Anthony Rota has resigned. Now it’s Justin Trudeau’s turn.

Canada’s political elite likes to portray Canada as an important player on the world stage. Due, however, to the elite’s own conduct, Canada is but a minnow in the geopolitical sea.

Prior to the Second World War, Canada’s foreign policy moved in lockstep with that of Britain’s imperial government. After World War II, when the United States displaced Britain as the world’s most powerful nation, Canada’s government seamlessly transitioned from being a British vassal to an American one.

More than 150 years of Canadian subservience to the Anglo-American empire has convinced much of the world that Ottawa will invariably follow the lead of Washington and London. Non-Canadians therefore have little reason to believe that what happens in Canada will affect them. They generally pay scant attention to Canadian political scandals.

But Volodymyr Zelensky’s shambolic visit to Canada is an exception.

When Zelensky returned last week to North America’s shores, Ukraine’s counter-offensive had proven to be a “colossal failure“.  The Ukrainian government had become embroiled in one corruption scandal after another. Poland’s government, one of Zelensky’s most ardent supporters, had angrily declared its intention to cease weapons transfers to Ukraine. Worst of all, voters in NATO countries seemed much less inclined to pour money and weapons into NATO’s proxy war.

In these dire circumstances, Zelensky came to North America in desperate need of more financial and military support. The international community understood that the outcome of this existentially dangerous war might hinge on Zelensky’s ability to procure that support.

As a result, when Canada’s Parliament gave not one, but two standing ovations to a Nazi, the world was watching, and watching closely.

NaziGate

By now, many of you will know the basic details of Yaroslav Hunka’s service in Waffen-SS Galicia, a division of Ukrainian volunteers that committed monstrous crimes in World War II. I need not repeat the details of Hunka’s service here, but one revelation stands out: Hunka volunteered for the unit in 1943, and later described the horrifying years of 1941 to 1943 as the ‘happiest years of his life‘.

All of this information was publicly available when Parliament disgraced itself before the eyes of the world.

By now, this infamous episode has been recounted in virtually every major media outlet on planet earth, including The New York Times and the Washington Post (United States), The Times of London and The Guardian (United Kingdom), the Irish Times (Ireland), Le Monde and Le Figaro (France), El Pais (Spain), Der Spiegel (Germany), RT (Russia), India Today (India), the South China Morning Post (China), the News (Australia), O Globo (Brazil) and Aljazeera (Qatar).

According to the Hill-Times, an Ottawa-based media outlet that caters to Canada’s political elite, Canada’s reputation has suffered a ‘black eye’.

That, however, is far too generous an assessment. Canada’s international standing has been run over by an SUV, and just to make sure that the pedestrian was dead, Parliament backed up and ran over the victim a second time.

Trudeau’s apology: too late and too little

Rather than apologize immediately, Justin Trudeau disappeared from Parliamentary debate and tried to wait out the firestorm. As pressure for an apology mounted, he finally capitulated.

Trudeau’s apology was not only too late, it was too little.

Although some twenty-seven million Soviets (a large proportion of whom were Russian) died in the defeat of Nazism, Trudeau’s apology made no mention of their immense sacrifice. Whatever one’s views may be of the Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine, Trudeau (and all Canadians) should have understood that tens of millions of Russians lost family members to Nazi aggression, and that Parliament’s glorification of Hunka is deeply offensive to the Russian people.

After decades of Russophobic propagandization, many Westerners seem not to care about offending the Russian people, but many more people in the non-Western world do care. Numerous countries in the global south maintained good relations with the Soviet Union, and continued to maintain good relations with Russia after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Moreover, these countries suffered grievously from Western imperialism and colonialism. By showing a callous disregard for the feelings of the Russian people, Canada’s government has likely diminished Canada’s standing in their eyes.

Not only did Trudeau’s ‘apology’ offend the Russian people, but it gave a free pass to Volodymyr Zelensky. Trudeau sought to portray Zelensky as a victim in this affair, even though Zelensky himself celebrated a Nazi in Canada’s Parliament.

Zelensky has remained conspicuously silent about this travesty, but that hasn’t prevented the compliant Canadian media from defending him. Pundits have asserted that Zelensky knew nothing of Hunka’s past, but that seems highly dubious. Are we seriously to believe that the President of Ukraine knew nothing of an individual who was presented to the world as a “Ukrainian hero”?

In 2020, after Zelensky came to power, Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled that symbols of the SS Division Galicia do not belong to the Nazis and were not banned in the country.

Moreover, Zelensky presides over a government that celebrates the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera. Zelensky’s government also tolerates Neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s military.

Last year, after Russia’s invasion commenced, Zelensky caused an uproar in Greece when he celebrated a member of the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Greece’s Parliament.

After receiving $9 billion in aid from Canada, the least that the compromised Zelensky can do is apologize to Canadians for glorifying a Nazi in our Parliament. It is mind-boggling that our Prime Minister would instead apologize to Zelensky.

Finally, Trudeau’s claim that former House speaker Anthony Rota acted entirely on his own initiative strains credulity. Hunka was honoured at a moment when a foreign head of state was speaking in Parliament. Zelensky’s speech was likely to attract extensive international scrutiny. If the Liberals excel at anything, it is image-management. Therefore, Trudeau’s suggestion that Rota consulted no one in Trudeau’s cabinet before honouring Hunka is laughable.

Trudeau is complicit in Canada’s whitewashing of Nazism and Neo-Nazism

As Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese has written:

[T]he most common method that Nazi apologists use [in Canada] to defend the 14th SS Division Galicia is to cite the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, often referred to as the Deschênes commission after its chairman, judge Jules Deschênes.

Supporters of 14th SS say the Deschênes commission cleared the division and all its members of any involvement in war crimes. “Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this Commission,” Deschênes concluded. “Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.”

At the time critics labelled the commission’s report as a whitewash. The decades since have further reinforced that view as additional information about the 14th SS Division Galicia’s war crimes have emerged.

Deschênes either ignored or appeared to be unaware the Waffen SS – which the Galician Division was part of – had been declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg Trials. This omission is particularly incredible as Canada participated as one of the allied nations in the prosecution of war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King actually visited the court and attended some of the trials.

Even a cursory glance at SS Galicia reveals its links to the Nazi campaign of destruction against the Jews and murder of civilians. Its commander was Oberfuhrer Fritz Freitag, a fanatical Nazi, who was directly involved in the mass murder of Jews.

Trudeau cannot plausibly disclaim responsibility for Canada’s decades-long whitewashing of Nazis.

His government opposed a widely supported United Nations resolution that condemned the glorification of Nazism and Neo-Nazism. After Trudeau’s then-Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland was caught lying about her grandfather’s collaboration with the Nazis, Trudeau elevated Freeland to the positions of Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. When Freeland was later denounced for donning the scarf of the murderous Organization of Ukrainian nationalists, Trudeau did nothing. Moreover, Trudeau continued to ship weapons to the Ukrainian military after the Ottawa Citizen revealed that the Canadian military had trained members of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov battalion.

Trudeau is as guilty of whitewashing Nazis as any Canadian Prime Minister in the post-WWII era.

Trudeau must resign

As long as a Prime Minister who is this tainted remains in charge of the country, there’s no reasonable prospect of rehabilitating Canada’s international standing. Canada has been disgraced under Trudeau’s watch. For the good of the country, Trudeau must resign – and his last act as Canadian Prime Minister should be to remove Chrystia Freeland from his cabinet.

NaziGate, however, is not the only or even the most compelling reason for Trudeau to resign. This Prime Minister is now so invested in total NATO victory that his government will never support the compromises necessary to resolve this war by means of negotiation, and thereby bring an end to the slaughter.

Last week, before NaziGate unfolded, Trudeau gave a chilling speech at a pro-Ukraine rally in Toronto. In a performance that surpassed anything we saw from George W. Bush at the height of Bush’s ‘war on terror’, Trudeau screamed that Ukraine must “win this war!”

The now-undeniable reality, however, is that Ukraine cannot win this war. Trudeau has lost touch with reality. Either this war will end in Ukraine’s destruction, or it will end in the destruction of us all.

For the sake of Canada, of the Ukrainian people, and indeed, for all of humanity, Trudeau and all Western leaders who have ruled out a diplomatic solution to this war must be removed from office, by any and all lawful means necessary.