by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Canada has loudly proclaimed itself to be at the forefront of the quest to put women on an equal footing in places like Iran and Afghanistan, but it's not a mission necessarily shared by Immigration Canada. Last Sunday, two leading voices from those countries were slated to speak at a Concordia University conference "Women and the Struggle for Peace in the Middle East." But only one made it, due to stringent rules and bothersome red tape dictated by Immigration Canada.

The two women - Jaleh Shaditalab, who founded the Tehran University Centre for Research on Women, and Shahla Abawi of the Afghan Housewives Organization - were expected to shine light on the evolving state of femalehood in their countries for an audience that was to include foreign affairs mandarins and academics.

But the paperwork proved a major obstacle. Says conference organizer Roksana Bahramitash, "My guest from Iran had to show a bank statement and documents to prove that she owned property, she had to show that her employer had given her one week off. The dean of Tehran University had to write her a letter, she had to give $52 (U.S.) and return to the embassy several times, where she could only talk to officials from outside through an intercom, which is patronizing and humiliating. We had to send faxes and I was on the verge of calling [Foreign Affairs Minister] Bill Graham, but she finally got her visa.

"We have to find why an established professor from Tehran University gets such humiliating treatment [from Immigration Canada] that she considered not coming."

The guest speaker from Afghanistan had an even tougher time. While she was never refused, Abawi's visa application was repeatedly subject to delays that lasted two full months, and as a result she was not permitted into Canada to speak at the conference.

"If Canada wants to liberate these women, they could have at least given her a visa," says Bahramitash, a prof at Con U's Simone de Beauvoir Institute. "Canada is investing a lot of funds in Afghanistan but they need to get feedback. Refusing her entry is bad policy and counterproductive. The lack of voice of people in the region is a huge handicap to the initiative.

"We want to empower women, but these ideas are formulated here and unless they are subjected to dialogue, then we're assuming we know what's best for women in that region. We're doing just what the Bush administration is doing in their take on democracy in the region."

Simone McAndrew, media flak from Immigration Canada, is unfamiliar with - and could not give specific information about - this case, but contends that no irregularities seem evident. "It's up to the person themselves to satisfy the consular office that they are a genuine visitor and they are coming to Canada for a temporary purpose. We consider a person's ties to their home country, we ask if they have family here or back home and their employment situation in the country of origin. As well, we consider the overall economic and political stability of that country."