Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said Canada likely permitted significant numbers of Nazi collaborators and war criminals to enter the country after 1945, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. “The main story is now told,” said IRCC in a report. IRCC disclosed a summary of confidential records published in 1986 detailing the arrival of suspected war criminals. “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,” it said. The report was prepared for the 1985 Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes led by former Quebec Court of Appeal justice Jules Deschenes. A confidential blacklist of 20 Nazi fugitives recommended for prosecution remains sealed. “B’nai Brith Canada has been advocating for the release of the entirety of the report of the Deschenes Commission’s findings since the 1980s,” said B’nai Brith Canada. IRCC counted 98 known Nazi members in Canada in 1946 and 738 German prisoners of war permitted to stay as labourers. It said there are cases of immigrants with SS tattoos permitted to work in Canadian lumber camps. “As of 1948, screening officers were advised by RCMP headquarters not to attach importance to these tattoos,” it said. “It would have been a simple matter for war criminals with assumed identities to deceive screening officers.”From 1946 to 1967, 620,000 immigrants from European countries where participation in war crimes was extensive were admitted to Canada. It acknowledged it “would be rash to assume that significant numbers of war criminals and Nazi collaborators did not enter Canada.”Fresh calls for release of all Holocaust-related records followed the House of Commons honouring Ukrainian Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka in September. Hunka belonged to the 14 Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal censured as a criminal organization. “An undetermined number of former members of the Division entered Canada with government approval first accorded in June 1950,” said the IRCC. It cited Nuremberg Tribunal findings Waffen SS units “were directly involved in the killing of prisoners of war and atrocities in occupied countries.” All Waffen SS members were volunteers. “Most Waffen SS units were combat units,” it said. The House of Commons Affairs Committee — behind closed doors — agreed in November to public hearings about how Hunka was given a hero’s welcome in Parliament. READ MORE: House of Commons committee approves Nazi investigation“Deal with this matter openly and transparently to get to the bottom of one of the greatest international embarrassments,” said Conservative MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, AB). Liberal MPs had objected to open discussion of the incident.
