In Conversation with David Frum: Nazi Unit War Veteran Controversy

This is the forty-first episode of The Hub's bi-weekly series featuring Sean Speer in conversation with leading author, journalist, and thinker David Frum. The two discuss the political controversy in Canada over the attendance of a Ukrainian man who fought for a Nazi unit at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech to the Canadian Parliament and what the episode tells us about the priorities of Canada’s political class.
The Hub Dialogues feature The Hub's editor-at-large, Sean Speer, in conversation with leading entrepreneurs, policymakers, scholars, and thinkers on the issues and challenges that will shape Canada's future at home and abroad. The episodes are generously supported by The Ira Gluskin And Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
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[@TheGoodShepherd117]

I’m a history and political science graduate and it frustrates me how ignorant and uncaring our political leaders, and too much of the public is regarding the wider world. David was balanced and analytical as usual. Good video.

[@barryhaley7430]

David Frum. Excellent balance well articulated.

[@tuomaskaila1010]

War criminal talks about war criminals.

[@johnmacleod2487]

There is no way that Free land did not know exactly who he is

[@jeanmorin3247]

Our foreign policy is being handled by Minister Mélanie Joly, an obvious decision by Trudeau to not care about foreign policy and simply react to headlines with smiles and well-worn clichés. Thank you Sean Speer and David From for a top-star conversation.

[@roquefortfiles]

Trudeau is a lamb to the slaughter on International issues. He has no idea.

[@frankyong2607]

Yeah. Joly is really rather too young, lacking exposure to world affairs, and thus has little working knowledge experience on foreign issues. Too light weight to handle the portfolio - now piling up on with China, India, Ukraine and Israel-Gaza issues.

[@roquefortfiles]

The sooner that dope Trudeau resigns the better off we will all be. He's the worst PM we've ever had. A complete dope. @@frankyong2607

[@leevuong8843]

This veteran was not just a nazi - weren't all Germans more or less nazis during WW2?. He was an SS who voluntarily joined the 14th SS Volunteer Division of the Waffen-SS, otherwise known as the 14th (1st Galician) Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS. According to a 1946 ruling in the Nuremberg Trials, any military from an SS brigade is to be considered a war criminal, without even the necessity to prove he participated to a criminal act. This ruling was overseen in 1986 by Canadian judge Jules Deschênes during the Commission of the same name mandated by Brian Mulroney in 1985. The presence of Ukrainian SS in Canada is therefore not anything new. They have been protected by the Ukrainian Canada Congress to which Ukrainian Chrystia Freeland has close ties. They are ultra nationalist and anti-soviets. The problem is that they totally erased the atrocities committed against Poles, Jews and Slovaks by Stepan Bandera's APU, and then by the Galicia Brigade. And looking at Chrystia Freeland's huge smile during the applauses, she obviously knew the whole story.

[@frankyong2607]

Yes, she knows. She even whitewashed the record of her grandfather Michael Comiak - a Nazi sympathiser and propagandist during his days in eastern Poland (later western Ukraine) - the Galician region under Nazi German occupation.

[@hadensonbuildingdesignandc4227]

David Frum's statement that " I do not believe there are any Nazi sympathizers in the Canadian Parliament " is an assumption that comes with serious risk of ignoring the capacity for historical revisionism manifest in this incident. Although the majority of parliamentarians are rational some have portrayed publicly and others accepted obsequiously that Ukrainian Nazis were victims and not perpetrators during the war. A stark reality of the affair was the inherent ignorance of revisionism displayed by all parliamentarians who unwittingly applauded an enemy combatant whose introduction to them included his contribution to fighting the Russians in W W ll when at that time they were our ally.

[@geraldking4080]

This is the Korporate Fourth Reich. We come from the right families. We go to the right schools. We live in the right part of town. We own the right companies. We vacation in the right countries. Crisis is our brand.

[@mikeeygauthier2959]

Rota was set-UP for the fall!

[@ToddSauve]

An embarrassing moment for Parliament, no doubt about it! WW2 in Ukraine was a very complicated affair. Much of the opposition to communism was in western Ukraine, as far as I know. A member of my church that I knew here in Calgary had a mother who was born in Ukraine just before the war. She was of German descent and her farming family had been planted in western Ukraine during the reign of Katherine the Great in the 1700s. Millions of Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin in the 1930s in what has come to be known as the Holodomor, so a great many Ukrainians hated the communists. When the Germans were retreating from Ukraine in 1944 they scooped up her and her family because they told her the Soviets would murder them if they stayed. So off to Germany they were taken. The Nazis had murdered untold millions in their war against Stalin throughout Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia, and the pay back was going to be extreme. So her family finally ended up in Paraguay in South America as Mennonite settlers. Eventually she came to Canada, married a man and had a family, living in the Niagara peninsula of southern Ontario. Neither she nor her family were Nazis to the best of my knowledge but western Ukraine was and remains a hot bed of anti-communism because of the Holodomor.

[@roquefortfiles]

David Frum always looks like someone stole his lunch money

[@bensanderson7144]

He’s been sour ever since trump was elected in ‘16

[@Asiablue]

The Speaker was at fault. The Speaker admitted it. The Speaker failed to properly vet his guest. The Speaker took responsibility for his error. The Speaker resigned. Blame Trudeau. If you burn your toast, blame Trudeau. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@barryhaley7430]

Didn’t someone say “the buck stops here”.

[@erikred8217]

Apartheid, say it and know it and that is how you end anti you know what.

[@opensky6580]

If you exclude the extraterretorrial killings by the US, russia might have the worst record. Even if you only considered the innocent victims of US drone strikes, US would be far worse.

[@erikred8217]

They aren't making hero's these days. Asov

[@erikred8217]

Ha. Zerlensky would have had a nuclear war if we had let him in the first month. Dave is weak.

[@patrickwalsh8997]

David As the author of the "Axis of Evil" unnecessary and pointless thrope I would be much more understanding of others Honest mistakes and amateurism Than your own wilful demonization