Bring Your Nazi to Work Day
So, 2023 has shaped up to be quite a year up here in so called Canada. We lost many famous and influential people such as Shane McGowan of the Pogues, Sinead O’Connor, Andre Braugher, Norman Lear, Richard Roundtree, Jimmy Buffet, Brooks Robinson, Tim Wakefield, Frank Howard, Mathew Perry, Rudolph Isley, Suzanne Somers, Jean Knight, Paul Reubens, Tony Bennett, Tina Turner, Ted Kaczynski, Al Jaffee, Harry Belafonte, Jerry Springer, Michael Lerner, Rober Blake, Richard Belzer, Burt Bacharach and David Crosby, just to name a few.
The wild fires were as out of control as ever, a Nova Scotia sex worker successfully sued a client for non-payment of services, the Bank of Canada sent interest rates through the roof, Elon Musk continued to be a moron, Hamas led an attack on Israel of unprecedented violence and finally, just when you thought that things couldn’t get any crazier, just a few days before Truth and Reconciliation Day, which here in Canada is a day that recognizes the genocide committed against the Indigenous people of this land, by white colonial settlers, a real life, honest to goodness Nazi, got a round of applause in the Canadian parliament. I am not making this up folks.
Our fearless leader, Justin Trudeau has so far in his time in office, got called out for appearing in Black Face on Halloween, went surfing when he had been invited to attend an indigenous ceremony regarding the discovery of unmarked graves on Indian Residential school grounds and more recently, has accused India of murdering a Sikh activist on Canadian soil. Then, just when you think that things can’t get anymore like an episode of Brooklyn 99, they decide to have “bring your Nazi to work” day in parliament.
Now, even if you know nothing about Canada, other than Hockey, beer and the metric system, everyone knows our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He is the guy that Ivanka and Melania Trump swooned over when he visited the White House. He’s young and good looking and……dumb as a post! He comes from privilege, is a womanizer just like his old man and doesn’t like to be told no. He’s the guy that invoked the Emergency Act (formerly the War Measures Act) when a group of malcontents, racists and Qanon conspiracy theorists, descended on the capital, Ottawa to accuse the government of taking away their freedoms due to Covid and generally being totalitarian. So, Justin responded by……that’s right……taking away their freedoms and generally being totalitarian.
Canada used to have a very good reputation on the world stage. We were known the world over for being very polite. Our military was somewhat famous for it’s Peace Keeping and humanitarian missions and Celine Dionne. We were known for having an entire province that speaks nothing but French and for the two Michael’s. No, not Kovrig and Spavor, but rather, Fox and Buble. Not so much anymore. We are currently seen as quite weak and under the thumb of our American neighbours to the south and beholden to China.
But let’s get back to the Nazi thing. So, it all started when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was invited to give a speech in the Canadian Parliament. Following President Zelenskiy’s speech, the speaker of the house, Anthony Rota, introduced 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who he had invited, describing him as a war hero. Which he was, just…you know…for the Nazis. But wait, it gets better. Everyone in the Canadian Parliament stood up and gave the former SS storm trooper a standing ovation. Yes, a standing ovation!
It turns out that no one, not a single person in the Prime Minister’s office did any kind of a background check on the guy. It would be sort of like inviting Jeffrey Epstein to host Miss Teen USA or booking Kyle Rittenhouse as the guest speaker at the NAACP Awards. If they had, they would have discovered that Hunka, fought for Ukraine during the second world war and served in the First Ukrainian Division, which as it happens was also known as the Waffen-SS Galicia division. It was a volunteer unit that was under the direct command of the Nazis. Which means that this guy didn’t just fight for the Nazis, he was a Nazi. Imagine what that must have signalled to the Jewish diaspora in Canada. Think about how people of Ukrainian heritage must have felt when they heard the news. Finally, imagine how pleased President Zelenskiy must have been, considering that A; he’s Jewish and B; Russia keeps accusing him of having a bunch of Nazis in his government. Chock one up for Putin.
A good example of how weak we have become, is the Meng Wanzhou incident back in 2018. The CFO of Chinese tech giant Huawei was detained in Vancouver while enroute to Mexico because the US had accused Meng and Huawei of stealing secrets and using Skycom, a Hong Kong communications firm, to sell tech equipment to Iran in defiance of sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Canada was not accusing her of anything. Canada was just hanging out minding our own business when America called and said, “hey, do me a solid and arrest this woman that we think is stealing technology”.
Canada: “Do you have any proof?”
America: “Dude….it’s me”
Canada: “Ummm………..yeah okay”
And that’s pretty much how it went down. This was strictly a beef between the US and China, nothing whatsoever to do with Canada and yet, we arrested her, which was probably illegal and held her under house arrest for four years. Did China retaliate against the US? Nope, they arrested 2 Canadians and accused them of spying and threw them in a very nasty Chinese prison with no legal representation and frankly no communication with anyone outside of China. Meanwhile, back in Vancouver, we allowed Meng Wanzhou to stay under house arrest in one of 2 mansions that she owns here in Vancouver and have her own security detail that she paid for. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on the other hand, were doing their best not to get traded around to provide sexual favours to the Triads.
Canada is also the land of monopolies. We pay about $7.23 for 1 GB of data, just a little bit less than the US, who comes in at $8.08 for 1 GB of data. The reason for this is mostly because, all the wireless and phone plans are owned by just 3 companies, Rogers, Telus and Bell. We are told that due to the size of the country compared to the population, it is much more expensive to provide these services. I say it’s because a very large pie is cut into only 3 very large pieces, and they charge pretty much whatever the hell they want. It’s also unbelievably expensive to live here, especially if you live in Vancouver or Toronto. The average detached home price in Vancouver is $1,168,700. Honestly, you could buy a small country for kind of money.
I guess what I’m trying to get at here is, Canada no longer has many redeeming qualities. If you’re indigenous, it probably never did. People aren’t sewing Canadian flags onto their backpacks when travelling anymore and having a Canadian passport carries about the same weight as a Tim Horton’s points card. Now if you’re a refugee or a foreign student Canada is probably not high on your list, but, if you’re a former Nazi war criminal looking to relocate, you no longer have to travel all the way to Argentina. Canada, land of the free and home of Hitler’s former inner circle.
