The Waffen-SS Man in the Gallery: The Yaroslav Hunka Scandal and Canada’s Undigested Past

In September 2023, in the Canadian House of Commons, the Speaker of the House introduced the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to a 98 year old Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran named Yaroslav Hunka, who was introduced as a “Canadian and Ukrainian hero” and given two standing ovations from the floor. This incident developed into an international political scandal and resulted in the resignation of the Speaker of the House. The scandal re-opened the painful subject of Canada’s legacy of allowing thousands of Nazi collaborators into the country. This article evaluates this controversy within the context of normative Canadian multiculturalism, which has stimulated and facilitated a multi-generational cult of Waffen-SS veneration in the Ukrainian Canadian community. Its powerful lobby has mobilized significant resources to prevent access to key sources that would allow for a candid engagement with this difficult past. In November 2024, the Canadian government reaffirmed its denial of access to crucial archival collections pertaining to war criminals living in Canada. However, in 2025, scholars uncovered the Deschênes Commission’s list of 776 alleged war criminals, released in an access to information and privacy request in 2019. This discovery—in combination with work in archives in countries with more archival transparency, such as the United States, Israel, Ukraine, and Lithuania—has now provided an opportunity for independent, critical analysis of Canada’s treatment of alleged war criminals.