J B Gregorovich, Chairman

Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association

Since 1984, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA), an independent and non-partisan national coalition of Canadians of Ukrainian heritage, has affirmed that all war criminals found in Canada, regardless of their ethnic, religious or racial heritage, or the period or place where they are said to have committed a crime against humanity or war crime, should be brought to justice in a Canadian criminal court. That remains our position.

Any Canadian citizen alleged to be a criminal must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Given the severity of the consequences of the current denaturalization and deportation hearings (eg senior citizens being stripped of their citizenship and deported to third countries, far from their homes, families and communities) we can not agree that this method for dealing with the alleged presence of war criminals in Canada is acceptable. Indeed the civil proceedings now core to this process are inherently unjust, for in such hearings the rules of evidence are not as stringently applied as they would be in a criminal court.

Furthermore, these proceedings implicitly establish a "second class" category of Canadian citizenship, including all those who choose to become Canadians by immigrating here. This latter sort of Canadian is being judged in a setting and with rules far different from those applied to Canadians born here. We abhor the notion that naturalized Canadian citizens are, in any way, "second class citizens."

To date, no evidence has been produced in the hearing rooms sufficient to warrant the denaturalization or deportation of any of those who have been subjected to these proceedings. We note that even federal prosecutors have admitted that they have no evidence of individual criminality in the cases that have been brought forward. Yet these denaturalization and deportation hearings have preceded, in explicit contradiction to this Government's own promise [vide "Canada's War Crimes Program", Public Report, 2000-01, page 3] that: "The government pursues only those cases for which there is evidence of direct involvement in or complicity of war crimes or crimes against humanity." That is untrue.

Regrettably, we believe the existing War Crimes Unit has also engaged in a selective inquiry, focused only on those alleged to have collaborated with the Nazi regime in eastern Europe while ignoring evidence that Soviet war criminals and communist collaborators made their way to Canada after the Second World War, avoiding screening procedures intended to prohibit them from settling here, and remain in our midst. Alerted to the possible presence of alleged communist war criminals in Canada, against whom there would appear to be compelling evidence of personal behaviour of a sort which a court might find criminal,these individuals are apparently still not being investigated. Justice that is selective is no justice at all.

We call upon the Social Union Committee of Cabinet to carefully review the actual performance of the existing War Crimes Unit. While all Canadians share our commitment to keeping this country free of those who willingly participated in war crimes or crimes against humanity few, if any, would wish to have agencies of our Government acting in a manner that appears to be not only partial but deliberately so. Whereas those who initiated these denaturalization and deportation proceedings, in 1995, will continue to champion them with specious arguments about seeing justice done, the reality is that these hearings, which have targeted citizens against whom no evidence of wartime criminality has ever actually been produced, represent a travesty of justice. Sooner or later they will be exposed for what they are, to the discredit of the current Government and of each and every Minister who continues to endorse them.