Nobody did a check on this old dude? How embarrassing, our enemies love these kind of amateur mistakes.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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This is embarrassing. Russia is already taking advantage of it.
Russia blasts Canada over 'outrageous' reception in Parliament for Ukrainian who served in Nazi unit
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov castigated Canada for 'sloppiness of memory'
Peskov is (ugh) right. How oblivious do you have to be to not clue in when this guy is announced as having fought against the Russians in WW2? Unless he's Finnish (which he is not), which side do you think that puts him on?
Canadians really need to start voting for actual competent people instead of parties. Even the pretense of parading a Ukrainian guy around due to the Russian invasion is rather repugnant behavior.
The problem is that if the candidate from Party "A" is a competent weasel who wants to undermine everything I stand for, and party "B"'s candidate is an incompetent boob who won't help matters but also is popular and won't actively ruin everything, then it's far more important to my interests that party "A"'s candidate not be voted in than it is to cast a vote for candidate "C". The system is working how is designed to and the only people who are capable of changing it are the ones benefiting from it being broken, so the only way that's likely to happen is if there were somehow a mass exodus away from the big two parties.
He wasn’t introduced that way, though. He was just introduced as a “Ukrainian war hero and a Canadian war hero [and we thank him for his service]”. That’s why it’s not surprising that everyone gave him an ovation. Who wouldn’t? The issue is that the person introducing him, who didn’t even tell anyone else about his attendance or that he would be recognized, although he got some basic facts right (the guy fought in Ukraine and now lives in Canada), didn’t bother to vet the context of those facts. It’s incredibly sloppy and incredibly embarrassing.
Immediate edit: I have finally seen a video of this and he definitely says “Ukrainian independence against Russia”. Oooooooof.
If I did something like that, I'd probably resign immediately. It's worrying that our politicians don't think that way
In most cases, I think I’d chalk it up to human beings being human and call it a mistake. This was just careless and thoughtless, though.
Don't we kinda give the Finns a pass on this shit already?
Russia was on Germany's side at the beginning of the war. They invaded Poland with Germany.
Ukrainians and other EE peoples fought against the Red Army who did not collaborate with the Nazi regime...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaroslav_Hunka this the guy, just for reference
I am not arguing that this specific dude collaborated, my understanding a few thousand of them surrenders to allies and end up in Canada.
Just addressing above claim that anyone who fought Russians during WW2 is a Nazi collaborator.
There didn't even need to be a check. Just the phrase "he fought in WWII against the Russians" would tell them all they needed if they put 2 seconds of thought into it.
Poland fought and lost against the Russians in WW2. Are they Nazis?
Some of them undeniably were.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland
But that's beyond the point, Poland and Finland are corner cases. The guy is Ukrainian.
He lived in Polish Ukraine at the time. Still not excusing fighting for the Nazis.
Whenever I think of a country that would have a loving relationship with the Nazis, it would be poland.
For anyone that has a hard time understanding sarcasm, that was extremely sarcastic.
Nope, politicians hard at work as always.
What a colossal screw up. He really should step down - like this has geopolitical ramifications these days.
The controversy exploded over the weekend when it came to light that MPs from all parties, Trudeau and [president of Ukraine] Zelenskky honoured this individual with cheers, salutes and applause.
"We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian Canadian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98," Rota said on Friday. "I am very proud to say that he is from North Bay and from my riding of Nipissing—Timiskaming. He is a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service."
I think this issue raises how complex political history is more than anything. And, yeah, MPs should probably have more guidance with this stuff. "Speaker invites Nazi" seems so 'gotcha!' without learning anything from the incident
Lol 'Ukrainian who fought the Russians in wwII' automatically makes him most likely a nazi, the political history is not complex at all here, they should have checked. I can't believe they didn't know.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090814153200/http://www.infoukes.com/galiciadivision/deschenes/
Canada says 'they did nothing wrong' besides yannow being nazis.
"We don't have proof they committed any war crimes"
Oh well, as long as they only cheer for the good Nazis in Parliament...
They can't spin this not to look like a very stupid thing to do. And with Russia calling Ukraine a bunch of Nazis, while everyone calls Wagner a bunch of Nazis, and all the tensions around the rise of fascism around the world, it's really the worst time to make such a mistake.
did we break some political mirror or something? how are we constantly stumbling over ourselves
It's modern Canadian politics. When have we not been constantly stumbling over ourselves in the past 15 years.
This seems as good a place as any to say that I've seen actual Parliamentary-minded people (Kady O'Malley, for one) point out that it would actually be inappropriate for the government to have any say in who the Speaker invites to the HoC. This is something that Andrew Scheer, as a former Speaker himself, knows.
Regardless, if Rota or anyone on his staff had done two minutes of research on the guy, I'm pretty sure he would have not invited him to HoC.
Yeah, I think he should definitely step down as Speaker.
I didn't realize speakers were MPs. (Dumb American)
I didn't know any Americans cared about Canadian politics. Welcome. It's a dim place, but at least we're not quite at dark cesspit yet. We are doing are darnedest to get there though.
You kidding? The NDP has always been my northern light. I grew up rage reading about Harper.
Are we taking bets on whether anyone will face any real consequences for this?
I have to say that this looks very odd to me. I'm in Rota's riding, and he hardly ever takes any action visible enough to make the news here. And now he takes a highly visible action that's going to trash his political career (regardless of whether he resigns or not, I doubt he's going to get reelected after this—rumour has it he won't run). He's been in politics for quite a while, and he should have known better. It's possible that he simply got complacent and careless, but I do wonder how he knew that this guy existed in the first place.