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Chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, J.B. Gregorovich, with Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, Ottawa, March 1993 (Photo by F. Monte) |
The Civil Liberties Commission (CLC) was brought into being by the Ukrainian-Canadian community in February 1985. Chaired by Toronto lawyer John B. Gregorovich, the CLC faced the urgent task of coping with the miasma generated by false media reports which suggested that thousands of Ukrainian and other Eastern European war criminals were hiding out in Canada, escaping justice for crimes committed during the Second World War. Most of those stories were prompted by Sol Littman, the Canadian representative of a Los Angeles organization known as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Although Littman would eventually be chastised publicly by Mr. Justice Jules Deschênes for grossly exaggerating matters, the Canadian government, largely in response to Jewish-Canadian pressure, established a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. From early 1985 until the appearance of its final public report in early 1987, the Deschênes Commission reviewed dozens of allegations about alleged war criminals said to be hiding in Canada. The vast majority were dismissed as unsubstantiated. During that two year period, and since, the CLC monitored government activities related to war crimes, responded to media reports about this issue and lobbied the government and Members of Parliament to ensure that the basic principles our community put forward with respect to how any war criminals found in Canada should be dealt with were accepted and acted upon. Very early in 1985 the CLC made the Ukrainian-Canadian community's position clear. While supporting the need for an investigation into whether any war criminals were actually living in Canada, and the need for prosecuting any who might be found here, the CLC consistently emphasized that any war criminals found in Canada should be brought to justice, regardless of their ethnic, religious or racial origin, the period or place where they committed crimes against humanity or war crimes, and that justice be done in Canada under Canadian criminal law. Our community, in cooperation with Baltic Canadians and others, organized into a loose coalition known as Canadians for Justice, never abandoned these just and reasonable principles. Eventually of course, it was exactly this "made in Canada" solution which was adopted by the government and accepted, at least temporarily, by all parties to the dispute, including the leading Jewish-Canadian organizations. Unfortunately, the latter, who never distanced themselves seriously from the often inflammatory statements made by Littman and his associates, remained deeply wedded to the idea of dealing with alleged war criminals by making use of civil proceedings, where the rules of evidence are less stringent, in other words utilizing a "denaturalization and deportation" method for ridding Canada of alleged war criminals. The Ukrainian-Canadian community and others concerned with civil liberties, being understandably suspicious of Soviet evidence, mindful of the grave injustices that have been perpetrated against individuals accused of war crimes when they have been sent to third countries like Israel (e.g. John Demjanjuk), or deported to face summary execution in states like the former Soviet Union, have remained opposed to this method for dealing with any war crimes problem Canada might have. Also unconscionable was the fact that the federal war crimes unit proceeded to investigate only war crimes that had been committed in eastern Europe, apparently with no intention or mandate to take action against war criminals in Canada who were members of the genocidal Khmer Rouge movement in the "killing fields" of Cambodia or, more recently, others who had been involved in mass murder in Somalia. Canada's Ukrainians believed, and continue to believe, that selective justice is no justice at all. And, mindful of the grave damage done to the good name of all Ukrainians by the disinformation campaign of the mid-late 1980s, the small band of volunteers and professionals who have constituted the CLC almost from its inception to the present, have continued to closely monitor and react to media reports and government actions having to do with bringing war criminals to justice.
Of course, that original campaign was fuelled partially by the Soviets and partially by fellow travellers here in the West. Although the former have now disappeared, the latter are still very much in evidence, as recent stories in both The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star should remind us. And certain Jewish-Canadian circles continue to press the government to retreat from the acceptable (if time consuming, costly and complex) "made in Canada" solution to the quick-fix "denaturalize and deport" option. Although it is not known how much Jewish-Canadian organizations raised as a war chest for pressuring the government of Canada to create a commission of inquiry, with a mandate focused only on eastern Europe after the break down of the Soviet-Nazi pact in June 1941, it is well worth remembering that we were forced to raise just over $1 million dollars to meet legal and educational expenses incurred during the period of the Deschênes Commission. With that fund the CLC retained the legal services of Mr. Justice John Sopinka, now a member of the Supreme Court of Canada, and managed to publish a number of booklets articulating the Ukrainian-Canadian community's positions, thereby allowing the Canadian public to review the issues fairly, without reference to sometimes biased media coverage. For example, Nikolai Tolstoy's satirical Trial and Error: Canada's Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals and the Soviets, John Sopinka's bilingual (English/French) submission to the government on the legal remedies for dealing with war criminals in Canada and On The Record: The Debate About Alleged War Criminals in Canada were all circulated widely and deposited in libraries around the world. Other educational measures, like full-page notices in the national edition of The Globe and Mail and in L'Actualite made it absolutely clear that the Ukrainian-Canadian community, and our friends in other Eastern European communities, would not stand idly by and suffer group defamation or hate mongering directed against them or their nation's historic and contemporary independence movements.
More recently, the CLC published another booklet in four languages (English/Ukrainian/ Russian/French) entitled War Crimes: A Submission. It was formally presented to his Excellency the Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada, Lev Lukianenko, in the summer of 1992 and has since been distributed throughout Ukraine and globally. That booklet recommends that the government of Ukraine establish a formal commission of inquiry to locate and prosecute any war criminals found in Ukraine who committed crimes against humanity or war crimes during the twentieth century, regardless of their ethnic, religious or racial origin of political affiliation. Although the government of Ukraine has yet to respond, the Ukrainian-Canadian community's hope is that in Ukraine, at least, Soviet war criminals and those responsible for genocidal acts like the Great Famine will finally be brought to justice. Perhaps action by Kiev aimed at bringing any and all war criminals found in Ukraine to justice will help convince Ottawa that our country should also make a sincere attempt to locate and prosecute Soviet war criminals and others like the Khmer Rouge killers who today are hiding in Canada. Oddly, the government of Canada seems concerned only with Nazi war crimes, as if one group of victims were somehow more worthy of remembrance than others. Justice, I repeat, can never be selective.
But the CLC has not only been involved with the war crimes issue. Since its inception the CLC executive has helped dozens of Ukrainian Canadians deal with a variety of legal and personal problems involving civil liberties, immigration issues and human rights. Most of these cases are private and so are never reported, even within the community's newspapers. More importantly perhaps, the CLC has also been the only organization within the Ukrainian-Canadian community to subsidize research and publish materials on issues like the First World War internment operations. In 1988, the booklet A Time For Atonement: National Internment Operations and the Ukrainian Canadians 1914-1920 helped launch our community's campaign for acknowledgement and redress. Since then thousands of postcards, coupled with CLC Redress Now! posters, letters to the editor, op-ed articles by CLC executive members like Lubomyr Luciuk and Bohdan Kordan, legal work by Dr. Orest Rudzik and Alexandra Chyczij, and educational work with the media and government by several members of the executive, have all raised this issue to the degree that the government of Canada is now on record as acknowledging those internment measures were unwarranted and unjust and has indicated its willingness to negotiate redress. Although Ottawa's men have been saying much the same sort of thing since 1988, with the Prime Minister himself making two public promises regarding redress, in 1990 (Edmonton) and 1992 (Winnipeg), there is work still to be done, primarily in negotiating the terms of any redress settlement and acknowledgement. So still headed by John Gregorovich, assisted by Lubomyr Luciuk (Director of Research), Alexandra Chyczij (Chair, Legal Committee) and several others like Drs. Oleh Romanyshyn, O. Rudzik and B.S. Kordan, the CLC is now preparing to enter into final negotiations with Ottawa over how best to secure acknowledgement and redress. That effort is expected to be resolved before the end of 1993, that is before the next federal election.
This redress campaign was, in its entirety, conceived and carried out from the mid-1980's until the end of 1992 by the Redress Committee of the CLC, perhaps surprisingly without much encouragement from the national executive of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC). Although the CLC's independent mandate was reconfirmed during the 15th and 16th national Ukrainian-Canadian assemblies in Winnipeg, and not changed during the 17th national congress this past October, some representatives of the self-styled "Big Five" organizations within the Congress have sporadically attempted to micro-manage the CLC's activities from afar, failing to do so largely because they do not possess the experience or capabilities required by anyone wishing to work professionally in contemporary Canadian society.
Unfortunately, the undemocratic nature of a Congress executive still hobbled by the crippling legacy represented by its 1940 vintage, essentially government imposed infrastructure, an internal organization in which unanimity (conformity) is insisted upon over flexibility and performance, has sporadically interfered with the CLC's work on behalf of all Ukrainian Canadians. Most recently, the Congress executive, headed by Oleh Romaniw, working behind closed doors, attempted, unconstitutionally, to disband the CLC, just as the redress campaign entered a crucial and delicate phase of negotiations and some sectors within Canadian society again began raising the war crimes issue. Attempts, initiated by the CLC in an effort to resolve these difficulties through face-to-face negotiations leading to reconciliation, had not been fruitful as of early 1993. Whatever the outcome of those meetings, a new body, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) has now assumed the mandate and responsibilities held by the CLC over the past seven years. The Association's officers will continue to represent the community's interests on issues ranging from war crimes to affirmative action to redress and do so without regard to regional, political, religious or generational prejudices. It must be underscored that this Association represents no threat to the Congress, nor should the Association's existence be misrepresented as fostering any "fragmentation" of Ukrainian-Canadian society. But what the Congress does (sic!) from now on, is simply, of no particular interest. The stale rhetoric, organizational nepotism, anti-democratic tendencies and unaccountability of the Congress are of the past and are no longer acceptable to the majority of Canada's Ukrainians.
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Copyright © 1994 Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Copyright © 1994 Lubomyr Luciuk
We acknowledge the help in the preparation of this document by Amanda Anderson
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Originally Composed: Wednesday December 4th 1996.
Date last modified: Thursday October 30th 1997.