Ottawa pressured to release secret list of Nazi collaborators allowed into Canada

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress sent repeated letters to federal officials urging them to withhold the names of suspected Nazi collaborators who entered Canada after 1945, according to newly released Access To Information records. Blacklock's Reporter says despite growing public pressure, the government continues to keep the names secret.A February 12, 2024 internal email from the department of Justice noted the Congress had contacted multiple departments. “The department of Immigration has received new correspondence dated February 7 and were wondering if other departments also received repeated letters,” the message read. The content of the letters was blacked out..Congress officials previously warned that disclosure could harm “innocent people,” including the descendants of alleged collaborators. “Today we hear repeated calls for the disclosure of the names of these innocent people,” said Alexandra Chyczij, then-president of the Congress, during an October 1, 2023 appearance before the Commons public safety committee. She claimed the pressure was driven by Russian disinformation and said the government’s inaction was contributing to a rise in anti-Ukrainian hate.“This creates a culture of impunity which normalizes this behaviour of referring to Ukrainians as Nazis,” said Chyczij. “We found a substantial increase in the number of anti-Ukrainian, hate motivated incidents.”.Calls to make the list public intensified after Parliament mistakenly honored Yaroslav Hunka, a former soldier in the 14 Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, during a September 22, 2023 visit by Ukraine’s president. The unit was designated a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials.In the eight months following that incident, the Department of Justice exchanged nearly 12,000 pages of correspondence with the Privy Council and immigration department about the issue, though nearly all the records were redacted.Canada’s only inquiry into Nazi war criminals, the 1985 Deschênes Commission, compiled a confidential list of individuals recommended for prosecution. That list has never been released..According to internal documents, the national archives hold over 1 million pages of material related to Nazi figures in Canada, including some marked Top Secret. An immigration memo cited privacy concerns, but offered no specific justification for continued secrecy.A motion by the New Democrats to release the files was narrowly defeated by Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs during a Commons heritage committee meeting on November 14. “This is an extremely delicate situation,” said Bloc MP Martin Champoux. “It was thought there was no need to go further.”