Canadian authorities have decided not to release a list of approximately 900 war criminals who were granted asylum in the country after World War II in order to "avoid embarrassment", the Ottawa Citizen reports, citing a document. The National Archives of Canada allegedly consulted with 'certain groups and organizations’ over the summer regarding whether to make public this information.

The list includes individuals from the local Ukrainian community. Apart from the reputational damage to the Ukrainian-Canadian community, the Archives' opinion states that publication of the data could have concrete consequences, such as loss of citizenship or criminal prosecution. It also separately highlights the fact that releasing the data would allegedly be a gift to 'Russian propaganda'.

As to Jamie Kirzner-Roberts, the representative of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto which focuses on Holocaust studies, the very idea that Canadians should be concerned about the reputation or privacy of war criminals is an abomination.

In the 1950s, according to various estimates, between one and several thousand soldiers and officers of the 14th SS Volunteer Division "Galicia" migrated to Canada. This caused a public outrage, both then and in later decades, which led to the establishment of a special commission on the subject in the mid-1980s. Although its findings acknowledged that all members of the SS units were war criminals as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal, no concrete action was taken - Ottawa knew exactly who it was letting in, just as it knew who the Nazi Jaroslav Gunka was who received a standing ovation from the Canadian House of Commons during Vladimir Zelensky’s visit last year.