Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 14.02.2024
Canada enjoys a global reputation as a defender of human rights, aided by a solid record on core civil and political rights protections that are guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Despite experiencing a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes since the start of the pandemic and its history of human rights abuses against its indigenous population, Canada ranks No. 1 for caring about human rights in the 2021 Best Countries rankings, moving up two places from its No. 3 ranking in the 2020 rankings. [1]
Canada is backing the genocide of the Palestinians, which means that it does not recognize that Palestinians have human rights.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined a chorus of politicians condemning protesters demonstrating at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital as antisemitism on Tuesday, though defenders alleged that activists were merely marching by the site on their way to the Israeli consulate.
“The demonstration at Mount Sinai Hospital yesterday was reprehensible. Hospitals are places for treatment and care, not protests and intimidation,” said Trudeau. “I strongly condemn this display of antisemitism. In Toronto and across Canada, we stand with Jewish communities against this hate.” [2]
Pro-Palestinian protesters waved Palestinian flags. Marchers chanted “long live the Intifada.” Mount Sinai was founded as a medical institution catering to Jewish patients, and its logo retains a Star of David.
“Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital was established in the 1920s by Jews against the backdrop of antisemitism,” said Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center. “Last night, it was the target of protesters chanting for violence and terror against Jews” [3]
The same Prime Minister had to apologize for something else
“TORONTO (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized Wednesday for Parliament’s recognition of a man who fought alongside the Nazis during last week’s address by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trudeau said the speaker of the House of Commons, who resigned Tuesday, was “solely responsible” for the invitation and recognition of the man but said it was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada.” [4]
A mistake? What this Nazi was doing in Canada? “The veteran, Yaroslav Hunka, fought with the 14th Waffen SS Galicia Division, writing in a 2011 blog post that he gladly volunteered to fight with the Nazi unit during the Second World War. The division was formed in 1943 when the Nazis needed extra volunteers to bolster its forces against the Allies. The Polish government said this week it is taking steps to extradite Hunka.
Despite the apology from Trudeau, a common claim circulating on social media this week has been that the unit to which Hunka belonged was exonerated of war crimes by a Canadian commission in 1986, and that therefore all veterans of the unit, including Hunka, are automatically innocent” [5]
The whole Nazi division was brought to Canada in preparation against mass protests and the cold war.
“This narrative suggests that Ukrainian volunteers in the SS unit were simply nationalists who during the Second World War took the opportunity to fight with the Nazis against their sworn enemy, the Soviet Union, and did not hold any allegiance to Nazi ideology. This claim is commonly argued by modern day Ukrainian nationalist groups.
However, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg in 1946 declared the entire SS to be a criminal organization. This fact was not addressed in the 1986 commission’s ruling on the Galicia Division. The IMT’s criminal charge did not apply to individuals who left the SS before the end of the war, or those who were conscripted.
Parts of the 1986 commission, dubbed the “Deschênes Commission,” remain secret. Jewish advocacy groups yesterday called on the federal government to release all the remaining documents.
In what follows, we looked through news archives and more recent pieces of historical analysis regarding the commission. These show that while the commission did claim that “no case can be made against members of the Galicia Division for revocations of citizenship or deportation,” this conclusion was and continues to be excoriated as being at best, based on incomplete investigations, and at worst, part of a whitewash of Nazi war crimes” [6]
“In 1967, Canada’s justice minister (the father of the PM) was asked to strip citizenship from a former Nazi who had been sentenced to death in the Soviet Union.The minister, Pierre Trudeau, declined to do so. Although the USSR had convicted the Latvian man of murdering Jews in the Holocaust, Trudeau argued that Canada had not erred in granting him citizenship when he first applied. “The applicant’s obligation is to satisfy the Court that he is of good character,” Trudeau, who would later become Canada’s prime minister, wrote in a legal opinion at the time. “He is not required to satisfy the Court that he, at no time in his past, committed an opprobrious act. … From a practical, and indeed reasonable, point of view, few, if any, applicants could meet a requirement of that kind” [7]
Canada was born as a counter revolutionary state to the American war of independence.
“Loyalists were American colonists, of different ethnic backgrounds, who supported the British cause during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). Tens of thousands of Loyalists migrated to British North America as Canada was called during and after the war. This boosted the population, led to the creation of Upper Canada and New Brunswick, and heavily influenced the politics and culture of what would become Canada” [8]
“During the Revolution, more than 19,000 Loyalists served Britain in specially created provincial militia corps, such as the King’s Royal Regiment of New York and Butler’s Rangers. Between 80,000 and 100,000 eventually fled, about half of them to Canada.” [9]
“Women often played an important role in a family’s decision to become Loyalist. Some actively supported the Crown, collecting information for the British, helping Loyalist soldiers, and hiding money and important papers from local authorities. When husbands left to join Loyalist military units or to escape capture by American “Patriots,” their wives often remained to run family farms and businesses” [10]
“Slavery existed in Canada until the middle 19th century. Between c. 1629 and 1834, there were more than 4,000 enslaved people of African descent in the British and French colonies that became Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick. The colonies denied their humanity, reduced them to property to be bought and sold, exploited their labor, and subjected them to physical, sexual, psychological, and reproductive violence” [11]
Black Canadian communities continued to expand through migration despite racist measures implemented against them. Many communities were tied to the rail industry, as many Black Canadians worked as porters. Others worked in sectors like mining and farming. Communities bonded together through many associations that advocated for their rights, such as unions and the Universal Negro Improvement Association of Canada (UNIA)” [12]
“Although some Black men had the right to vote, this was not the case for every Black Canadian in the early 20th century. Black women had to advocate for their right to vote in Canada. Men who did not own property also did not have the right to vote, which excluded many poorer Black Canadians from voting. It was not until 1918 that Black women could vote in federal elections and not until 1920 that property ownership was removed as a prerequisite to vote. However, it took until 1940 for all provinces to allow women, including Black women, to vote” [13]
Canada is not only a country stolen from the native Indians but the Indians were abused physically and sexually they went through cultural genocide. Their children were stolen up to the 1990’s.
“Many survivors who gathered in Ottawa felt empowered for the first time in their life after hearing findings of the six-year-long commission. It feels like our story is validated at last and is out there for the world to see”, said a tearful 58-year-old Cindy Tom-Lindley, who is executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivor Society in British Columbia. “We were too scared as children to speak out. So, to give our testimonies to the commission was liberating and emotional.”
“As many as 6,000 children died in residential institutions, which ran from 1876 to 1996.The accurate figure could be much higher however, since the government stopped recording aboriginal students’ deaths in 1920 in light of the alarming statistics. Caribou believes that dozens of pupils perished at the institution where she was detained. “Remains were found all over the fields. But numbers do not reflect reality. Many of my friends committed suicide after their release”, said Caribou, who said she was frustrated that an inquiry did not take place twenty years ago, after the last of the residential schools closed” [14]
“Justice Sinclair, who was the second aboriginal judge to be appointed in Canada in 1988, made clear the connection between residential schools and the social ills plaguing the First Nations today, namely unemployment, domestic violence, the over-representation of aboriginal children in foster care and the high homicide rate of indigenous women” [15]
“I didn’t learn anything at the Guy Hill school except the “Our Father” prayer and the national anthem”, said Caribou. “My children taught me how to read and write. I’ve been a housekeeper all my life because of my lack of education and poor health” [16]
“The hopeful mood among survivors in the capital was met with silence by the government, despite urgent calls to act on the commission’s 94 recommendations. Prime Minister Harper did not utter a word while he attended the emotional closing ceremony of the TRC on Thursday, nor did he announce any measures that would further reconciliation for survivors and close the economic gap between First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians” [17]
“Since coming into power in 2006, the Conservative government has repeatedly rejected some long-standing demands by First Nations, such as holding a national enquiry on the missing and murdered aboriginal women, a measure also recommended by Justice Sinclair” [18]
Sol Littman, Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, told the commission that he believed as many as 2,000 Nazi war criminals were living in Canada at the time. Ukrainian diaspora groups, meanwhile, mounted public pressure during the commission.
In December 1985, a Ukrainian advocacy group accused Canadian media of “one-sidedness” reporting on the commission process, suggesting that stories were reporting “Jewish perceptions as what really happened.” The group’s spokesperson, Roman Serbyn, suggested that, regarding Ukrainian-Jewish relations, “[…] both sides committed atrocities, not just one side.” Of the Galicia Division, Serbyn claimed “there were no swastikas, no fascism. Most of the men had never even heard of Nazis,” and that “all they wanted to do was fight the Soviet Union.” In fact, the division was personally visited by SS leader Heinrich Himmler in 1944. A photo of Hunka during his time in the SS unit shows him wearing a uniform decorated with Nazi military insignia” [19]
“If Canadian immigration officials had actually probed deeply into the background of the 14th Waffen-SS division they would have found few victims in its ranks. “The volunteers (of the Galician Division) committed themselves to German victory, the New European Order, and to Adolf Hitler personally,” explained Per Anders Rudling, a historian of Eastern European history and Associate Professor at the Department of History at Lund University, Sweden. The division not only fought the Polish Home Army but it took part in the crushing of the Slovak National Uprising and hunted down anti-Nazi partisans in Slovenia. There were also allegations of war crimes being committed by division members.
While some in the Canadian government didn’t probe deeply into the background of the Ukrainian “refugees,” British government bureaucrats knew who they were dealing with and were more than happy to dump the SS troops into Canada’s lap. “The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals,” noted a report from Britain’s Under-Secretary of State” [20]
And while the Canadian government brought to Canada a Nazi division during the war it refused to let in Jewish refugees escaping the Nazis.
“Written by Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933–1948 (published in 1982), documented antisemitism in the Canadian government’s immigration policies as they applied to European Jews fleeing persecution from Nazi Germany. The phrase “none is too many” entered the Canadian political lexicon largely because of this book. Even before its publication, the book played a crucial role in changing the Canadian government’s policies toward refugees, such that the government of Joe Clark welcomed Vietnamese refugees then referred to as the “Boat People.” [21] Who collaborated with the American army during the war of Vietnam. This is the real record of the Canadian capitalist ruling class and it is not surprising that they support the genocide of the Palestinians.
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/the-10-countries-that-care-the-most-about-human-rights-according-to-perception#:~:text=Despite%20experiencing%20a%20surge%20in,ranking%20in%20the%202020%20rankings.
[2] https://www.jpost.com/bds-threat/article-786814
[3] Ibid
[4] https://apnews.com/article/apology-ukraine-nazi-canada-trudeau-parliament-c8bde89b7c6bb7c04685608e1b01913
[5] https://www.readthemaple.com/how-canada-whitewashed-the-nazi-ss-galicia-division/
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid
[8] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/loyalists
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/black-history-in-canada-1900-1960
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] https://www.readthemaple.com/how-canada-whitewashed-the-nazi-ss-galicia-division/
[20] https://www.espritdecorps.ca/history-feature/the-rcaf-officer-who-brought-hitlers-waffen-ss-to-canada
[21] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/none-is-too-many