Federal agencies are keeping secret the names of Nazi collaborators admitted to Canada after World War Two, fearing disclosure “might cause them harm,” a B’nai Brith Canada executive said yesterday. The advocacy group has gone to Federal Court seeking to overturn decades-old confidentiality orders.“These are records from the 1940s and ’50s about people who have long since died,” said Richard Robertson, research director for B’nai Brith. “One exemption we keep hearing is it might cause them harm if we release this information. How do you harm a person who has been dead for decades?”The group is asking for access to blacklists sealed by the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes led by Justice Jules Deschênes. In a January 27 court filing, its counsel argued archivists “acted unreasonably and unlawfully” in withholding the files under the Access To Information Act.Robertson said Ottawa also claimed release could strain relations with a foreign ally, possibly referring to the Ukrainian community in Canada. “Ironically, by not releasing the information the Russians have used that secrecy to promote the idea that Ukraine is a fascist state with a Nazi history,” he said..Access To Information records show the Ukrainian Canadian Congress petitioned federal agencies against naming wartime collaborators. Calls for disclosure grew after the Commons in 2023 mistakenly honoured a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of the 14 Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a unit declared a criminal organization at Nuremberg.The Congress last October told the Commons public safety committee that naming names would upset the community. “Today we hear repeated calls for the disclosure of the names of these innocent people,” said then-president Alexandra Chyczij.Matt Malone of the Investigative Journalism Foundation called the government’s resistance “astounding,” saying Ottawa was “spending resources to go to court” to block public access to historically significant files.Artur Wilczynski, a former Department of Public Safety official, said keeping 80-year-old war records secret was “bizarre.” He argued that information from the 1940s should be automatically released unless there was a clear reason to keep it classified.“People see disclosure as a pain,” said Wilczynski. “It diverts them from what they want to focus on and creates the possibility of unwanted media attention.”
