Edmonton Journal (A18)
Friday, November 24, 2000
by David Marples
Attack on McLellan off base
Ukrainian group’s campaign against minister is counterproductive
In the current federal election campaign Canada’s multicultural groups have canvassed MPs on various issues.
The Ukrainian Canadians are among Canada’s oldest communities, having first settled in Canada 108 years ago. Further waves arrived in the 1930s, and during and after the Second World War. The events of that war continue to have a significant impact on the lives of Ukrainian Canadians and one community organization, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) has focussed on Anne McLellan, Justice Minister and the MP for Edmonton West.
UCCLA chairman, Toronto lawyer John B. Gregorovich, has called for community members to ensure that Anne McLellan does not get re-elected.
Writing in a recent issue of the National Post, Borys Sydoruk, a member of the Calgary branch of the UCCLA, writes that the Justice Minister, together with Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan, has foisted a two-tiered justice system on Canada, asking that “Canada’s five million naturalized citizens should think before they vote for a government that gave itself the power to denaturalize and deport any of them without a fair trial, in effect rendering those not born here second-class citizens.” Better, he says, “to dump Ms. McLellan and her friends in cabinet than live in a Canada where the rule of law has been so basely corrupted.”
A feature article on the campaign against McLellan appeared this week in the Ukrainian Weekly, the most widely read English-language newspaper among Ukrainians in North America. So what exactly has the Edmonton MP done to arouse such ire?
Anne McLellan herself is perplexed at such an attack. She notes firstly that the issue belongs with the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration rather than the Ministry of Justice. There are currently three legal processes to deal with suspected war criminals: criminal prosecution, extradition, and deportation and denaturalization. McLellan feels that all three should be considered and a decision made as to which is the correct procedure.
The Supreme Court has upheld Canada’s policy of “no safe haven” for war criminals and a process has been in place since the Deschenes Commission in the 1970s and the 1986 Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes.
So what is the role of the Ministry of Justice? The War Crimes unit in the ministry does focus on atrocities, but there is no targeting of any particular group. McLellan notes that the emphasis is mainly on modern war crimes in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and the former territories of Yugoslavia.
There is no question that Ukrainians are concerned about this issue. But the UCCLA is acting independently of the umbrella group for Ukrainians in Canada, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. By focussing on the two ministers in such emotional tones, the UCCLA has ignored the dialogue that has been taking place between the Liberal government and the UCC – and indeed was interrupted only by the sudden calling of the election by Prime Minister Chretien.
An Edmonton member of the UCC, Andriy Hladyshevsky, notes that the hearings between the UCC and government officials, including the Justice Minister, to review the process have “opened the door on a dialogue that didn’t exist a year ago.”
The Liberal response to a UCC survey notes the party upholds the right to use “immigration action” if it can be proved that “the subject concealed information concerning wartime activity” that if revealed would have prevented entry into Canada. The new Extradition Act and war crimes legislation “Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act” support the use of all three methods of process (deportation, extradition, criminal prosecution).
Ukrainian Canadians are very concerned about the reliability of evidence against wartime immigrants that may have been manufactured (and in some cases quite clearly was) by the KGB. Both the government and the UCC are still seeking areas of common ground. The key factors, however, are first that the UCC is not focussing on any one minister; and second, that the dialogue is in progress and indeed some UCC recommendations for the final statute have already been accepted by the Liberals.
So where does this leave Anne McLellan? That she is the focus of a UCCLA campaign, not one by the more representative UCC, may be of small consolation if Ukrainians in Edmonton West believe the current publicity. The UCC, in turn, would welcome a government that pays more attention to Ukrainian issues, but a dialogue is in process, and has been interrupted only by the Chretien’s premature calling of an election. The attack on Anne McLellan seems misdirected.
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David R. Marples is a professor of history and director of the Stasiuk
Program on Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian
Studies, University of Alberta.
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[The errors in dates, grammar and context appeared in the original article and have not been corrected.]