House Committee Blocks Motion Seeking Disclosure of Nazi Collaborator Blacklist

NDP member of Parliament Niki Ashton holds a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 6, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs blocked a Commons committee motion asking the cabinet to disclose a secret blacklist of Nazi collaborators admitted to Canada after World War II.

NDP MP Niki Ashton, who introduced the motion at the Canadian heritage committee on Nov. 14, called for the release of information regarding roughly 900 individuals suspected of being Nazi war criminals who had entered Canada after 1945.

This list of suspected individuals was included in Part II of the 1986 report by the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, led by retired Quebec Superior Court judge Jules Deschênes. The commission was established to investigate claims that a considerable number of Nazi war criminals had gained admittance to Canada.

“Many Jewish, Polish, and Ukrainian organizations have been clear: the names need to be released,” Ashton said.

In response to Ashton’s motion, Bloc MP Martin Champoux said that most of the individuals investigated by the Deschênes commission had been cleared of wrongdoing. He also noted that the majority of these individuals were likely deceased, with their descendants now integrated into Canadian society, which he said makes the release of the suspects’ names a particularly sensitive issue.

“I am not comfortable with proceeding further on this,” Liberal MP Brenda Shanahan said and introduced a separate motion to adjourn debate on Ashton’s motion, which passed with a 6–5 vote.

The confidential list of Nazi suspects in the Deschênes commission report is held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC), which is part of the Canadian Heritage portfolio. Ashton accused Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge of withholding the list while the minister was testifying at the committee on an unrelated issue. St-Onge was not allotted time to respond as the motion was introduced near the end of the committee meeting.

Earlier this month, several organizations made Access to Information requests to the LAC, seeking the release of the list. LAC declined these requests. The decision to withhold the information “in its entirety” is due to the “risk of harm to international relations,” LAC told The Epoch Times on Nov. 15.

The LAC confirmed that Part II of the Deschênes report contains the names of around 800 individuals, with an addendum list of 38 names, and a list of 71 German scientists and technicians.

On Feb. 1, the federal cabinet declassified a Deschêne commission research paper, which said that “significant numbers” of Nazi collaborators and war crimes suspects were admitted into Canada with few questions asked, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“There can be little doubt that war criminals could have and are likely to have come to Canada in significant numbers in the postwar years,” said the report titled “Nazi War Criminals in Canada: The Historical and Policy Setting From the 1940s to the Present.”

Concerns about former Nazi collaborators residing in Canada surfaced last year after a former member of the Waffen-SS was honoured during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Parliament in Ottawa on Sept. 22. The Waffen-SS was the combat branch of the Nazi paramilitary Schutzstaffel, which is accused of committing war crimes. During the event, then-House Speaker Anthony Rota called 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka a “war hero” for fighting against the Russians during World War II.

Facing criticism from opposition parties, Rota apologized for recognizing Hunka and resigned from his role as speaker.

Last October, Rideau Hall also apologized for appointing Peter Savaryn, a former member of a Nazi unit, to the Order of Canada in 1987. Savaryn was the former chancellor of the University of Alberta and leader of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, according to his Order of Canada biography.