On 22 September 2023, Yaroslav Hunka, a Ukrainian Canadian, was invited to the House of Commons of Canada to be recognized by Speaker Anthony Rota, the Member of Parliament for Hunka's district. Hunka received two standing ovations from all house members, including Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and visiting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Later, Hunka's identity as a former Waffen-SS member was reported by the Canadian media, receiving international attention. Rota resigned as speaker five days later, and the House unanimously adopted a motion to condemn Nazism and withdraw its recognition of Hunka. Prime Minister Trudeau and Canadian government officials apologized to the worldwide Jewish community. The handling of suspected World War II war criminals in Canada became a renewed matter of public interest.
The incident, seen as a political blunder and a scandal, such that it drew comparisons to the most embarrassing moments in Canada's history, was leveraged by the Russian establishment to further its justifications for waging war in Ukraine, which had been started under a pretext of "denazification", among other stated reasons.
Background
Yaroslav Hunka
Yaroslav Hunka (, ; born 1925) is a Ukrainian-Canadian World War II veteran of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician)—abbreviated as SS Galizien—a military formation of Nazi Germany. Hunka was born in Urman, Second Polish Republic (now Ukraine). In 1943, Hunka volunteered to join the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) at 18 years old. According to Hunka, his reason for enlisting was following the call of the Ukrainian Central Committee to fight for the idea of "Unified Ukraine". During his time in the , he was photographed training in Munich and Neuhammer (present day Świętoszów).
In 1944, Hunka was deployed into combat against Red Army forces on the Eastern Front of World War II. Dominique Arel, the chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa, told CBC News that thousands of Ukrainian volunteers had been drawn to the division, and that many aspired doing so could help attain Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union. According to Arel, it was "difficult to determine" whether specific groups of the division took part in atrocities, but he said that by the time Hunka's unit reached the front, German operations relating to the Holocaust would have ended in that area. He said, however, that the had been implicated in the killing of Polish civilians. In his memoir, Hunka referred to the Wehrmacht as "mystical German knights".
Following the conclusion of World War II in Europe, Hunka, now a displaced person, settled in the United Kingdom and joined the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. In 1951, he married Margaret Ann Edgerton (1931–2018), and the couple emigrated to Canada three years later, settling in Toronto, where they raised their two sons, Martin and Peter, and became active in the Ukrainian-Canadian community. After graduating from a technical college, Hunka worked in the aircraft industry, eventually becoming an inspector for De Havilland. In retirement, Hunka was heavily involved in the Ukrainian community; his sons established the Yaroslav and Margaret Hunka Ukrainian Research Endowment Fund at the University of Alberta to advance academic research in the underground Ukrainian Catholic Church. On 20 August 2004, Hunka was named an Honorary Citizen of the City of Berezhany in Ukraine by the Berezhany city council. In 2007, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress awarded Hunka and other former members of the the Medal of Merit.
Hunka contributed to a blog by an association of veterans on the Internet in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, he compared the Ukrainian diaspora to Jews. In 2022, Hunka travelled to Greater Sudbury to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine that year. Describing the situation in Ukraine, Hunka told CTV News that the "Destruction is just unbelievable but it will take years and years to rebuild it, ... But Ukrainian will win and God Bless Ukraine and I pray for it." As of 2023, he was a resident of North Bay, Ontario.
Handling of suspected World War II war criminals in Canada
In the years after World War II, Canada's permissive immigration policies enabled many alleged Nazi war criminals to settle in the country. An especially large number of former members (relative to their total number) migrated to Canada from the United Kingdom, where they had been detained. While there existed a policy of denying entry to former Nazi military personnel, members of this unit were exempted by a 1950 cabinet-level decision.