The House Affairs committee plans to vote on Thursday whether to hold hearings about how a member of the Waffen SS was portrayed as a Canadian hero in the House of Commons.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, MPs were informed on Tuesday the incident on September 22 “brought shame on Parliament.”“This should never have happened,” Conservative MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, AB) told the committee. “It is a stain on the reputation of the institution of Parliament. It caused enormous hurt and offence to the Jewish community across Canada and around the world and dishonoured the more than six million Jews who were murdered at the hands of Nazis during World War II.”Yaroslav Hunka, 98, who openly acknowledged being a member of the Waffen SS, received VIP treatment on Parliament Hill during a state visit by the President of Ukraine. At that time, then-Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Hunka as a national hero.“We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98,” said Rota. “His name is Yaroslav Hunka.”“I am very proud to say he is from North Bay and from my riding of Nipissing-Temiskaming,” said Rota. “He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service. Thank you.”Hunka was a volunteer who joined the 14 Waffen SS Grenadier Division. They were later captured and held as prisoners of war in 1945.“My generation was united by two great forces, faith in God and love for Ukraine,” Hunka was quoted in a 2011 commentary published by the Ukrainian-language Combatant News.The Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 declared the Waffen SS to be a criminal organization.The department of Justice to date has not released a confidential list of 20 suspected Nazi fugitives in Canada compiled by the 1985 Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes led by Québec Court of Appeal Justice Jules Deschenes.Cooper on Tuesday said he would ask the House Affairs committee to support his motion that it investigate why “proper vetting was not done or the individual’s military record was ignored” before Hunka was praised in the Commons. “It is a matter of extreme seriousness involving an incident that brought great shame on the institution of Parliament and brought great hurt to many Canadians, particularly Jewish Canadians,” said Cooper.“Canadians deserve answers. They deserve to know how this happened.”On September 27, Rota resigned over the incident.“My intention was to show that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not a new one, that Ukrainians have unfortunately been subject to foreign aggression for far too long,” said Rota.
