Thank you, Chair.
Obviously, the majority of the committee will have its will, but I hope we have an opportunity to at least have some discussion here today, because I think there are a lot of important points that need to be aired on this.
I want to start by sharing a little bit of personal context. I haven't spoken on this issue yet, but it's personal for me. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. I share in the shock about what happened on Friday. I personally wasn't here when it happened. I only found out about it afterwards. For me growing up, knowing about the Holocaust and World War II was obviously really important. It was a part of my family's history, as well as world history. My parents always emphasized the importance of knowing about history, how learning about history is how we avoid repeating it, how we learn from the mistakes of history, and how it's especially important for us to learn about these darker moments in our collective history so we can prevent these grave evils from repeating themselves.
The promise that was made to my grandmother's generation, the promise of “never again”, of not allowing genocides to happen in the future, is one we have obviously failed to deliver on. We have rising anti-Semitism around world, including here in Canada. By my count, there have been four instances in the time I've been a member of Parliament in which this House has recognized contemporaneous acts of genocide, so we know genocide continues. This, again, underlines the importance of knowing world history, of knowing our history, and of having that inform the decisions that our institutions make.
One of the things about this that are so shocking to me is that we have a whole apparatus of government that is responsible for security, for protocol, for ensuring the success of these visits. For any of the people involved in this process, it should just not have passed the basic smell test. The basic description of who this individual was—someone who fought against Russia during the Second World War—should not have passed a basic smell test. That should have led to any number of the people in RCMP protocol, the Prime Minister's Office and all those who were involved in this visit to ask more questions about it. In this country, there's a whole painful history of conflict around people who came to Canada who had been members of the Waffen-SS, so for people to not have known that history....
I think we need to underline that the Prime Minister is ultimately responsible for this apparatus. House of Commons security reports to the RCMP, and I think this is important from a process perspective. I understand that some members want to say this isn't a government operations issue but a procedure and House affairs issue. I agree with my colleague who said the procedure and House affairs committee is already seized with the issue of foreign interference, and pushing this over to procedure and House affairs is, I think, frankly, a way of trying to bury the discussion of it.
Moreover, this isn't just a question of procedure and House activities. This is a question of the operations of government and therefore we need to be looking at the operations committee. It suits the framing of some members, who want to avoid looking at the responsibility of the government and government operations for this outcome, to say that, no, it's just the House of Commons.
This was a state visit. The House of Commons is used for these kinds of addresses, but formally speaking, the House of Commons isn't sitting. We have people on the floor who are not members of Parliament. We understand that, formally speaking, the House doesn't sit. We have a foreign leader addressing the House within the House of Commons. This very much, I think, raises important questions of government operations. How did this happen from a government operations perspective?
So when members say it should be put over as a procedure and House issue, it's not a procedure and House issue fundamentally. It is more fundamentally a government operations issue, and we need to be able to ask those government operations questions, which I think include looking at how there was such historical ignorance within the processes that, ultimately, are the responsibility of the Prime Minister and the government, such ignorance of the debates that have happened in Canada around the Waffen-SS and of the history of the Holocaust itself.
Chair, the sad thing is that we are living through a time when the term “Nazi” is regularly thrown around as a political insult, apparently by people who don't seem to have a basic understanding and recollection of the history of Nazism. This is deeply troubling and it contributes, I think, to the concern about what happened last Friday.
I want to put on the record, as well, that it's important to underline what we're talking about in terms of the Waffen-SS. Some articles have referred to the person who was in the House as being someone who fought alongside Nazi Germany, and this grossly understates the full picture. The SS was the paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party that was personally loyal to Hitler. The SS was not just a unit within the German army; it was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party that was personally loyal to Hitler. It was deployed in all kinds of the most horrific, unimaginable atrocities, and it was used as a personal vehicle for exercising power.
It was there, in part, so that if there was agitation against the regime from within the army, the SS could be deployed. It was personally loyal to the Nazi Party and to Hitler. This is, of course, historically important, because we know that, as a result of the Valkyrie plot, there was agitation within the German military. The SS was deeply evil and was responsible for some of the most horrific atrocities in human history, and this is the case of an individual who voluntarily enlisted with the SS in 1943. He chose to enlist with the SS in 1943.
My colleague referenced the Nuremberg trials, and I just want to share a number of quotes from the Nuremberg trials so we understand what we are talking about here: “It is impossible to single out any portion of the SS which was not involved in these criminal activities.... The tribunal finds that knowledge of these criminal activities was sufficiently general to justify declaring that the SS was a criminal organisation to the extent hereinafter described.”
It also states:
There is evidence that the shooting of unarmed prisoners of war was the general practice in some Waffen SS divisions.... Units of the Waffen SS and Einsatzgruppen operating directly under the SS main office were used to carry out these plans. These units were also involved in the widespread murder and ill-treatment of the civilian population of occupied territories[.] Under the guise of combating partisan units, units of the SS exterminated Jews and people deemed politically undesirable by the SS, and their reports record the execution of enormous numbers of persons. Waffen SS divisions were responsible for many massacres and atrocities in occupied territories such as the massacres at Oradour and Lidice.
Chair, again, we have a situation in which the term “Nazi” is increasingly thrown around as a political insult on Twitter, on social media and in other places, even by political leaders, but we have, I think, a declining understanding of the horrors of this period and of the roots and causes of this totalitarian evil. I would commend to all members of the public the importance of understanding history and understanding this period in particular as we commit ourselves to the principle of “never again”.
As the government operations committee, we need to understand what happened as a matter of government operations. If members want to make the case that the Prime Minister is not responsible or that government operations are not associated with what happened, then they can make that case, but let's not bury it. Let's not hide it. Let's not pretend there aren't questions about the operations of government that need to be asked and considered. Now is not the time for excuses or for punting it to other committees. Government operations is the place to do it because it's a government operations issue and because there are already issues on the table at procedure and House affairs.
I hope members will consider this reality and take a stand for remembering and learning from history, getting to the bottom of what happened and holding powerful people accountable for this grave stain on our national reputation.
Thank you.
