Canadian/Russia Relations

Canada now says open to dialogue with Russia, what does this signal?

Roger Annis, Feb 1, 2016

A shift in the attitude of the Canadian government towards Russia has been announced by Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion.

On Wednesday, January 27, Dion announced to the House of Commons in Ottawa that he would visit Ukraine in the coming days. Under opposition party haranguing, he restated views expressed to journalists one day earlier that it was time for a shift in relations with Russia, specifically that at minimum, his government will reopen communication with Russian counterparts.

Dion told the House, “Our foreign policy will stop being ideological and irrational and will be effective for our allies and for Canadians.”

{he goes on to talk about Canada still standing for Ukraine (one wonders in its current state)}...but then went on to say it was time to start working with Russia “when we have common interests”.​

“Canada was speaking to the Russians even during the tough times of the Cold War. And now we are not speaking … because of the former policy, of the former government. In what way is it helping our interests in the Arctic? [for example]”

“We have a lot of disagreements with the government of Russia,” he went on, “but it’s certainly not the way to stop speaking with them when the Americans speak with them and all the Europeans, the Japanese, everybody [does so] except Canada. ”

Dion’s comments followed those of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday at a press conference surveying Russia’s view of the multiple conflicts and tensions in the world. Turning to Canada, Lavrov said Russia “was stunned by the absence of pragmatism” by the previous government of Stephen Harper in its policy concerning Russia and the conflict in Ukraine.

The foreign minister accused the Harper government of following the “blatant interests of the Ukrainian diaspora [while] ignoring Canada’s national interests.” There are about 1.3 million Canadians of Ukrainian descent. Their journeys to Canada began more than 100 years ago and a majority would be born here.

Russia looks forward to new relations with Canada, Lavrov said.[1]

{the Crimea question and response from Lavrov comes up, and that is correctly not up for discussion Lavrov states}

[...]

Still early days whether Canada will end its hostility to Russia

Canada has played a leading, provocative role in the military threats by the NATO military alliance against Russia during the past two years. It has encouraged and joined the economic and political sanctions of its fellow imperialist countries against the Russian economy and politicians and businessmen.

Canada has been a leading voice describing the 2014 referendum vote of the Crimean people as a Russian “annexation”. It condemns Russia for assisting the people of eastern Ukraine in resisting the military onslaught against them begun in April 2014 by the right-wing government that came to power in a coup in February 2014. That onslaught is spearheaded by extremist and fascist paramilitary battalions with which the government is allied but which Western media blacks out of its reporting.

It gets worse. Canada, along with the United States and Britain, has soldiers and police on Ukrainian soil in ‘training missions’ whose ultimate goal is not disclosed but which gravely threaten and destabilize the entire border region between Russia and eastern Europe. Ukraine’s constitution expressly prohibits the presence of foreign soldiers on its soil, but the country’s Parliament happily agreed to waive that last April in order to welcome the Western troops.[2]

Canada also participates in the ongoing NATO military exercises on land and sea in eastern and western Europe whose goal is to send Russia the message: ‘obey our diktats, or else’.

Unknown to Canadians and Americans, Arctic cooperation is a model

{and here is where the below the surface relationship comes in}

Foreign Minister Dion cited Arctic cooperation as an area where Canada has lost out during the past two years of Anti-Russia policy. Indeed, Canadians (and Americans) don’t know the half of what Dion was referring to.

It turns out that scientific as well as economic cooperation among the eight countries that border the Arctic region has been stellar for decades and, fortunately, has not suffered much from the NATO-led folly and confrontations of the past two years. Given that the Arctic is ground zero of the visible, calamitous consequences of global warming, it’s good news that Arctic cooperation is surviving. (The bad news, of course, is that this is not, and now cannot, stop the inexorable melting of Arctic ice, but that’s another story.)

{I'll leave the anthropogenic global warming leaning in this article somewhat alone}

Canadians, for one, will be utterly in the dark over the record of Arctic cooperation because the chosen angle of reportage of this subject in mainstream media in Canada is, surprise!, that Russia is a threat to Canada’s interests and ambitions in the region.

For example, the sub-headline to an article by Scott Gilmore in Maclean’s magazine on November 15, 2015, reads, “All of Moscow’s effort and attention, combined with Canada’s neglect, has effectively turned the Arctic Ocean into Putin’s Lake.” He writes:

Justin Trudeau recently promised to push back “the bully that is Vladimir Putin”. Supporters may enthusiastically imagine the tall boxer staring down the short black belt. [Editor’s note: Justin Trudeau is an accomplished boxer.] Unfortunately, the more accurate picture would have Trudeau sitting on a battered snowmobile, craning his neck to see Putin standing far above him on the bridge of a nuclear-powered icebreaker.

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Brian Stewart, an eminence grise of the CBC state broadcaster wrote earlier the same month:

An oddity of Canada’s foreign policy of late is how gravely we viewed Russia’s expanding power in distant Eastern Europe and Syria, yet took scarce note of Moscow’s actions closer to our own Arctic and Asia-Pacific interests.

Even allowing for the vast distances involved, Vladimir Putin’s strategic thrusts are almost on our doorstep and may well require far more serious attention from the incoming Liberal government. {that's Brian Stewart for you - ("an eminence grise")}

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A common theme of the scare-mongering reporting is that Canada needs to boost its military spending and presence in the Arctic in order to confront an aggressive Russia.

A very different view of the Arctic is provided by Dr. Michael Byers of the University of British Columbia, an expert on all things Arctic. He spoke at a public forum attended by this writer in Vancouver last November 18. The theme of the forum was ‘ Russia, the Arctic and crisis in Ukraine’.

Dr. Byers is a professor in UBC’s Department of Political Science. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law. His work focuses on Arctic sovereignty, climate change, the law of the sea and Canadian foreign and defence policy. He has written several books on the Arctic, including the 2013 ‘International Law and the Arctic’.

Perhaps to the surprise of many in the audience on November 18 (given the title of the event), Byers explained that Russia’s scientific cooperation in the Arctic has been stellar for decades and remains so. He cited a string of scientific, political and transport treaties and agreements going back decades between the eight member countries of the Arctic Council–Russia, The United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.

Worse news for the war party in Canada was Byer’s claim that Canada is the laggard among Arctic countries on matters scientific, social and otherwise. The most glaring example of Canada’s neglect and abuse of its Arctic territory is the scandalous social and economic conditions of the Indigenous peoples of Canada’s north. A great many live in Third World conditions.[3]

Canada’s search and rescue capacity in the north is scant. Most of it is located thousands of kilometres away to the south.

Concerning Canada’s scientific capacity in the north, Byers reported its shortcomings as well as the cuts and the silencing of scientists during the Harper government years that made things worse. He reported {this is a good one} the embarrassing fact that the lead vessel in the Canadian expedition that in September 2014 located one of the two lost ships from Britain’s 1845 Franklin Expedition was Russian! (This fact was utterly unreported in all the Canadian government and media hoopla that accompanied the finding.)

Earlier, in September 2014, Michael Byers took part in a public forum at UBC titled, Arctic War or Arctic Peace? The Stakes for Canada’. The forum was a debate between him and a pro-military ideologue arguing for more confrontation with Russia.

Byers told the forum, “On Arctic security, in my view, the overriding issue is climate change.” He argued that competing states, including Russia, are no threat to Canada’s ambitions in the Arctic, outside of the normal waxing and waning of international politics.

“There is a tendency in the media to ‘hype up’ the threats from other states [in the Arctic],” he said.

Byers argued that the positive attitude towards cooperation in the Arctic by Russia has remained unchanged since the events in Ukraine. He repeated that claim at the November 2015 forum. (He says, perhaps cynically, that Russia’s cooperation stems from the fact that Russia has benefitted economically and otherwise for decades from a cooperative rather than confrontational Arctic arrangement.)

All the more remarkable in Byers’ comments is that he counts himself among the Russia-bashers in Canada. He argues for a big military expansion of Canada in the Arctic, in part to counter Russian influence. At the November 2015 forum, he told the audience, “Let’s be clear, I believe Vladimir Putin is a thug.” He said that Russia staged a brutal “annexation” of Crimea in early 2014.

He told the Sept 2014 forum, “There are reasons to be concerned about the Putin regime, serious reasons to be concerned about the Putin regime.” He called Russia “a dangerous and dark regime”.

At the November 2015 forum, Byers made his standard pitch for increased military spending. “We are the second largest country in the world, we need a larger military.” {it's pretty funny when you think about Byers silly assertions of Canadian military grandiosity}

Where is Canadian policy headed?

What does the shift in Canadian tone towards Russia herald? That’s tough to answer because first of all, policy will ultimately be decided by Washington, upon which time Canada will sign up.[4] The question to be answered in this regard, then, is where U.S. policy is headed.

Secondly, as Dion has signalled, there will be no change in Canada’s support to the right-wing regime in power in Kyiv. Too many years of coddling and support to Ukraine’s ultra-nationalists have passed. The three large parties in Parliament are unanimous on the matter. Too many lead voices in the anti-Russia bandwagon in Canada, beginning with lead attacker and now Minister of International Trade Chrystia Freeland, are comfortably at the center of power in the new government of Justin Trudeau.

Turning to the question of where U.S. policy is headed (with Canada and other U.S. allies in tow), that’s a complicated one. At least three major issues are determining the U.S. course:

• Russia’s diplomatic initiatives with respect to the war in Syria begun last October are reshaping the Middle East by eroding U.S. diktat over the region. The emerging, de facto alliance between Russia, Iran, forces of the Kurdish people, the Syrian government and progressive forces in Turkey has already weakened the U.S.-EU-Israel-Saudi-right wing Islamist nexus and is likely to continue to do so.
• In Ukraine, the Kyiv’s government’s economic and political crisis is profound and renders it an unstable pawn in the NATO threats and buildup against Russia. Furthermore, the shifts towards dialogue if not cooperation with Russia in the Middle East open uncomfortable questions about the situation in Ukraine. Russia has been relentlessly painted as a big, bad wolf for the past two years. Now there is dialogue opening up, yet Crimea remains “annexed” while the “separatists” (pro-autonomy) political forces in Donbass (eastern Ukraine) are as “separatist” as ever with continued Russian backing. So what has all the fuss of the last two years been about? Is there something we were not told? Have we been fed stories of “Russian aggression” in order to sell an anti-Russia political agenda by the NATO countries?
• All the industrial countries of the world are under intense pressure to respond to the rising awareness among the world’s population of global warming. Demands are growing louder for radical, political and economic measures to forestall the worst consequences of global environmental and climactic degradation.

Stay tuned for how this all ends. And settle in. 2016 promises to be a year of many surprises and, if we’re lucky, some reversal of the crazed descent into war, austerity and climate emergency. Then the real work of salvaging our planet and futures may begin.

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"We do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"

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angelburst29 said:

One thing I don't understand the reasons for, other than, may be NATO and U.S. are steering Canada's economic reforms, why is Canada systematically liquidating it's Gold Reserves? While Russia and other Countries are purchasing Gold by the Tonne to back their own currencies. When the American Dollar (officially) collapses - Canada's currency will probably flat-line along with it?

Back in the 1960s, Canada held more than 1,000 tonnes of gold. But it began steadily selling off its hoard, and by 2003, the country had just 3.4 tonnes.

Now, Canada has less than one tonne.

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Holding gold erases the possibility that a central bank will have to turn to its government for help, along with the increased oversight that will come with it.

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David J. Frum (/ˈfrʌm/; born June 30, 1960) is a Canadian-American neoconservative[3] political commentator. A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Frum later became the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency. He is a senior editor at The Atlantic and also a CNN contributor. He serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the British think tank Policy Exchange, the anti-drug policy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and as vice chairman and an associate fellow of the R Street Institute.

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CHRYSTIA FREELAND IS THE BODY DOUBLE – CANADA PLAYS HILLARY CLINTON CARD AT RUSSIA; KREMLIN SUSPECTS FREELAND PUTSCH AGAINST JUSTIN TRUDEAU

http://johnhelmer.net/?p=17007

By John Helmer, Moscow

Chrystia Freeland, a leading figure in the Ukrainian and Canadian campaigns against Russia, was promoted last week in Ottawa to become Canada’s foreign minister. She is now one step away in her plan to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, sources in Ottawa, Washington, and Moscow report.

There was a hitch in the plan, though. Freeland had been hoping for a senior ministry when Trudeau took power in November 2015. Instead, he gave her the low-ranked international trade portfolio to keep her out of Canada as often as possible. Freeland then counted on Hillary Clinton to win the US presidential election last November, in order to persuade Trudeau she had better relationships in the coming Washington administration than the incumbent foreign minister, Stéphane Dion. The election of Donald Trump, with whom Freeland has no relationship and no agreement either, disappointed but didn’t deter her.

Trudeau has also accepted the Freeland scheme, and also for a Clinton reason. Trudeau will be safer in the prime ministry, Ottawa sources believe, if Freeland follows the Clinton role model into public acrimony, private hysteria, then defeat.

The usually dignified Dion departed his office last week, not by saying he wished Freeland well, but that he wished her luck. He meant Freeland, whom he blamed along with Trudeau for his abrupt ouster, would need it.

“For one year”, Dion (right) said, intimating that he had been caught unawares, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave me the honour of being his Minister of Foreign Affairs. As is his privilege, he has just entrusted this great responsibility to another person. I wish Chrystia the best of luck.” Freeland’s supporters crowded into the Canadian media to celebrate. Dion’s supporters say he was ambushed repeatedly during his short tenure, made to take the blame in public for policies decided by others, while being kept away from decisions that were Dion’s prerogative to take, but his rivals pre-empted. This version of Dion’s ambush gives all the credit for the conspiracy to Trudeau. Another Canadian source suggests Trudeau isn’t clever enough, and that more than half the credit for the plot should go to Freeland herself.

In Brussels, sources who report on NATO say that among the military alliance leaders Trudeau’s reputation for low intelligence “approaches, if it doesn’t exceed” that of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who was NATO secretary-general between 2009 and 2014.

Officially, the Russian reaction to Freeland’s appointment as foreign minister has been as non-committal as possible. “We don’t know,” said the ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova on December 12, “what the [Canadian] priorities will be. I think that it is necessary to be guided by specific acts and the specific program which, probably, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada will build. After that, we will comment and, perhaps, take some actions.” Responding to the fact that the Russian Government announced counter-sanctions against Canada, including a travel ban on Freeland in 2014, Zakharova said: “I would like to remind everyone that in spite of the fact that many headlines say ‘the Foreign Minister of Canada is included in the Russian sanctions lists’, the situation is a little not so. [Freeland’s name] was not placed on the sanctions lists as the Foreign Minister of Canada; she was included in the lists in 2014 as a response measure of the Russian side. First came the sanctions lists accepted [from the US] by Canada concerning Russian citizens, including Russian officials. Respectively, the Russian list was retaliation for this action of Canada’s. I think that for the answer to when and under what circumstances people [like Freeland] can be removed from this list, it is necessary to look at the rule of reciprocity.”

For the current lists of Canadian sanctions against Russia, click to open.

Freeland reacted swiftly, announcing on the government television network CBC, “we wouldn’t look at lifting sanctions. The sanctions were imposed by the previous government but with strong support from us in opposition in response to very clear violations of international law by Russia with the invasion and annexation of Crimea and for a war against Ukraine in the Donbass.”

A year ago, Foreign Minister Seregei Lavrov had said Canadian sanctions were the result of a Russophobic government pushed by “rabid” Ukrainians”. “Canada is an influential, respected member of the [community of] international relations. We have had ups and downs in our relations from time to time. We saw such downs in the period of the government of Stephen Harper. The last two years were generally a period of lost opportunities with respect to Canada, when suddenly the previous [Harper] government sharply took a Russophobic line and curtailed bilateral ties, imposed sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities, suspended cooperation in the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic issues.”

“We were surprised by the complete absence of any pragmatism in those impulsive actions that the previous government made. It took a course with totally blind adherence to the requirement of rabid representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.”

Lavrov added that Russia was hoping that Trudeau’s takeover from Harper would correct the “mistakes of predecessors.”

In the year which has followed, President Vladimir Putin has almost totally ignored Canada and Trudeau. The Kremlin announced that he had sent greetings to Trudeau on December 30, 2015, and again last month. In the 2015 message Putin had told Trudeau “he expects to see constructive development of Russian-Canadian ties in the coming year in all areas – from trade and the economy to sport, with our traditionally fierce but friendly hockey battles.” In Putin’s latest message, he added a birthday greeting for Trudeau (born on December 25, 1971), expressing “confidence that the strengthening of bilateral cooperation and the development of partnership in opening up the Arctic and in other fields meet the interests of the both countries’ people.”

During the election campaign of 2015, Trudeau had called for “pushing back against the bully that is Vladimir Putin”. Trudeau also claimed that after the election, when he met Putin at the G20 summit conference in Turkey on November 16 of that year (pictured below), he had “a fairly direct exchange with him where I pointed out that his actions in Ukraine were illegitimate and irresponsible.”

The Russian side says the conversation was brief, and no such statement was made. According to Putin, “the prime minister himself said when we were at G20 in Antalya that he thinks how we should re-establish the relations in full. We welcome this . . . and will get down to this task, to work together.”

Last Friday Freeland told Canadian reporters she had met Putin at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting in Peru last November. This was the first time she had made the disclosure. “I’ve spoken with the top guy in Russia quite recently,” Freeland told her state radio. “We spoke in Russian and we had quite a long conversation.” The Kremlin records no such conversation took place, a spokesman for the president adding: “Vladimir Putin did not have a meeting with Freeland.”

Unofficially, the Russian assessment – based on contacts with the Foreign Ministry, veteran diplomats, and Russian oligarchs with Canadian business interests — is that Canada is a minor country whose international role-playing is either that of a foil to the US, as when Pierre Trudeau , Justin’s father, was prime minister and opposed the US on the Vietnam War; or the role of a puppet and echo of Washington. The Russian oligarch connexions have included Roman Abramovich’s attempt at goldmining with Peter Munk, founder of Barrick Gold; Oleg Deripaska’s scheme for acquiring the Opel car company with Frank Stronach of the Magna Corporation; and Alexei Mordashov’s goldmining ventures with Frank Giustra. The contacts have all ended unsuccessfully, as the Russians see it.

From left to right: Peter Munk, Peter Mandelson, then EU commissioner for trade; Oleg Deripaska, on an ill-fated trip to visit Deripaska’s assets in Siberia. Their trip was exposed by a London newspaper and subsequent UK court rulings; for details of Munk’s and Deripaska’s scheming, read this.

Russian and Canadian sources also believe Freeland had been plotting Dion’s ouster since the two of them both contended for a senior ministry post in November 2015. Dion won; Freeland lost. Freeland is a bad loser and goes into hysterical rages when crossed, her associates at the Financial Times remember. Hillary Clinton, too — according to US press reports of her behaviour on election night last November, when she reportedly wept, swore, screamed, and was incapable of making the traditional concession speech.

Look carefully again at the official Canadian government photograph of the swearing-in of Trudeau’s first cabinet on November 4, 2015: {worth having a look at where she positioned herself}

That’s Foreign Minister Dion to the right of Freeland, who sits between Dion and the prime minister. In the normal Canadian protocol, Freeland ranked 13th and should have stood in the second row behind Trudeau. Two other economic policymakers who were appointed above Freeland in rank – Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Minister of Economic Development Navdeep Singh Bains were obliged to stand behind her in the second row. Freeland also employed the Nancy Reagan ploy of being the only woman to wear red. For details of Freeland’s first see-red plot, read this.

Freeland’s political scheming has been spelled out by sources who know her and her husband, a New York-based journalist named Graham Bowley who reports mainly on the art market and the troubles of former comedian, Bill Cosby. Bowley also doubles as an expert on Russian cyber-warfare, and on how undemocratic Clinton’s defeat was in November.

Freeland wasn’t exceptional in expecting Clinton to win. Local polls show that 79% of Canadians thought the same. Sources in a position to know claim Freeland had been plotting Dion’s downfall in the expectation that she would appear to be the natural counterparty in Ottawa for Clinton in Washington. Without Clinton to boost Freeland’s further chances for a shot at the Canadian prime ministry, the sources believe Trudeau and his advisors are setting her up to fail with the Trump Administration.

Trudeau’s reading of the domestic polls is that foreign policy issues like the conflict with Russia and the wars in Syria and the Ukraine are of next to no importance to Canadian voters. Legalization of marijuana is more important, according to this poll in mid-December. The Canadian priority is the economy, the poll also reported. Two-thirds of Canadians now think Trudeau’s performance in office is more style than substance. That percentage is up eight points since the government’s one-year anniversary, just over a month ago.

Trudeau’s grip on popularity is misleading, reported the Toronto Sun two weeks ago. “According to a Nanos-IRPP Mood of Canada survey released this week, just 15% of people rate the performance of the federal Liberal government as ‘very good’, a plunge of 22% in just one year. Overall, 54% of Canadians believe Trudeau and his Liberal government are leading the country in the right direction, down 9% over the same time period. ‘This concept of Justin Trudeau being exceptionally popular is actually empirically untrue because his scores, for example, on the performance of the federal government are very similar to (former Conservative prime minister) Stephen Harper at the same point in Stephen Harper’s mandate,’ Nanos said Wednesday. ‘So I think this survey is a bit of a reality check.’”

Canadian political analysts believe Freeland’s ambition to capitalize as Trudeau weakens will not be advanced by either Trump or Putin. According to one of the sources, “in her frustration, Freeland will make the personality mistakes for which she’s known. Trudeau, having neutralized Freeland’s capacity to do him harm, will then get rid of her, like he has Dion – with the offer of an ambassadorship she will consider beneath her dignity – and her pocketbook.”

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http://johnhelmer.net/?p=17016

VICTIM OR AGGRESSOR – CHRYSTIA FREELAND’S FAMILY RECORD FOR NAZI WAR PROFITEERING, AND MURDER OF THE CRACOW JEWS

Chrystia Freeland (lead image), appointed last week to be the new Canadian Foreign Minister, claims that her maternal family were the Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution, who fled their home in 1939, after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed on a non-aggression pact and the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. She claims her mother was born in a camp for refugees before finding safe haven in Alberta, Canada. Freeland is lying.

The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland’s maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army’s winning phase of the war, Chomiak celebrated in print the Wehrmacht’s “success” at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.

Just before Vienna fell to the Soviet forces in March 1945, Chomiak evacuated with the German Army into Germany, ending up near Munich at Bad Worishofen. On September 2, 1946, when Freeland says her mother was born in a refugee camp, she was actually in a well-known spa resort for wealthy Bavarians. The US Army then controlled that part of Germany; they operated an Army hospital at Bad Worishofen and accommodated Chomiak at a spa hotel. US Army records have yet to reveal what the Americans learned about Chomiak’s war record, and how he was employed by US Army Intelligence, after he had switched from the Wehrmacht. It took Chomiak another two years before the government in Ottawa allowed the family to enter Canada.

The reason the Polish Government is now investigating Freeland is that Chomiak’s wartime record not only victimized Galician Jews, but also the Polish citizens of Cracow. In a salute to Freeland as a “great friend of Poland” by the Polish Embassy in Ottawa last week, Warsaw officials now believe a mistake was made.

Last July, Freeland, then trade minister, was in a large delegation of Canadians accompanying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland. Freeland is not included in the press photographs; Trudeau wept. A statement issued by one of the Canadian Jewish organizations in the delegation said: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau signifies the importance of remembering the six million Jews and countless others who died at hands of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust will forever stand as the ultimate expression of human hatred. That is why every Canadian should use this as an opportunity to reflect upon their personal role in combating the forces of antisemitism, racism and bigotry wherever they are found.” {not mentioned was how about fascism}

Trudeau (above) and his staff, as well as Foreign Minister at the time Stephane Dion, and the Jewish representatives appear not to have known this was familiar territory for Freeland and her family. Michael Chomiak and his wife Alexandra, parents to Freeland’s mother Halyna, spent the war from 1939 to 1945 working and living just 68 kilometres away in Cracow.

According to the autobiographical details Freeland has provided herself to the Canadian media, Freeland’s family were victims of war. “My maternal grandparents,” she wrote in May 2015, “fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939… they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.” In November 2015 Freeland told the Toronto Star: “Michael Chomiak was a lawyer and journalist before the Second World War, but they knew the Soviets would invade western Ukraine (and) fled … and, like a lot of Ukrainians, ended up after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany where my mother was born.”

According to Freeland, “they were also committed to the idea, like most in the (Ukrainian) diaspora, that Ukraine would one day be independent and that the community had a responsibility to the country they had been forced to flee … to keep that flame alive.”

The Edmonton, Alberta, newspaper obituary for Halyna Chomiak Freeland says she had been “born on September 2, 1946 in Bad Worishofen, Germany in a displaced person’s camp.” The Alberta provincial government library reports it holds Michael Chomiak’s papers. He is described as having “graduated from Lviv University with master’s degree in law and political science. In 1928, as a journalist, he started work in the Ukrainian daily Dilo, and from 1934 to 1939 he served on the editorial staff. During the Nazi occupation, he was the editor of Krakivski Visti, published first in Cracow and then in Vienna.”

There is much more to the story which Freeland has not revealed. The details can be found in Polish and Ukrainian sources; from the archived files of Krakivski Visti (“Cracow News”); and from the evidence of Jewish Holocaust museums around the world. Chomiak was editor in chief of the newspaper after a Jewish editor was removed. The newspaper itself was set up in January 1940, publishing three times weekly in Cracow, until October 8, 1944. It was then published in Vienna from October 16, 1944, until March 29, 1945. The precision of the dates is important. They coincide with the movement of the German Army into Cracow, and then out of the city and into Vienna. The newspaper itself was established by the German Army; and supervised by German intelligence. Chomiak was employed by an officer named Emil Gassner (above). His title in German indicates he was the German administrator in charge of press in the region. When Gassner moved from Cracow to Vienna, he took Chomiak with him.

Chomiak’s publication was an official one of the German administration in Galicia, known at the time as the General Gouvernement. The printing press, offices and other assets which provided Chomiak with his work, salary, and benefits had been confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish publisher, Moshe Kafner. Kafner was a native of the region; he and his family were well educated and well known until the Germans arrived, and replaced Kanfer with Chomiak. Kanfer was forced to flee Cracow for Lviv. From there he was taken by the Germans to the Belzec concentration, where he was murdered some time in 1942. From Chomiak’s office to Belzec the distance was 300 kilometres.

Krakivsti Visti was “the most important newspaper to appear in the Ukrainian language under the German occupation during World War II,” according to this history from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, published in 1998. Chomiak — reports the Harvard history by John-Paul Hinka from a contemporary source — “had the ability to sense what could be written and how in the severe German reality, and he gained some trust among the German officials, without which the work would have been impossible.”

In print, according to this archive of Krakivsti Visti, when Chomiak was in charge, there were reports of the “success” of the German Navy in killing 13,000 US Army soldiers, when their transports were torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic enroute to England. Chomiak editorialized: “this last German attack [was] a smashing blow to the solar plexus of the alliance.”

Chomiak also reported the US “colonization” of Australia and Canada . “Americans who are now living in Australia believe that the economic possibilities of Australia are even much better than those of the USA, and many US soldiers are thinking about staying in Australia after the war… as they feel much better there than in their own Fatherland… There are such close relations between the USA and Canada and Australia that there will be a special trade and tax [agreement] between these countries after the war. In other words, the United States does not hide the intention of the US to begin full economic penetration of Canada and Australia.”

By the standard of Trudeau at Auschwitz, Freeland’s grandfather also produced race hatred to Nazi order, including antisemitism and racism against several other nationalities, including Americans, Poles and Russians.

Chomiak not only justified the death camps surrounding Cracow. He attempted to foster Ukrainian sentiment against the Poles in the region. The German objective was to support the Ukrainian takeover of Galicia and cleanse it of its Jewish and Polish populations. For this reason Chomiak and his newspaper were given special favour by the German administration; Chomiak himself was reportedly held in high esteem by the Nazis. In the Harvard history it is reported “there can be no doubt that Krakivs’ki visti enjoyed more autonomy than any other legal Ukrainian-language publication under the German occupation.”

Himka, a Ukrainian-Canadian academic, composed his history of Krakivtsi Visti from Chomiak’s personal papers in Alberta. He mentions the newspaper’s backing for ethnic cleansing of Poles. He omits to mention Jews. Chomiak’s antisemitic record can be found in the files of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. For details, read this.

Chomiak didn’t flee from the Ukraine in 1939, as Freeland claims. Five years were to elapse before he left Cracow; that was when the German Army pulled out in defeat, as the Soviet Army advanced from the east to liberate the city. Gassner was moving the media operation to his home town, Vienna.

Chomiak closed down Krakivsti Visti in Vienna in March of 1945 for the same reason. The Soviet Army was days away, and a new Austrian government replaced the Third Reich in April of that year. With the retreating Wehrmacht Chomiak then moved westwards into Germany. But a full year is missing from the official records available publicly. That’s between March of 1945 and April of 1946, when the displaced persons camp was opened in the Bavarian town of Bad Worishofen, where Freeland says her mother was born.

As the name indicates, Bad Worishofen was (still is) a thermal waters resort for wealthy Bavarians and day-trippers from Munich. Freeland claims her mother was born as a victim in a refugee camp. In fact, she was born in a hospital administered by the US Army, while her parents were living in a spa hotel managed by a US Army intelligence unit.

During the war there had been a Luftwaffe training aerodrome at Bad Worishofen. But it was so insignificant operationally, it wasn’t bombed by the allies. More or less intact, along with the spa hotels, the town welcomed new paying guests from the US Army when they arrived in April of 1945.

According to US records, a US Army Intelligence “training unit” was established, as well as a US Army hospital. The trainees weren’t Americans; they were East Europeans, including Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and others who had been fighting on the German side.

On June 28, 1945, the 2nd Hospitalization Unit of the 30th Field Hospital left a forward position at Ebsenee, Austria, where it had been caring for the survivors of the Ebensee-Matthausen concentration camp.

The war in Europe now over, the hospitalization unit regrouped in the rear at Bad Wörishofen, where its role was to support the 80th Infantry Division. The unit history says: “As usual, living quarters proved excellent (buildings), with many conveniences added to make living conditions very comfortable.” Among the people the American Army doctors now cared for were Mr and Mrs Chomiak.

The camp for displaced persons or refugees at Bad Worishofen was not formally established for another year, until April 1946. Ukrainians who were there at the time say the camp housed mostly Lithuanians, and also 490 Ukrainians. The term camp is a misnomer. The records show that many of the Ukrainians were living in spa hotels when they were subject to the administration of the camp. Although the subsequent records of the Ukrainians are voluble on what happened there between 1946 and 1948, including testimony from Ukrainians who moved on to the US and Australia, there is no reference to the Chomiak family at all.

“All the camps in Bad Worishofen were liquidated in May 1948 due to consolidation of the various camps by IRO (International Relief Organization),” remembers this Ukrainian.

It is not (yet) known when Chomiak presented himself to US Army Intelligence, offering the same services he had been performing for Gassner and the Wehrmacht. Journalism, however, wasn’t what the US occupation authorities wanted from him. In return, Chomiak received accommodation; living expenses; and the hospitalization which produced Freeland’s mother in September of 1946.

Two years were to elapse before Chomiak left Bad Worishofen for Canada, arriving there in October 1948. He already had a sister in Canada, but no job of a professional kind to which his university education and experience qualified him. In Alberta Chomiak worked as a manual labourer. Why the Americans didn’t offer him intelligence and propaganda employment in the US may be revealed in the Chomiak files in Washington. The Canadian government file on his admission in 1948 is likely to include some of the details Chomiak revealed about his work with the Americans. Unless he kept that secret.

Last week the Polish Embassy in Ottawa issued this tweet in celebration of Freeland’s promotion:

This week Polish political analyst and journalist Stanislas Balcerac has opened the dossier on Freeland and Chomiak. The Polish Foreign Minister, Witold Waszczykowski, has been asked to investigate, and to decide if, according to Balcerac, “the circumstances and family loyalties of Mrs Freeland may affect the support that Canada provides the pro-Bandera Government of Ukraine, so they can have a direct impact on Polish interests.”

Regarding Bandera (right), the record of Chomiak’s involvement with him when they were under German, then US supervision, Freeland did not reveal in the Financial Times when she reported Bandera as one of the Ukraine’s all-time heroes. “Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus, was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on orders from Moscow in 1959….The Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That would be a mistake.”

Freeland was asked directly to clarify her own claims about Grandfather Chomiak’s war record. Her press spokesman, Chantal Gagnon, asked for more time, but then the two of them refused to answer.

“The sins of the grandfather can hardly be attributed to the granddaughter,” says Polish investigator Balcerac, “—except for two, race hatred and lying. Chomiak made a lucrative war selling hatred of Jews, Poles and Russians. Freeland is doing the same preaching race hatred of Russians. To mask what she’s doing, she has lied about the Nazi record of her family. The Chomiaks weren’t victims; they were aggressors.”

A Washington source adds: “Chomiak was recruited by US intelligence to wage war in the Ukraine against the Russians. Let’s see what the US Army and intelligence files reveal about his role, and let’s compare that to the one Freeland is now playing in Canada.”

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