Canada's Faulty WWII Memory

"The Canadian government should directly condemn SS Galicia, not honour it. It is  unbelievable this happened in the first place."

"Members of this division were involved in mass murder of Jews, Poles and Ukrainians during [the Second World War], and many of them did this before they joined this division."

"They're considered to be Nazi collaborators, and they are not regarded even as heroes in Ukraine by the Ukrainian government."

"They massacred entire villages of Polish residents in this region… including women and children because they were accused of being associated with Soviet partisans. This was just mass murder without any real justification."

"In addition to this, the SS Galicia Division was involved in other cases of violence. They took part in the suppression of the anti-Nazi uprising in Slovakia, and they also took part in the brutal and violent suppression of the anti-Nazi partisan movement in Yugoslavia."

Ivan Katchanovski, Ukrainian Canadian professor, University of Ottawa 

 

"Those units were involved in real acts of atrocities against Jews and other victims of the Nazi regime."

"The Nazi units, like the one he was involved with, did not give the victims of the Holocaust, the millions of them, Jews and others, an opportunity to live their lives, have children and grandchildren and live to be 98 years old."

"[It's] absolutely critical that we reflect back on Canada's absolutely awful, awful record of holding Nazis accountable for their crimes."

"We have failed at that -- we were a safe haven for so many that came in."

Wiesenthal Center president, CEO Michael Levitt 

"[The military division contributed to the deaths of six million Poles during the war, half of whom were Jewish." 

"This is a person who participated in an organization that was targeting Poles, was committing mass murders of Poles, not only the military personnel but also civilians." 

"For me, such people should not be present in public life and probably should be prosecuted."

Witold Dzielski, Poland's ambassador to Canada

The obtusely stunning performance -- during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Canada, preparing to address Parliament -- to reveal the invited presence of a Ukrainian WWII 'hero',

98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka by Parliamentary Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota as a surprise went sideways fairly quickly. "He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service" said Speaker Rota in introducing the nonagenarian invitee. The entire chamber burst out in an ovation of appreciation.

Only to soon enough discover him to be a Ukrainian who had voluntarily, during World War II, joined a Nazi SS division, fighting with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division known as well as the SS 14th Waffen Division, referred to as well as the First Ukrainian Division under the command of Nazi SS officers. Friday was the day that Yaroslav Hunka was feted by Parliament, and on Sunday, Speaker Rota apologized for the man's presence in Parliament, before a Jewish Ukrainian president no less, whose family had perished in the Holocaust.

Jewish groups in Canada and the world over were shocked, dismayed and angered, demanding at the very least an apology from the Canadian government, the rousing standing ovation honouring a Ukrainian Nazi, beyond belief. Poland too has demanded an apology. And has gone even further issuing a formal request for the man's extradition to Poland to stand trial for war crimes as a former officer of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division.

 

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo by Patrick Doyle /The Canadian Press

Calls for the resignation of House of commons Speaker Anthony Rota were swift in coming. And finally, on Tuesday, he did resign, under pressure from even several members of his own governing party. What stretches credulity is that everyone invited to appear in person at a parliamentary session is given a background security check, and in this instance it would have been no different. It was well known in North Bay and among Ukrainians that the man was a Nazi collaborator. That he was a resident of the Speaker's riding, fails to excuse Mr. Rota of ignorance of his past.

A website honouring the division that includes photographs of the man in his Nazi uniform offers ample details. The photographs that the professor posted on social media were viewed over three million times. The shameful episode on Parliament Hill has been reported in American, British, Polish and Australian legacy media. The Waffen-SS Galicia Division is well noted for its role in murdering civilians and its involvement during the war in bloody massacres.

At that point of the war after Hitler's Germany had invaded Russia, despite its pact with Germany as part of the Axis group, Soviet Russia allied itself with Canada, the United States, Britain and other Allied nations against Nazi Germany. The Ukrainian SS division dates from 1943 when Germany looked for allies to support its forces at a time when the Allies began gaining traction in the war and Germany became concerned the war was its to lose.

Recruitment of Ukraines to the SS made use of propaganda, one particularly appealing poster featuring an SS soldier in conflict with a caricature with the Star of David emblazoned on its arm. In the end, 80,000 Ukrainians volunteered for the SS Division with 12,000 making the final selection. Many more Ukrainians fought against the Nazis, with the Soviet military. Following war's end, the International Military Tribunal included the units of the Waffen SS like the Galicia division in its identifying them as criminal organizations. 

In Canada, there remain some nationalist Ukrainian-Canadians that view the 14th Waffen Division as heroes for fighting Soviet forces. Oakville, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta have sites where monuments honouring the Ukrainian SS troops were erected to express that pride. And while the monuments fail to state the Divisions as part of the Nazi SS, this is what they clearly are.  B'nai Brith Canada and the Canadian Polish Congress jointly called for their removal.

Finally, not a word from Chrystia Freeland, finance minister, and deputy prime minister of Canada. Whose own Ukrainian-Canadian background surely entitles her to make some pithy comments. Then again, perhaps not, given that her grandfather was in essence, little different from a Ukrainian member of a Waffen SS. He was stationed in German-occupied Poland, editor of a newspaper that parroted Nazi propaganda de-humanizing Jews, a collaborator himself.

Contempt for Parliament

 

"Every week, my team reached out to the person in charge of Simon Marcil's riding office, so I can assure you that there has been a large number of citizens that have been assisted and contacts with municipalities despite the Member of Parliament's absence." 

"We made sure that all services were still being offered through the riding office."

There are rules that surround all these expenses, and all I can tell you is that he files his expenses to the House of Commons administration like any other MP. The administration then judges if the expenses are reimbursed after evaluating them."

"So all expenses that were disclosed publicly were determined to be in line with the MP expense rules. It's not up to me as the whip to judge those expenses."

Bloc Quebecois Whip Claude de Bellefeuille

"That decision is very strange, very very strange. He is an MP, he has obligations to his constituents. And part of that obligation is to be direct about what's happening with your situation."

"If you disappear for one year, it becomes a problem for representative democracy."

Mike Medeiros, Canadian electoral politics expert, University of Amsterdam

"The public assumes that if they're paying someone's salary, that the individual will be actively working for them. There's also an issue with transparency."

"If an MP stops working without announcing that they have a health issue, it creates space for a lot of speculation that is hurtful to everyone involved."

Louis Massicotte, retired professor, Universite Laval, expert in Canadian politics

Simon Marcil

"On December 16, the city and Exo [a local commuter train authority] announced the opening of the new Mirabel train station next month. This is a very important local file that involved an investment from the federal government."

"But Simon Marcil was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a Liberal MP from a neighbouring riding showed up."

"I've always gotten the impression from Marcil that he doesn't care about the work at all. It's interesting that you call me now, because I've been wondering over the past few days where our MP has been. How can a two-term MP like him just disappear?"

Mirabel Mayor Jean Bouchard

The Bloc Quebecois was formed as a national political party whose aim was to achieve separation between Quebec and the rest of Canada by promoting a Quebec-based separatist party, the Parti Quebecois. Their purpose was to succeed in having Quebec vote in a referendum overwhelmingly for Quebec sovereignty, total separation from Canada. That vote did take place, and by the slimmest of margins the 'non' vote won over the 'oui' vote and Quebec to this day remains within confederation. And while the popularity of the Parti Quebecois and its vision of separation has fallen in popularity, there will always be a disgruntled element within the French-speaking community in Quebec.

 

For years the Bloc, virulently separatist, was the leading opposition party in the House of Commons. Canadians, in other words, were paying the parliamentary salaries of a political group elected to public office to represent Quebec's interest in Parliament, that actively worked toward separation. Breaking up the country high on their agenda , in point of fact the only item on the agenda. Their presence in Parliament was of a party completely disinterested in the rest of Canada, active and involved only where such action and involvement focused on and benefited Quebec.

 

For decades, the wealthier provinces of Canada financially supported Quebec through transfer of equalization payments, a program designed to ensure that all the populations of Canada received equal provincial benefits. That was accomplished by extracting from wealthy provinces taxes to support less prospering counterparts.  Quebec was able to provide far greater benefits for its citizens than any other province as a result of those equalization payments, but it viewed this as one of its unique entltlements of which it has many, including partial autonomy. It calls itself a nation, its parks are designed 'national'.

 

And one of the elected parliamentarians it sent to the House of Commons is bleeding the Canadian taxpayer for a handsome salary for non-appearance at his workplace serving those people who sent him to parliament. Under current COVID distancing, he need only appear through remote connection. Bloc Quebecois MP Simon Marcil has been on unspecified medical leave from his duties in the House, an absence never made clear to those who voted him into office. He was originally elected in 2015 in the Greater Montreal Area riding of Mirabel. He collects his full salary as a MP of $182,600 along with expenses.

Since January of 2020 he has been on medical leave. Based on a doctor's note requiring a month of medical leave. Thereafter a new note was provided monthly to extend his leave on a dozen occasions leading to a year's absence. No one outside Parliament was aware of this little discrepancy, not those he represents, not the media. Until someone was curious enough to look into the matter. The party chose to say nothing, just to cover for their absent member, protecting his 'privacy'.

There have been other parliamentarians who have  gone on leave due to medical reasons and they have taken steps to announce those reasons, a reasonable enough expectation for someone voted into office on the premise they will devote themselves to representing the interests of the constituents who voted them into office for that very purpose. The mayor of the city of Mirabel who had himself announced that due to cancer treatment he would miss work for several months, was shocked by the MP's absence in the riding.

He had been privy to rumours of the medical leave taken by his MP but no one had advised him of the absence despite that there were times when he required assistance from MPs in neighbouring ridings on certain files with the federal government in the absence of his own MP. Unnamed former and current Bloc MPs claimed surprise at their party's decision to remain silent about the MP's absence. "I don't even know what Simon Marcil looks like", one of them admitted. They agreed between themselves that prior to medical leave the MP appeared to have scant interest in his job, describing him as 'lazy'.

 

While on medical leave, Marcil claimed $14,150 in expenses for his secondary residence at a remote village of 370 inhabitants in cottage country an hour north of Ottawa. House of Commons rules permit MPs who own secondary residences used as an alternate residence when parliamentarians find it convenient to work from Ottawa, are given allowance to claim an accommodation rate of $50 daily. He submitted that claim, despite not appearing in Parliament, remaining absent on sick leave.

The man is obviously short on ethics and enthusiasm for his obligations for which he is handsomely remunerated, but big on his entitlement to his entitlements as he interprets them, even those running afoul of the rules.