The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons resigned Tuesday after again apologizing for presenting a 98-year-old Ukrainian who served with a Nazi SS unit as a “hero” after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of Parliament.
The speaker, Anthony Rota, introduced Yaroslav Honka, a voter from his constituency, as a “Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” on Friday, drawing a standing ovation from lawmakers and other guests as well as a fist bump from Mr. Zelensky. Who is Jewish?
But over the following days, several Jewish groups expressed outrage and outrage, saying that Mr. Honka was a member of a Nazi volunteer unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which fought alongside Germany during World War II and pledged allegiance. For Hitler.
After days of calls for him to step down, Rutte announced his resignation on the day he was due to host an annual garden party at his official country residence.
“This House is above any of us,” he told his fellow lawmakers. “I repeat, I am deeply sorry.”
Mr. Rutte apologized for the first time over the weekend for inviting and introducing Mr. Honka, noting that he “later became aware of more information.”
While Mr. Rutte is a member of Parliament from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, he is not a political power broker like his counterpart in the US House of Representatives. Speakers in the Canadian House of Commons serve as non-partisan arbiters of the chamber and are independent of the government. The Speaker of Parliament, not the government, controls all activities and behavior within the chamber, as well as its staff.
Mr. Rutte said he had not informed the governments of Canada or Ukraine of his plan to invite Mr. Honka. However, Mr. Trudeau’s political opponents immediately called on the House of Commons and the Prime Minister to formally apologize on behalf of Canada to Jews in Canada and abroad.
Mr. Trudeau was in Toronto to attend an event with auto parts manufacturers. Karina Gould, the Speaker of the House of Representatives on his behalf, responded by repeatedly pointing out that the invitation to Mr Honka was made without the government’s knowledge.
Ms. Gold, a Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors, said she “never in a million years would have stood up and applauded someone who helped the Nazis” if she had known about Mr. Honka’s past.
Quiet diplomatic efforts will not be enough to repair the damage caused by the issue, said Lori Turnbull, a professor of public and international affairs at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
She said no one doubted that “this was a real mistake” on Mr Rota’s part. “But it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The point is that we are still the country that made Zelensky applaud a man who fought with the Nazis.”
She added: “I don’t see how there can be any resolution to this without some acknowledgment on the part of the Prime Minister that something really terrible has happened.”
Professor Turnbull said that because the Speaker symbolizes Parliament’s independence from the Government, it was inappropriate and unusual for Mr Rutte to place his guest list in front of the Prime Minister’s Office.
But Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader whose party leads Trudeau’s Liberals in opinion polls, blamed Trudeau for not vetting guests who joined lawmakers for Mr. Zelensky’s speech.
The Prime Minister’s spokeswoman, Anne-Clara Vaillancourt, said responsibility for security clearances at the event rested solely with the House of Commons, and not with any police, security or intelligence agency that reports to the government.
Calls for Mr Rutte to step down first came from Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the centre-left New Democratic Party. These events accelerated on Tuesday in the run-up to a lunchtime meeting scheduled by Mr Rutte with leaders of all parties in the House of Commons.
In the hours before Mr Rutte’s announcement, the Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Industry Minister and the government’s leader in the House of Commons told journalists that he should resign.
In the House of Commons, the opposition Conservatives said the incident contributed to Russian propaganda. Collaboration between supporters of Ukrainian independence and Nazi forces during World War II was a key component of Moscow’s false narrative that the current government in Kiev had been infiltrated by neo-Nazis.
The 14th Waffen SS was made up of volunteers from the Galicia region, which extended across parts of what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. After the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine in 1939, the creation of the unit in 1943 attracted Ukrainians eager to fight for their independence, said Dominic Arel, chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa.
“Having been trained by SS officers, you can imagine the kind of political indoctrination they received,” he said. Even if their goals were independence, Mr. Arel said the unit “fought for the Nazis and were trained by them.” There’s no doubt about that.”
Canada has long taken the position that simply being a member of the 14th Waffen SS is not a war crime, although individuals can be prosecuted for specific atrocities. A national committee was identified In 1985 There is no evidence linking former members of the band in Canada to war crimes. Jewish groups have criticized this position, and anger at Mr. Honka has renewed calls for a reassessment.
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