Official Blackmail

In the spring of 1991, Suleyman Goven, an Alevi Kurd from eastern Turkey, arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport with $90 in his pocket, and in his heart the dream of becoming a citizen in a country where he would be free from persecution. Instead, he would be forced to endure a dark side of Canada where refugees who have fled terror and persecution are terrorized and persecuted all over again.

Goven’s story, compellingly told in Mary Jo Leddy’s important new book, Our Friendly Local Terrorist, is disturbingly familiar. The book joins what is sadly becoming a new genre of Canadian non-fiction: stories about immigrants or refugees who have left oppressive regimes for Canada, only to be targeted here by a system in which, Leddy writes, “enormous power rests in the hands of people who are not accountable.”

Canadians are familiar with some of the more recent stories about how that power has been abused with impunity. The best known is that...