Ottawa’s low key assistance to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators may have begun in the late 1940s, but has continued all the way into the present day, with the government reportedly shelling out grants worth over $2.2 million (nearly $3 million Canadian) over the last seven years to at least eight groups glorifying the infamous 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division Galicia, a German WWII unit made up of Ukrainian volunteers.
According to a new investigation by independent US media, authorities okayed nearly $1.5 million in funding to a group known as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress between 2016 and 2022, with much of the funds listed as cash spent on translation services. The nonprofit umbrella group played an active role in US and Canadian Ukrainian-language propaganda services against Soviet Ukraine after WWII, and has actively defended SS Galicia, recently speaking out in support of a monument to the Nazi military unit at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario.
The Ukrainian National Federation of Canada, whose official logo contains a Ukrainian coat of arms combined with a sword - the same logo used by the notorious Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) militia force – another collaborator force, got some $140,000 between 2015 and 2022, ostensibly for summer jobs for youth.
Meanwhile, New Pathway, a Canadian-Ukrainian weekly newspaper which has publicly accused Edmonton’s Jewish community of “fueling the flames of ethnic discord” and “regurgitating Russian propaganda” by expressing vehement opposition to a monument to UPA leader Roman Shukhevych, got $68,000 in money through a grant for local publishers. The same newspaper has repeatedly sought to whitewash SS Galicia by assuring that the division has been “wrongly accused” of Nazism and of war crimes, and evidence in this direction is just "Russian propaganda."
The money for the Ukrainian-Canadian groups defending or lionizing Nazi collaborators came from a variety of sources, including Canadian heritage, social and economic development and public safety-oriented institutions, organizations and grants.
Thousands of Ukrainian fascists, including former fighters from the UPA and the SS Galicia Division, fled to Canada after World War II. As in their home country, they constituted a minority in their newfound home, with tens of thousands of Ukrainian-Canadians joining millions of Soviet Ukrainians to fight the Nazis during World War II. However, amid the escalation of the Cold War, these small numbers of Ukrainian Canadians gained an outsized influence in their new homeland, with the Canadian and US governments happily using former collaborators to wage guerilla and propaganda warfare against Moscow.
In the mid-1980s, the Canadian government formed a commission of inquiry to research evidence that hundreds if not thousands of potential WWII war criminals had been allowed to enter Canada. But the commission concluded that “mere membership” in SS Galicia did not mean they should “be indicted as a group” and have their citizenship revoked or be prosecuted.
Amid the scandal over Yaroslav Hunka, the SS Galicia division vet who got a standing ovation in Canada’s parliament last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured that the government would look carefully at the possibility of making more of the partially classified 1980s report public, including the names of alleged Nazis in Canada, most of whom are now presumed dead and thus happily immune to prosecution.
“There are top public servants looking very carefully into the issue, including digging into the archives,” Trudeau told reporters late last month. Trudeau also apologized to Canadians over the Hunka scandal, but immediatedly complemented it with a call to fight so-called “Russian propaganda.”
Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada received sneak peek access into part of the sealed portion of the report, which included 822 opinions on individual cases, revealing this week to media that Canadian immigration authorities and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had a major soft spot for potential WWII war criminals hailing from Eastern Europe, liberally overlooking records and potential evidence of potential crimes.