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A medal for MP Anthony Rota
By Peter Christensen
Op-Ed Commentary
The recent debacle in Ottawa where what should have been a rallying of support for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s war in the Ukraine turned into an opportunity for Russian propagandists to validate President Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia is not grabbing territory to ensure naval and shipping routes but rather “de-Nazifying” the Ukraine was to say the least embarrassing.
Having neglected running the business of the country by not vetting appearances before the House of Commons the Prime Minister and his party made fools of us. And to make matters worse they have positioned themselves as post-modern Nazi-hunters with the additional role of exhibiting public guilt for whatever recent victim spectacle is in fashion labelling anyone who does not agree with their mob rule agenda as a homophobe, xenophobe, racists, Nazis, misogynists and all of the rest.
The visit by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was by no means ordinary and at least one of the elected or their staff should have looked into the identity of a war veteran being introduced in association with President Zelenskyy.
This lack of due diligence can only be attributed to the general malaise of self admiration, fear of taking a stand and negligence that infects Canadian politicians so much so that they go along with the notion that contrarian opinions needs to be purged rather than debated.
How did the howling media/government mob know that Jaroslav Hunka was a Nazi? Did they ask him; did they ask his family? Did they search his immigration files? Did they find something in old RCMP intelligence documents? Did they ask Speaker MP Rota why he chose Jaroslav Hunka as a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism? Did they research if Hunka actually was a member of the far-right National Socialist German Workers’ Party?
They did not allege that he was a Nazi; no, they denounced him, and then smeared him in the global media. They steamrolled a 98-year old Ukrainian veteran because he fought the Russians as a member of Waffen-SS Galicia Division. Why did he fight the Russians with the German Army? Because seven years earlier Stalin starved eight million Ukrainians to death to discourage any dreams of independence. Because he deported other millions to die in the Gulags.
In 1985, the Duchene Commission on Nazi War found no Nazis among the thousands of Ukrainian veterans from the Galicia Division who’d immigrated to Canada. Did the knot head media even think of looking into the complexity of the matter?
Rather than firing MP Anthony Rota we should give the disgraced Speaker and scapegoat for PM Justin Trudeau a medal for revealing what a bunch of unread dunderheads sit in our government while collecting their $200,000 plus expenses per annum.
This event was untimely for me as I was halfway through re-reading an anthology of poems published in 1985, No Feather No Ink, (Thistledown Press) remembering 100 years later the action of the Canadian Parliament on behalf of Prime Minister MacDonald’s ‘Orangemen’ and cronies; sending a military force to rout the Metis from land along the Red River that the Hudson’s Bay Company had bequeathed them as reward for their 150 year service in the fur trade.
No Feather No Ink refers to the Ottawa constabulary refusing Louis Riel, the Northwest’s Metis representative, writing material while incarcerated and waiting to be hanged. Riel was hanged for a traitor. which thereby served Parliament’s purpose to justify a land grab by Ottawa speculators.
So not the first time Parliament has acted out of step with any decency. Well at least these days Parliament only fires rather than hangs people.
One has to wonder what President Zelenskyy thought of this, but then the ignorance of Canadians is least of his worries.
– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley resident, writer and poet
