The Netherlands released the names of 425,000 suspected Nazi collaborators. Why won’t Canada do the same?

 

On Feb. 10, the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada published its decision on whether Library and Archives Canada was justified to block the release of the full, un-redacted 1986 Deschenes Commission report on suspected Nazi war criminals and collaborators who came to Canada after the Second World War.

The government archives department claims it can’t release everything, because Canada received some key information after the war from an allied foreign government—who wouldn’t like it published, even all these years later—and doing so could jeopardize Canada’s international relations. Plus, releasing RCMP file numbers could be dangerous.

The OIC ruling suggested that B’nai Brith Canada, who has been lobbying for decades to unlock Canada’s murky wartime immigration policies, should take the case to the Federal Court of Canada. And that’s just what B’nai Brith Canada has done. On Jan. 21, lawyers for the Jewish human rights group filed documents asking for a judicial review of keeping the “Deschenes Report” secret.

On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we’re joined by Sam Goldstein, former legal counsel to B’nai Brith Canada, and also by historian and author Howard Margolian, a former war crimes investigator who thinks Canada let in relatively few hardcore Nazis back then—but still wants the names released as well as their entire case files.