The celebration of Waffen-SS veteran Jaroslav Hanka in Parliament last Friday can be viewed through more than one lens..Notably, it feeds the narrative the Trudeau Liberals are so unable to follow their own narrative, they just can’t help leaving two sets of tracks as they stumble along. It should make you shudder: The people who can’t even control who comes into the House, actually have responsibility for who comes into the country..Also, one can hardly blame the opposition for sticking it to the government. Apart from the issue itself, the sheer cowardice of the prime minister in ducking Question Period and leaving the luckless Karina Gould to face Pierre Poilievre alone for two days, merits the utmost contempt..To his credit, or perhaps to avoid the appearance of shooting Bambi, Poilievre was comparatively restrained. Soon enough, Mr. Trudeau will have to come back and face that music..There are however two other angles — lenses, if you will — to consider..One is how much attention the affair warrants, given what else is going on..Yes, it was a bad thing to fete somebody who fought under the swastika for all the reasons well-canvassed over the last four days. We get it..And yes, grist to the Conservative mill it most certainly was. Being not unsympathetic to Poilievre’s aspirations, I don’t begrudge him the opportunity to take his pound of flesh..However, the Liberals have now been allowed nearly a week to avoid further discussion of substantive issues..While they’re ululating over the shame, the shock and the horror of it all, and having heaped up the blame upon the Speaker’s back and forced him thus encumbered from his position, nobody — least of all the prime minister — has had to explain the massive errors of judgment that led the world’s largest democracy to despise one of the world’s oldest..Nor have the Liberals been asked to explain why at a time of growing international tension, they are giving more money to the Ukrainian army and less to Canada’s..Prime Minister Trudeau has also been able to dodge a response to criticism of his dismissive remarks about the 1 Million March 4 Children, or to the news that in the run up to a UN climate change conference in Dubai, the Chinese have ditched the targets that the Government of Canada would have Canadians walk the road to poverty to meet..So yes, big mistake. You found somebody to fire. May we now get back to the business that matters to people who pay taxes?.Finally, there’s this about Mr. Hunka. I don’t know the man and I don’t know anybody else who knows him. But for what it's worth, whatever choices he made when he was 18, he was one of millions of young men on both sides of the Second World War who if they were not conscripted first, had the same choice to make. My country is at war. What am I going to do?.Then whatever they did, they did. Those on the winning side were seldom asked to justify their actions. But a tremendous number wouldn’t talk about what they’d seen..Those on the losing side did not enjoy the same privilege. So for the sake of context, let us say this of the 18-year-old Jaroslav Hunka, who joined up in 1943. In his slender lifetime, he had seen the Communist government of Russia destroy through starvation around four million of his fellow countrymen and women in what the Ukrainians continue to call the Holodomor. (In 2008, the Harper government recognized it as "an act of genocide.") When the Germans offered him a gun, a chance of revenge and what seemed at the time a chance to keep the Russians out of Ukraine, he would have had every reason to agree..And by the way, while there was a good guy/bad guy situation on the western front, the battle in the east was simply between hateful ideologies, neither of which were on the side of freedom and democracy..Eighty years after the fact, judgement is self-indulgent..Finally, it is worth noting however that when Hunka was admitted to Canada in the early 1950s, along with hundreds of other Ukrainian veterans, their applications to come here would have been vetted by people who, being closer to the times, would have a more personal and realistic view of what everybody had been through in previous ten years than we do today..Some might even have fought for Canada. Yet, they had it in their hearts to approve immigration applications from men and women of nations with whom they had recently been fighting — Germans, Italians, Japanese and yes, Ukrainians..On what basis are we second-guessing their decisions? What did they understand, that this spoiled generation can't?.Unless there is something particular about Mr. Hunka that was overlooked 70 years ago we, having thoroughly roasted his reputation, might consider just leaving the old man alone — with his family, and his conscience before God.
