The accidental honouring of a Nazi unit veteran in the House of Commons was caused by Canada’s “indifference and inaction” over its history with Nazis, according to a former federal justice minister.
“This was a failure here. Indifference and inaction by successive Canadian governments—the result being that we became a sanctuary for Nazi war criminals—and no accountability then ensued,” Irwin Cotler told CTV News in an interview on Oct. 1.
During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Parliament in Ottawa on Sept. 22, House Speaker Anthony Rota recognized Yaroslav Hunka as a “veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,“ and a ”Canadian hero.”
The parliamentarians who applauded Mr. Hunka later became aware that during World War II he fought with the 4th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a military wing of the Nazi Party. Mr. Rota later resigned as House Speaker over the incident.
Mr. Cotler said at that point in Canada’s history, it was “easier to get into Canada if you were a Nazi than if you were a Jew.” The former justice minister said the mishap with Mr. Hunka was the result of Canada’s “unconscious internalization” of former Nazis settling in the country.
Call to Unseal Records
Following the incident in Parliament, there were calls from several Jewish groups to unseal portions of the report from the 1985 Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, which examined 800 cases of people suspected of committing war crimes and then escaping to Canada following World War II.The Commission found that while hundreds of former members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division were living in Canada by the mid-1980s, membership in the division did not itself constitute a war crime.
Mr. Cotler, who served as chief counsel to the Canadian Jewish Congress during the Deschênes Commission, said he also wants to see those portions unsealed. Mr. Cotler said the Canadian government could unseal the records without necessarily compromising confidentiality in some instances.
“As it has always been said, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we need to be fully transparent, so that we can bring about the necessary understanding of what, in fact, took place,” he said.
Mr. Cotler said the “necessary justice” around Nazis in Canada has been “lacking,” and unsealing the Deschênes Commission would allow for the historical record to be corrected.
“That we can go forward in terms of pursuing justice, and not having situations like what occurred in the Canadian Parliament, where we inadvertently end up indulging the falsity of history,” he added.
