[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

In other news I'm surprised Languished hasn't commented on yet....rumblings of a new centre-Conservative party from the Centre Ice coalition?

Could this be Trudeau's lifesaver?



https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/new-federal-centrist-party-canada-1.6972891

A new federal party is entering the fray and is hoping to gain support from voters unhappy with the federal Liberals and Conservatives.

The group Centre Ice Canadians (CIC) announced Wednesday that, after months of consultations, it would be launching a new centrist party — the Canadian Future Party.

Dominic Cardy, a former Progressive Conservative provincial cabinet minister in New Brunswick and CIC advisory board chair, will lead the new party temporarily.

Cardy told CBC News Network's Power & Politics that CIC has heard from Canadians who "are fed up with the status quo."

"We heard from Liberal and Conservative members and voters that they felt their parties were becoming more extreme and less representative of their vision for the future of Canada and less representative of their values," Cardy told host David Cochrane.

Cardy said "evidence will be at the heart" of the party's ideology.

"When we talk about being centrist, we're not talking about being the mushy middle. We're talking about being the sharp, pointy end of the arrow trying to push things forward," he said.

'Worse than 338 root canals'
CIC was founded in 2022 by former federal Conservative leadership candidate Rick Peterson and branded itself as a "bold voice for pragmatic, centrist Canadians."

At one of CIC's initial public meetings, the group insisted it wasn't interested in forming a party. Peterson compared the task of setting up 338 riding associations to undergoing "338 root canals."

"We have found out there is something worse than 338 root canals," Cardy said when asked what changed since that meeting. "It's letting our politics be dominated by people who are unable to present any sort of plans for our country's future and are mainly engaged in online click-baiting."

Cardy said many of the party's policies will be those CIC has been suggesting over the past year. He pitched ideas such as transitioning to nuclear energy as a way to reduce carbon emissions and bringing in more skilled immigrants to shore up Canada's workforce.

When asked about the new party, Housing Minister Sean Fraser told reporters the Liberals are focused on putting forward policies to help Canadians.

"Regardless of which parties may emerge ... our job is not to defend the interest or perspective of our party. It's to defend the interest and perspective of Canadians," he said.

CBC News reached out to the federal Conservative Party for comment but has not received a response.

The CIC says it will soon begin the process of registering the new party with Elections Canada. To do so, the party must have a minimum of three officers, an auditor and the signatures of 250 electors willing to register as party members.

Cardy said the party plans to hold its founding convention and leadership vote sometime in 2024. He didn't rule out running for the permanent leadership position but said he is focused on getting the party up and running.

Never heard of them.  Sounds like just a bunch of meaningless rhetoric coming from people who didn't succeed in the existing parties.

[Grey Fox]

That's what Quebec's party forming the government since 2018 was. It can happen.

[HVC]

Another Sikh just released on India's most wanted list shot dead yesterday this time in Winnipeg.

[Jacob]

Another Sikh just released on India's most wanted list shot dead yesterday this time in Winnipeg.

That seems pretty brazen.

[HVC]

Another Sikh just released on India's most wanted list shot dead yesterday this time in Winnipeg.

That seems pretty brazen.

Well Modi is pals with Putin

[Admiral Yi]

Britain's historic role in Indira Gandhi storming the Golden Temple

What was Britain's historic role?

[Sheilbh]

Britain's historic role in Indira Gandhi storming the Golden Temple

What was Britain's historic role?

Unclear - that's what Sikhs here want to know. I believe all the relevant docs are still classified. The SAS were definitely advising Indian special forces - but I think that was only discovered/confirmed because there was a small reference in some unrelated papers that were declassified.

[crazy canuck]

There are 1.9 million Indians in Canada, so just under 5% of the population. About 3/4 of million Sikhs. From what i gather (i was a little kid) after the air india bombing Sikhs weren't looked at too kindly, but things have changed to a more sympathetic view towards them.

You are generalizing too much here.  Most of the people killed on that flight were Sikh.  There has always been a significant split in the Sikh community over the use of violence with the vast majority condemning the downing of the flight.

Also, don't underestimate the political clout of this group, they may be a small percentage of the overall population but Sikh's are concentrated in a few ridings that highly competitive.

With Modi's religious nationalism support for an independent nation is increasing amongst Sikhs.

Trudeau didn't make the public announcement for anything other than political motive, mainly to take the heat off him at the start of the sitting of Parliament.

[crazy canuck]

So the House Speaker invited a Ukrainian veteran of WW II as a guest to Zelensky's speech.  Problem is the guest had volunteered to fight in an SS unit.

[HVC]

Instructions Unclear.

[Grey Fox]

It's a little unfair to call them SS units 80 years after the fact but FFS, the federal government is bad at everything.

[Barrister]

OK, so you're  Ukrainian in the 1940s.  You've just survived a fucking genocide attempt by the Soviet government within the last 10 years.  The western allies weren't coming to your rescue - but the Germans come in, promising an independent Ukraine.  Yeah they're pretty dodgy in their own way, but hell - they have to be better than Stalin and the Russians, right?

Ukraine has it's own history of antisemitism that it has to account for, but generally speaking I refuse to fault any Ukrainian who sided with the Germans in WWII.

[crazy canuck]

It's a little unfair to call them SS units 80 years after the fact but FFS, the federal government is bad at everything.

It was originally an SS unit. It was renamed after the war.

[crazy canuck]

OK, so you're  Ukrainian in the 1940s.  You've just survived a fucking genocide attempt by the Soviet government within the last 10 years.  The western allies weren't coming to your rescue - but the Germans come in, promising an independent Ukraine.  Yeah they're pretty dodgy in their own way, but hell - they have to be better than Stalin and the Russians, right?

Ukraine has it's own history of antisemitism that it has to account for, but generally speaking I refuse to fault any Ukrainian who sided with the Germans in WWII.

But then again, one needs to look at the facts of each individual case. Canada took the decision to not place blame on the individual soldiers of that unit, unless there was proof to the contrary.

[crazy canuck]

Here is the Globe's report

The Speaker of the House of Commons apologized Sunday for publicly honouring a Ukrainian Canadian man as a Second World War hero after President Volodymyr Zelensky's speech to Parliament last week.

The recognition of the man – it was later revealed that he served in a Nazi SS unit during the war – prompted unanimous standing ovations that experts say could now be used by Russia to spread disinformation about Ukraine.

When Mr. Zelensky finished his speech last Friday, Anthony Rota drew attention to a 98-year-old man from North Bay, Ont., named Yaroslav Hunka, who was seated in the chamber as an invited guest, and lauded him for "fighting for Ukraine independence against the Russians" during the Second World War.

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"He is a Ukrainian hero and a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service," Mr. Rota said. His comments led to cheers and two standing ovations, which included Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mr. Zelensky.

In appeal to House of Commons, Zelensky invokes Canada's Ukrainian diaspora

Zelensky warns Canadian MPs that Moscow is attempting genocide in Ukraine

But the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies said in a statement on the weekend that the man served in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Nazi military unit with documented evidence of "crimes against humanity" during the Holocaust.

"The fact that a veteran who served in a Nazi military unit was invited to and given a standing ovation in Parliament is shocking," the group said, joining other Jewish organizations that called on the government to publicly apologize.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Mr. Rota said he had "become aware of more information" that made him regret the decision to invite Mr. Hunka, who is from his riding.

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"I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world," he said.

His statement does not specify any details about the information he received. He said no one else, including the Ukrainian delegation, was aware of the invitation or his remarks before he delivered them.

A spokesperson with the Prime Minister's Office said that Mr. Hunka was a guest selected independently by the Speaker – and that "no advance notice was provided to the Prime Minister's Office, nor the Ukrainian delegation, about the invitation or recognition."

Ivan Katchanovski, a University of Ottawa political scientist who has published on the SS unit and is writing a book about the Ukraine war, called the standing ovations "beyond comprehension." He said the televised clips could now be used by Russia, which has falsely claimed the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine as one of the reasons for its invasion of the country last year.

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"Russia propagandists have gone out of their way to justify their claims, which are totally without merit," said Daniel Panneton, the director of allyship and community engagement for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre. "This is an example they can use in bad faith to provide weight to their argument."

Dr. Katchanovski said that the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS was renamed the First Ukrainian Division at the end of the war – a move that he said was meant to distance the unit from Nazi ties, and depict its members as fighting to protect Ukraine from a Russian invasion.



VIDEO
1:43
 
Yaroslav Hunka was praised by speaker Anthony Rota in Parliament on Sept. 22 and received two standing ovations from the audience who had assembled with Prime Minister Trudeau to hear a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The volunteer unit was originally formed in 1943, under the Waffen SS, the combat branch of the Nazi Party's paramilitary, and has been linked to massacres of civilians carried out in villages in Poland.

The unit has been a source of continuing controversy both in Canada and Ukraine. Statues commemorating the unit were vandalized in Edmonton in 2021. A few months before Russia's invasion, Dr. Katchanovski said, a march celebrating the unit was held in Kyiv, and publicly criticized by Mr. Zelensky, who is Jewish.

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In a blog post, written in Ukrainian, on a website dedicated to the First Ukrainian Division, a writer named Yaroslav Hunka, from Canada, describes volunteering for the unit in 1943, when he was 18. He said he feared a Russian invasion with the German army planning a retreat from western Ukraine.

The writer explains that he signed up with other fellow students. "We felt our duty to our native land," he writes. The unit surrendered to the British Army at the end of the war.

In 1950, the Canadian government agreed to accept members of the division who had volunteered to fight under the Germans against the Russians, if they were otherwise qualified to come. That was a decision that was criticized by Jewish groups at the time, especially since the Waffen SS had already been declared a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials.

A 1985 royal commission studying whether Canada had become a haven for criminals, made the controversial finding that being a member in the unit was not a war crime on its own, unless the person was personally found to have participated in a crime.

A 2012 paper in the journal Canadian Slavonic Papers said that two narratives about the unit have competed for "historical truths." One portrays ex-members as traitors and war criminals and the other that they chose the lesser of two evils by joining the Germans to defend their country.

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B'nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn said the group expected a "meaningful apology," as well as a "detailed explanation as to how this could possibly have taken place at the centre of Canadian democracy."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Sunday that the Prime Minister also needed to "personally apologize" for what he called "an appalling error in judgment."

Mr. Poilievre pointed out that parliamentarians had no opportunity to vet the man's past – a task for an important state visit that he said should have been handled by the Prime Minister's Office.