The Canadian federal government has released a report that outlines how Canada provided a safe haven for former Nazis during the Cold War. There were renewed calls for transparency regarding the presence of war criminals in Canada after parliamentarians gave two standing ovations to a man who fought in a Nazi unit in the Second World War. The man, Yaroslav Hunka, fought for the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit created by the Nazis to fight the Soviet Union, and was welcomed to hear a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the House of Commons last fall.
The report, known as the Rodal report and prepared by researcher Alti Rodal, was produced as part of a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada in 1985 to provide the commission with information on the historical policies and circumstances that led to the presence of Nazi war criminals in Canada. Initially released in a heavily censored form in 1987, it was last summer that more details were made public in response to a Freedom of Information request by B’nai Brith Canada. The newly released and nearly complete version, constituting 15 previously classified pages, makes those pages public, according to the immigration minister’s director of communications, Aissa Diop.
According to Immigration Minister Marc Miller, people who survived Nazi Germany and their descendants want transparency when it comes to this shameful chapter in Canadian history. The report concludes that in the decade following the war, there was “ample opportunity” for war criminals and Nazi collaborators to enter Canada. B’nai Brith Canada has advocated for the release of the full document since the 1980s, and filed several requests under Access to Information Laws in the past year, which the group says the government repeatedly denied. David Matas, who represented the group during the commission, welcomed the release of the Rodal Report. He said, “We cannot learn from the past unless we know the past. The almost complete disclosure of the Rodal Report is an important step in coming to grips with our past and applying its lessons for the present.”