FOR THE RECORD: UCC letter to prime minister (02/09/97)

FOR THE RECORD: UCC letter to prime minister

Dear Editor:

We attach a copy of the letter sent today to the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honorable Jean Chrétien. This is an open letter which summarizes the Ukrainian Canadian community's grave concerns over specious allegations made by an American TV network about alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada. We hope that the Canadian justice system will not be misdirected by disinformation of the sort that was broadcast by CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" program ("Canada's Dark Secret," February 2) and that Ottawa will continue to pursue all war criminals found in Canada, regardless of their ethnic, religious or racial origin, or the period or place where they committed their crimes against humanity, bringing all such villains to justice in Canada under Canadian criminal law.

Lydia Shawarsky
Executive Director
Ukrainian Canadian Congress

* * *

The Right Honorable Jean Chrétien
Prime Minister of Canada
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Dear Prime Minister:

On behalf of the Ukrainian Canadian community, I am writing to express our serious concern about allegations made that there are Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada, as reported yesterday evening on the CBS-TV "60 Minutes" program in a segment titled "Canada's Dark Secret," hosted by Mike Wallace. Please note that this is an open letter which we will be distributing to all MPs, senators, media, and to our supporters across Canada for their information and action.

As you may recall, the Ukrainian Canadian community has repeatedly and unanimously supported the principle that all war criminals found in Canada, regardless of their ethnic, religious or racial origin, or the period or place where they committed their crimes against humanity or war crimes, should be brought to justice in Canada under Canadian criminal law.

We accepted the "made in Canada" solution to this problem when it was tendered by Mr. Justice Jules Deschenes, in the public report of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals (December 1986).

Despite our misgivings about what appears to be a rather selective mandate on the part of the Ministry of Justice's War Crimes Unit (e.g., no Soviet war criminals are being investigated seriously), we have supported the government's efforts to explore what appeared to be serious charges against a few individuals. We also note that none of those cases were successful, reportedly because the evidence produced was insufficient to secure a criminal conviction.

As much as we would be dismayed to think that a Nazi war criminal might escape justice - more Ukrainians perished during the second world war than any other European nation - we do not support attempts to deal with this problem through the civil procedures of denaturalization and deportation. These are serious cases, involving the life and liberty of individual Canadians, every one of whom must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the basic principle of our legal system.

The government first investigated charges about Nazi war criminals in Canada in the early 1950s, when they were raised (without any accompanying proof) by the Canadian Jewish Congress. We went through it all again in the mid 1980s, against a background of very divisive arguments between Canadians of East and Central European origins and the Jewish Canadian community, provoked by what we now know were the specious claims of Mr. Littman and his confederates. Mr. Deschenes, after several years of study, rebuked Mr. Littman, his Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center and Mr. Wiesenthal himself for their gross exaggerations on this subject.

We would appreciate an early opportunity to meet with you and the Honorable Allan Rock, minister of justice, to place our concerns on this subject before you directly. We support efforts to ensure that any and all war criminals found in Canada are brought to justice under Canadian criminal law, but we want to underscore how critical it is for the government of Canada to reject as malicious and disingenuous all attempts to portray our country as a haven for war criminals of any sort.

Canada's Ukrainians, despite our misgivings about the workings of the War Crimes Unit, nevertheless believe that we live in a country where justice is done fairly. We want to keep our legal system unpolluted by misinformation of the sort that the "60 Minutes" program was laced with.

Oleh Romaniw, Q.C.
President
Ukrainian Canadian Congress

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