecture of the Middle East. A surviving theocratic successor regime or military junta would continue to be a node in the authoritarian axis Canada claims to oppose. And it is increasingly possible the USA will content itself with a symbolic removal of Khameni, leaving the rest of the murderous millionaire mullahs and corrupt clerics in place.

So here are eight concrete things Canada could do right now.

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1. Create a Canadian Democracy Endowment, or Fund the EED Directly

Canada has no institutional equivalent to the US National Endowment for Democracy or the EU’s European Endowment for Democracy — the body that funds civil society organizations, youth groups, independent media, and pro-democracy activists in countries including Iran, often without requiring formal registration (because formal registration in an authoritarian state is impossible or dangerous).

Under Stephen Harper, Canada abolished its own version of a pro-democracy endowment, called Rights & Democracy, in 2012. That was a mistake. Rebuilding it, or capitalizing a direct contribution to the EED, is a high-leverage step Canada could take. The Trump administration has now gutted USAID and defunded the NED, and left over 2,000 democracy activists and organizations without support. Canada has a real gap to fill.

2. GAC Support for Labour Solidarity

Iran’s labour movement is one of the most sustained sources of resistance to the Islamic Republic. The International Trade Union Confederation has mechanisms to channel solidarity to clandestine union networks in authoritarian states. The Government of Canada could provide direct support to the Canadian Labour Congress to formalize links with Iranian labour organizations through ITUC channels, provide financial support to union legal defense funds, and amplify the names and cases of imprisoned labour leaders internationally. This is what Scandinavian unions did for Solidarity in Poland.

3. Fund Independent Media in Farsi and Treat Internet Shutdowns as Human Rights Violations

The regime’s nationwide internet and phone blackout, imposed on January 8, 2026, concealed civilian casualties, cut access to emergency services, and isolated communities so that fear replaces solidarity. Authorities are now using drones and signal jamming to suppress circumvention, and conducting house raids to confiscate Starlink terminals. Canada should formally treat internet shutdowns as violations of international human rights norms, fund secure non-hardware communication tools, and provide significant sustained funding to independent Persian-language journalism operating from diaspora hubs. This is what the European Endowment for Democracy does systematically across its neighbourhood.

4. Open an Emergency Asylum Pathway for At-Risk Activists

Right now, journalists, union leaders, lawyers, and human rights defenders inside Iran face an acute window of danger. The regime’s first instinct in a succession crisis will be to liquidate visible opposition. Canada should immediately designate Iranian human rights defenders as a priority group under expedited asylum processing, and task Global Affairs with proactively identifying individuals on watchlists maintained by organizations like the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for outreach and documentation support.

5. Treat Transnational Repression as a National Security Issue

Iranian-Canadians report intimidation linked to regime networks operating on Canadian soil. Ottawa should strengthen reporting mechanisms, ensure proper investigations, and visibly protect diaspora communities. Canada should establish a dedicated diaspora engagement mechanism at Global Affairs and fund Iranian-Canadian civil society organizations working on human rights documentation.

6. Support Iranian-Led Civil Society Organizations Directly

As Dena Abtahi recently wrote in Policy Options, Canada should support credible human rights organizations documenting the current crackdown, amplify verified reporting from inside Iran, and engage directly with Iranian-Canadian advocacy groups. The Human Rights Activists News Agency and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center are doing essential work under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Canadian development funding should reach them directly, not only through large multilateral intermediaries that are slower and less flexible.

7. Lead on an Iran Accountability Mechanism at the UN

Canada led the successful resolution at the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on Iran’s human rights situation and helped remove Iran from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The next step is supporting the creation of a formal accountability mechanism, similar to the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism for Syria. This initiative collects and preserves evidence of atrocity crimes for future prosecution. The Government of Canada should support Canada’s substantial Iranian-Canadian legal community to contribute directly to such a body.

8. Publicly and Clearly State That Canada Supports the Iranian People’s Right to Self-Determination

Canada’s position should be unambiguous: cosmetic reforms cannot dismantle Iran’s security courts, censorship system, or ideological policing. The EU foreign policy chief has already said that Khamenei’s death is “a defining moment in Iran’s history” and that “there is now an open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape.”

Canada should make a similar statement, but more importantly, it should funnel support to Iranian civil society so they can build a more democratic Iran.

Folks might say that anything Canada can do is infinitesimal, and pro-democracy work in 2026 is naïve at best. In my view, it’s still worth doing. Having been to Iran (though it was many years ago, in 2007), I can honestly say I have scarcely been anywhere the distance between people and their government is so vast, and where the people’s potential was so brutally quashed and distorted. One feels it in every interaction, with every person and family who befriends you (which happens literally dozens of times per day). Canadians should be proud to work with the rest of the democratic world to support the people of Iran.