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David Pugliese is an award-winning journalist covering Canadian Forces and military issues in Canada
A judge has ordered the release of federal records on an American initiative to settle Nazi war criminals in Canada after ruling there is no evidence that making the files public would harm relations between the two nations.
The records involve a U.S. program set up after the Second World War to secretly settle large numbers of Nazi war criminals in Canada, often with the support of Canadian officials.
The federal government declined to release the documents under the Access to Information law, claiming the records would harm U.S.-Canada relations at a time of ongoing tension.
But Federal Court judge Simon Fothergill concluded that claim was unsupported by any evidence. “A bald statement of ongoing ‘tensions’ between Canada and the United States is not a sufficient basis to refuse disclosure of very specific information related to efforts by the United States to resettle suspected Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada following World War II,” he wrote in a Sept. 1 ruling.
The decision to withhold the information was unreasonable and the records must now be disclosed, Fothergill concluded.
Similar information had already been released years ago by the Central Intelligence Agency, which ran the Nazi resettlement program, as well as the U.S. government.
After the war, U.S. intelligence agencies recruited Nazis and Nazi collaborators, many from eastern Europe, for their covert operations against the Soviet Union.
Fothergill noted in his ruling that the study written for the Deschênes Commission concluded “inadequate security screening led to many perpetrators of Nazi war crimes entering Canada.” He also pointed out the study concluded Canada was reluctant to prosecute such war criminals.
That “inadequate security screening” was intentional- same as in the US.
Canada has long been seen as a haven for Nazis and their collaborators, including large numbers of Waffen SS soldiers. There are a number of monuments in Canada to the Waffen SS. In addition, the Department of Canadian Heritage had to remove the names of several hundred alleged Nazi collaborators it planned to engrave on the Victims of Communism Memorial in Ottawa.
Robertson said he is hopeful the public will get a better understanding why the government had agreed to the Nazi resettlement program after the war. “This is a victory for all Canadians,” he said. “This is information that all Canadians deserve to have made accessible.”
Much of the renewed debate around Nazi war criminals and collaborators in Canada was prompted by a September 2023 event in which MPs of all parties gave two standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, a resident of North Bay, ON. Hunka was described by then-House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota as a hero and he was thanked for his military service.
But news quickly emerged that Hunka had served in a Ukrainian Waffen SS unit which fought for the Nazis. Large numbers of soldiers from a Ukrainian Waffen SS division came to Canada after the war.
There are no allegations that Hunka took part in any war crimes.
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The Polish government and Jewish groups have denounced the Ukraine SS unit for its role in killing civilians and its involvement in massacres during the Second World War. The division was also used by the Nazis to crush a national uprising in Slovakia, again prompting allegations of war crimes.
But some Ukrainian nationalists see the SS soldiers as heroes because they fought against the Soviet Union. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton continues to maintain eight endowments in the names of Ukrainian SS veterans.