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 Robert
Argue
Robert Argue is professor
emeritus and past chair (1992-97) of the Department of Sociology at the
university formerly known as Ryerson and currently known as ‘X.’ Since
joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at age 12, he has been active
on matters relating to peace, labour rights, housing and food
co-operatives and food security. Originally from Saskatchewan, he studied
Sociology at the Universities of Regina, Calgary, and York. He was
employed at Ryerson from 1972 until his retirement in 2008. He currently
lives in Sudbury.
"I signed this petition because I have long had an interest in European
fascism and its links to various nationalist groups, particularly
Ukrainian nationalism and the links between the branches of these groups
in Canada and the Canadian government. This interest was sparked by a
Ukrainian friend of mine who used to translate various nationalist
publications for me. He passed on his horror of their attempts to
whitewash Nazi collaborators and vicious antisemites.
"The post-war nationalist groups that
still cherish their wartime fascist heroes, have long been a festering
wound in Canadian society. If we cannot excise these groups it is long
past time, at the very least, that we deny them public funding. Their
support for Canada's bellicose foreign policy constitutes a danger to us
all."
 Sandra
Beardsall
Rev. Dr. Beardsall is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada
and a scholar of history and ecumenical studies. Originally from Ontario,
she ministered in Newfoundland and Labrador, and was professor of church
history and ecumenics at St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon, from 1997 until
her retirement in August 2021. Her teaching, research, and personal
commitments include the history of Christianity in Canada and ecumenical
and interfaith engagement at local, national, and international levels.
Sandra serves on the World Council of
Churches' Commission on Faith and Order. There she co-moderates a group
seeking common theological ground on contemporary issues, including the
intersection of peace and religious pluralism.
She contributed to a just-published
book featuring essays from Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and
community partners: Honouring the Declaration: Church Commitments to
Reconciliation and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
"History is littered with warnings about the dangers of uncritically
legitimizing one’s culture with religious and political approval,"
states Rev. Dr. Beardsall. "That the government would provide funding
to Canadian groups seeking to glorify their Nazi-collaborating forebears
is deeply troubling. Not only does it misrepresent the past, it helps to
fuel vicious and hate-based ideologies in the present. This petition
invites us to demand and shape a better future for Canada and the world."
 Alison
Bodine
Originally from the US, Alison lives in
Vancouver where she is an antiwar, climate justice and social justice
organizer. Besides being on the editorial board of the Fire This Time
newspaper, Alison is chair of the Mobilization Against War and Occupation
antiwar coalition in Vancouver.
Alison regularly publishes articles on climate justice, migrant and
refugee issues, and Venezuela. Most recently, her articles have been
published by Fire This Time, Venezuelanalysis, Global
Research, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Common Dreams, Monthly Review
and CounterPunch.
She is also the coordinator of the Fire This Time Venezuela Solidarity
Campaign and author of the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in
Venezuela (2018). She has been a speaker and participant at
international antiwar and anti-imperialist events in Cuba, Venezuela,
Ireland, England, and the U.S.
“By funding groups that glorify Nazi collaborators and fascist leaders,
the government of Canada once again exposes a pattern of behaviour that
matches its firm stand on the side of the US in the dangerous new Cold War
against China and Russia. More than 75 years since the end of WW2,
humanity is still suffering from the deep wound of the Holocaust. Ongoing
support for fascist-rooted groups makes it unbelievable that the
government of Canada is serious about fighting xenophobia, neoNazism and
organized racism at home or abroad. Canada must immediately stop its
inhuman foreign policy practices. This petition is an important
contribution to our antifascist, antiwar, and antiNATO organizing in
Canada.”
 Elizabeth
Briemberg
Growing up in England after WW2, Elizabeth
knew that Nazi Germany received extensive fascist support from across
eastern Europe. That and the H-bomb tests in the early fifties led to her
involvement in antiwar activism in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(England), the anti-Vietnam war movement (California), and Vancouver's
Committee to Aid American War Objectors. Elizabeth has also supported
Palestinian rights and helped women organize into unions and demand their
reproductive rights.
Working as a family mediator, Elizabeth knows that
working through conflict cooperatively is the most important, humane and
effective solution. Since retirement, she has volunteered with immigrant
and refugee agencies, and with a low-income, women's housing project.
"Having lived through the negative consequences of
the fifties' Cold War, I am exceedingly anxious that Canada’s present
foreign policy is promoting another Cold War against Russia and China.
Canada should leave NATO and work to disband it. Created as a defensive
force, it is now used as an aggressive force against Russia and has joined
America's Middle-East war making. There are no Russian troops on our
borders, why on earth does Canada put troops on Russia's border? Canada
should return troops from Latvia, Ukraine and elsewhere and direct energy
toward a multipolar world that resolves conflicts by dialogue and
diplomacy. Our government should stop funding far-right nationalist groups
within Canada that spread antiRussian propaganda. Their misinformation
favours the direction of Canada's dangerous foreign policies."
 Roberto
D. Carrasco
Born in Cuba in 1947, Roberto emigrated
to the US in 1962 and joined the civil rights and antiVietnam-war
movements in 1967. When drafted in 1969, he moved to Canada, became a
landed immigrant and took Quaker-run courses on US military law. Returning
to the US to be forced back into the army, he refused to swear alliance to
the flag, organized dissent and became their nightmare. Deserting in 1970,
he fled back to Canada to escape sedition charges.
In 1972, Roberto moved to Chile to experience its turn to socialism when
Salvador Allende was democratically elected as president of a Marxist
government. When a
neofascist coup ousted Allende on September 11,1973, Roberto was wounded
in combat by the military forces of General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled as
dictator for the next 17 years. Roberto sought asylum at the Canadian
ambassador's residence and was returned to Canada thus avoiding the fate
of thousands murdered and tens of thousands interned and tortured by
Pinochet's US-backed junta.
With a US pharmacy diploma (1969), a BA
in English and Spanish (1989) and an MA in Spanish literature (1994) from
UBC, Roberto now owns Rio Verde Gourmet Products.
"As a Sephardic Jew and a Canadian
citizen, I am appalled that my government is using public funds to support
movements in Canada and Ukraine that celebrate fascist WWII heroes.
Chrystia Freeland's leading role in Canada's support for a coup to oust
the elected socialist government of Venezuela is appalling."
 Ken
Collier
Ken Collier has been active since the
1950s opposing war, the nuclear industry and weaponry, apartheid and
poverty. Now retired, he taught social work at the University of Regina
for 23 years before moving to Athabasca University. He earned degrees in
political science (Saskatchewan), social work (UBC), and a PhD in
development economics (University of Wales Swansea). Ken has written for
several magazines and his books include Social Work with Rural Peoples
and After the Welfare State. He has served as president of the
Society for Socialist Studies, an independent, interdisciplinary academic
association.
"My pre-school days in Saskatchewan
included living next door to Czechoslovakian refugees from Nazi invaders.
By my mid-teens I was used to my parents having guests who were refugees
from American McCarthyism as well as others who fled Europe to safety in
Canada, they thought. But Nazis made their way here, too, post WWII. I
remember seeing men working construction wearing partial Nazi officer
uniforms, including high leather boots. Fearful immigrants faced arrogant
fascist men who believed they would soon rise again.
"Nothing
in theory, policy or organizing degrees blotted out knowledge that the
Canadian state funds fascist groups who continue to celebrate their
attacks on the rights and conscience of subjected peoples."
 Phyllis
Creighton
Phyllis
Creighton is a peace and justice activist, a historian, author and retired
researcher/translations editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
In 1983, she persuaded the Anglican Church of Canada to call for the
abolition of nuclear weapons. Through the Hiroshima Nagasaki Day
Coalition, she is pushing Canada to join the nuclear ban treaty. Active
on the board and executive of Science for Peace for 20 years, she helped
persuade it to call for Canada to get out of NATO. She also served on the board and executive of Project
Ploughshares (1989-99). Her awards include the Order of Ontario, the Anglican Award of Merit, and Voice
of Women's Muriel Duckworth Award.
As part of a citizen-exchange project
that created the sister-city agreement between Toronto and Volgograd
(formerly Stalingrad), Phyllis visited that city three times. In 1993, she
attended a three-day, 50th-anniversary celebration of the victory in
Stalingrad. The 1943 battle, in which
Soviet forces suffered some 1.1 million casualties
(and about 40,000 civilians died), was the war's turning
point and led to Nazi Germany's eventual defeat.
During her decade on the coordinating
committee of Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, she first learned from a
Ukrainian member about fascist-oriented Ukrainian groups. Phyllis now
notes:
"Given that Ukraine is a flash-point with potential for nuclear conflict
between Russia and NATO, it is utterly irresponsible for the Canadian
government to support Ukrainian organizations that still glorify fascist
WWII leaders."
 Stephen
Crozier
Stephen Crozier retired this fall from
a 30-year teaching career. For most of the last 15 years, he was at
Douglas College in BC where he held several positions with its faculty
association. He is the immediate past president of the New Westminster and
District Labour Council, the third largest labour council in Canada. He is
president of Democracy Direct Society, from which the present mayor and
four councillors were elected in the last municipal election in White
Rock, BC, where Stephen lives.
An ecosocialist, he is active in a
number of groups including Leadnow, Stand Earth, Climate Emergency Unit,
Citizens Climate Lobby, Dogwood, Surrey for Future, World Beyond War,
Socialist Action, Socialist Unit Assembly and the NDP. In 2019, he
was the NDP candidate in South Surrey – White Rock.
“I endorsed the petition because I’m
very concerned about the rise of fascism worldwide.
At their
roots, fascist groups are based in weakness and fear, which in turn give
rise to hatred and violence. Often this is hidden beneath a veneer of
legitimacy and their fascist roots are hidden and denied.
Financial support from the Canadian
government furthers this legitimacy and provides agency to these groups
which promote fear and hatred of NATO's enemies.
“I suppose every generation feels
they are at a crossroads … because they are, but ours is one like never
before in that the consequences of our actions are truly existential. We
need the strength of true caring not the weakness of fear and hatred in
both domestic and foreign policy and action."
 Verónica
Dahl
Verónica Dahl is an Argentine/Canadian
mother, computer scientist, musician, comedian and writer.
She co-founded the logic programming
field with 14 other scientists, and has received numerous prestigious
awards for her pioneering contributions to artificial intelligence. She is
also the recipient of three first prizes on creative non-fiction.
Throughout her career she has worked to
further the status of women and other marginalized people, to promote
world peace, and to help end the violence needed to maintain the forced
hierarchies she views as at the root of our interrelated crises.
She presently develops software to help
planners move us city by city into the social and planetary safe area of
Doughnut Economics, for a world no longer organized around domination, but
around cooperation and solidarity.
"I signed this petition because I
believe our government should withdraw its active support through funding
of indoctrinations towards accepting / glorifying war, war crimes and
hegemonic power. This subject relates to my ambition of evolving our
societies of violence-backed domination into societies of equitable
cooperation. This I believe is mandatory not just to recover our humanity,
but for our survival as a species."
Edwin E. Daniel
Born in 1925, Edwin's life was
interrupted by infantry service in France and Germany (1944-45). After
stepping on a mine, which blew off his left foot, he returned to biology
at Johns Hopkins University (BA, MA) and University of Utah (Ph.D), 1952.
His political activism, opposition to loyalty oaths, and support for the
anti-nuclear Stockholm Peace Appeal excluded him from US academia. Moving
to Canada he
worked at UBC and later started the University of Alberta's Pharmacology
Department in 1959. In 1974, he established a research group at McMaster.
After "retirement" in 1994, he continued work there until 2001, and then
worked at the University of Alberta until 2010.
"Now 96, I have had a full life. Since 1947, when meeting outstanding
intellectuals whose insights and communist analysis I admired, I have
remained a Marxist and socialist. In 1965, I began calling for justice for
Palestinians. After joining Science for Peace in the 1970s, I opposed the
blockade of Cuba and America's Middle-East wars.
"After 2001, my wife and I organized Edmonton Friends of Cuba. After 2007,
we began protesting Canada's meddling in Venezuela and Bolivia, joined
Victoria Friends of Cuba, and started the Victoria Coalition Against
Israeli Apartheid.
"I oppose hate groups and the might-is-right doctrine of Nazis and their
ilk. I fought them in 1944-45, and spent my life missing the limb they
took from me. My personal loss is only a reminder of their wars to create
a world where justice has no meaning."
 Radhika
Desai
Radhika Desai (professor, Political Studies, University of Manitoba) is
director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group and president of the
Society for Socialist Studies. She helps lead the International Manifesto
Group which unites socialists on six continents. (See: “From Pluripolarity
to Socialism: A Manifesto.")
Her books include Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization
and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in
Indian Politics (2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’
and the Labour Party (1994).
Desai's articles appear in Economic and Political Weekly, New Left Review
and Third World Quarterly and she serves on the editorial boards of
Canadian Political Science Review, E-Social Sciences, Pacific Affairs,
Global Faultlines, Research in Political Economy, World Review of
Political Economy, and International Critical Thought.
"Our foreign policy should not be influenced by groups whose heroes
collaborated with the Nazis and were welcomed here by Canada's government
after the war. People should read and digest Defunding the Myths and Cults of Cold
War Canada, which underpins this petition. We need to demand that Canada
adopt a new, genuinely progressive foreign policy."
 Judith
Deutsch
Judith
Deutsch is a psychoanalyst in Toronto and is on the faculty of the Toronto
Psychoanalytic Institute where she teaches a course on the superego -- on
conscience and morality.
She has
a master of social work degree from the University of California
Berkeley,
is a past president of Science for Peace (2008-2012), and a
member of Independent Jewish Voices.
Judith writes articles on social
justice, climate change, and the military for Counterpunch, The
Bullet (published by The Socialist Project),
Canadian
Dimension magazine and the Science
for Peace Bulletin.
"This petition exposes the divide between what is said and what
is done by the Canadian government. Although Canada's leaders have a long
history of supporting and colluding with organizations that arose from
pro-Nazi roots, they pretend to support peace, justice and human rights.
"At this most dangerous time in
human history, Canada's real policies are on the side of militarization,
racism, global immiseration, nuclear weapons, and the trajectory to
unstoppable climate change."
 Martin
Duckworth
Martin
Duckworth is a Canadian documentary director and cinematographer. After
receiving his BA in history (Yale), and MA in history (University of
Toronto), he spent five years as Director of Extension at Mount Allison
University.
After
being a staff cameraman at the National Film Board (1963-1970), Martin
worked another 45 years as an independent cinematographer. He has more
than 100 films under his belt, thirty of which he directed or co-directed.
His
credits as director include "12,000 Men" (1979) and "Return to Dresden"
(Golden Sheaf awards at Yorkton, 1979 and 1986), "A Wives' Tale" (Quebec
Critics’ Choice, 1981), "No More Hiroshima" (Genie for Best Short
Documentary, 1984), "Our Last Days in Moscow" (best direction FIFA, 1987),
"Oliver Jones in Africa" (Mannheim Ducate, 1990), and "Brush with Life"
(Hot Docs Best Film, 1994).
After 22
years teaching at Concordia University's School of Cinema, Martin won
Quebec's prestigious Albert-Tessier award (2015) for "contribution au
développement culturel de la société québecoise."
He is a
member of Les Artistes pour la Paix and Collectif Échec à la guerre.
"I am
concerned about Canada's military support to Ukraine. Its armed forces
tolerate soldiers with far-right views who wear fascist symbols, give Nazi
salutes and promote white power beliefs. Canada's training of Ukraine's
military should stop."
 Yves
Engler
Yves Engler is an activist, author and cofounder of the Canadian Foreign
Policy Institute. The latest of his twelve books is
Stand on Guard for
Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military.
Yves became active when organizing against corporate globalization in the
early 2000s.
Although elected vice president of the Concordia Student Union, Yves was
expelled from the university for protesting Israeli war crimes. When the
US invaded Iraq, Yves helped rally students at massive antiwar
demonstrations.
Yves co-authored Canada in Haiti: Waging War Against the Poor Majority,
helped establish the Canada Haiti Action Network, and spent five days in
jail for disrupting a speech by Prime Minister Paul Martin on
Canada's role in invading Haiti.
Yves has used peaceful, direct actions to interrupt two dozen speeches by
the prime minister, ministers and opposition MPs to question their
militarism, anti-Palestinian positions, climate policies, and efforts to
topple Venezuela’s government.
On federal funding of groups glorifying fascists, Yves has said:
"It is deeply troubling that groups which honour Nazi collaborators, also
have influence over Canadian policies on Eastern Europe. By pushing their
belligerent, proNATO, anti-Russia postures, these groups are helping to
edge Canada toward ever more dangerous and bellicose foreign policies."
 Bruce
K. Gagnon
Bruce is co-founder and
coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in
Space.
Raised in the military, he
was a Young Republican volunteer for Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign.
In 1971, he enlisted in the military but was politicized by antiwar
soldiers. He later trained as an organizer with the United Farm Workers
Union, and is active in Maine Veterans for Peace.
Living near General
Dynamic's shipyard in Maine, which builds the world's
deadliest warships,
his protests there include a 37-day hunger strike in 2018. He speaks internationally,
has written for many publications, and hosts a monthly podcast called
Space Alert.
Since coordinating the
Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, thirty years ago, Bruce has
worked against militarizing space, which corporations brag would be
history's "largest industrial project." He also opposes space
privatization by companies bent on capitalizing the heavens with
nuclear-mining colonies.
"With ancestors among
the early settlers of New France, I follow Canadian politics quite
closely.
"I'm outraged that
Canada's government funds groups which glorify Nazi collaborators.
"Since Ukraine's
US-orchestrated coup in 2014, I've watched NATO nations, including Canada,
train and equip Nazis from western Ukraine that attack fellow citizens in
the Donbass (eastern Ukraine). This indiscriminate killing has gone on
almost daily since 2014.
"I've been to Ukraine
twice since 2016 and seen for myself the impacts on the people there from
the Nazi-declared war on Russian-speaking populations in eastern Ukraine.
"How could any
self-respecting 'democratic' nation be so blatantly supportive of Nazis? I
hope all Canadians will demand an end to Ottawa's terrible policies."
 Irene
Gale
Born six years before WW2,
Irene remembers hearing the Prime Minister announcing that Australia was
at war. Her family were all actively working to overcome the Nazi forces,
and later for world peace and the end to nuclear weapons. Starting adult
life at 15 as a clothing machinist, Irene was an active trade unionist.
Later she qualified as a high school teacher.
Irene spent half her adult
life in NZ and half in Australia, involved in both countries in
organisations working for peace, human rights, Maori and Aboriginal
rights, women’s rights, education, and justice in all areas. Part of her
work in both countries related to fighting Apartheid and stopping
government, sporting and trade links with South Africa, working on the
executive of the Campaign Against Racial Exploitation, and later the
Australian Peace Committee.
In 1988 Irene was awarded
the Order of Australia (AM) for her work against racism, and in 1989 she
received the Equal Opportunity Award from the Government of South
Australia for her work promoting equality, justice and an end to racism,
in particular with regard to Aboriginal Australians.
“Having witnessed fascist and nationalist groups currently indoctrinating
young people, it appalls me to hear that the Canadian government is giving
support to organizations that still glorify their Nazi collaborating war
heroes. The rise of far-right movements threatens world-wide efforts to
create a decent life for all people. Governments should put their
efforts and money into teaching the true history of their own Cold War
support for East European émigré groups that sympathize with Nazi
collaborators.”
 Peter
Gose
Peter Gose is professor
emeritus of anthropology at Carleton University and past chair of the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton as well as the
Department of Anthropology at the University of Regina.
Peter was raised in the
anti-war movement in Vancouver and was active in it in Regina and Ottawa.
As a founding member of the Justice for Hassan Diab group, he served as
one of Hassan’s bail sureties and was a speaker in many public events over
many years that helped Canadians recognize his innocence. Over the last 25
years, he has participated in various ecosocialist initiatives in
Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia. He was first involved in land
defence struggles on Vancouver Island as a teenager and has recently
returned to them in retirement.
“Most Canadians would be shocked to learn that our federal government
(under both the Liberals and Conservatives) supports openly Nazi parties
and militias in the Ukraine. It tolerates their antisemitism and
glorification of Nazi atrocities during WWII in eastern Europe because
these groups also hate Russia, and therefore promote the new cold war the
US and its vassal states are waging against Russia and China. These
tensions are serious and threaten our basic security. Our government must
stop supporting the very fascists we defeated at such human cost in WWII,
withdraw from NATO as an alliance of international aggression, reclaim our
national sovereignty and reject American empire.”
 Cathy
Gulkin
Cathy Gulkin is one of Canada’s foremost film editors.
Since beginning her career in 1978, she has edited more than 50 films.
While focusing on documentaries about social justice issues she has also
edited drama, comedy and children's programs.
In 2019, she won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Editing in a Documentary
for “You Are Here: A Come From Away Story." In 2016 she won Best Editing
awards from the Directors Guild of Canada and the Canadian Cinema Editors
for “Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr.”
She has also been active in the antiwar, anti-racism, pro-choice,
environmental and Palestine solidarity movements for most of her adult
life.
"There is a frightening increase in fascism around the world and it
must be fought wherever and whenever it raises its Hydra head. It is
unconscionable that our own government is financially supporting groups
that actively glorify wartime fascist leaders who epitomize anti-Semitism.
In doing so these groups are trying to erase the history of Ukrainian
collaboration with the Nazis in exterminating Jews and others.
"It is beyond ironic that the Canadian government is funding these groups
whilst accusing the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement of anti-Semitism
and trying to suppress our fight against Israeli Apartheid"
 Larry
Hannant
Larry
Hannant is an adjunct associate professor in the Department of History at
the University of Victoria and a writer who specializes in dissent, state
repression and human rights in the twentieth century. His most recent book
is All My Politics Are Poetry (Yalla Press, 2019). Forthcoming from
Athabasca University Press is his co-edited Bucking Conservatism:
Alternative Stories of Alberta from the 1960s and 1970s.
"As an historian who closely follows 20th political movements and
struggles for human rights, I understand the importance of the historic
popular victory over fascism in 1945. It set the stage for a dramatic
improvement of rights for working people, ethnic and racial groups and
women.
"I
also recognize that the suppression of fascism was never accepted by the
rich. As it was in the inter-war years, fascism is still cherished by the
elite as a means to save their crisis-prone system.
"Celebration by Eastern European groups of 'heroes,' 'patriots,' and
anti-communists is a means to revive fascism. No government should be
dignifying this backward agenda by funding it, recognizing it or assisting
it in any way."
 David
Heap
A teacher-researcher (French Studies and Linguistics, also affiliate
faculty with Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies) at the University of
Western Ontario, David is a father of two and a community-based peace and
human rights advocate. He is active within a number of civil society
groups at the neighbourhood, municipal, national and international levels.
A trade-unionist who participates in the London and District Labour
Council, David helped organize Londoners for Door to Door mail delivery,
2014-2016, People for Peace, London, and Green Left-Gauche verte.
He co-founded the Canadian Boat to Gaza campaign in 2010 and sailed
against the blockade of Gaza in 2011. As a delegate and
steering committee member on the Canadian Boat to Gaza
he was imprisoned in Israel for six days before being
deported back to Canada.
David has supported successive missions of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
Coalition in different capacities since then, including most recently as
media coordinator.
"It is important to support this petition because we cannot make Canada a
force for peace in the world until we recognize and end our government's
sordid support for reactionary groups that work against peace and human
rights.
 Arnd
Jurgensen
Arnd Jurgensen has been active in the environmental and peace movements
for over 40 years, he is a musician who regularly performs in venues
around Toronto and elsewhere and has written and published numerous
articles on topics ranging from international relations to environmental
policy. His research has focused on the political economy of the global
south, particularly Latin America. He spent a year in Venezuela
researching his doctoral dissertation.
He has taught at UBC, Wilfrid Laurier and McMaster universities in
faculties ranging from applied sciences and engineering to
interdisciplinary studies. He is currently doing research and teaching
courses on international politics at the University of Toronto.
"I
am particularly concerned with the emergence of a second 'cold war'
between 'the West' and Russia and China and the prominent role of Canada’s
government in this process. The rehabilitation of far-right groups in
Eastern Europe is throwing fuel on this fire and Canada is complicit in
it. These rising global tensions are undermining any hope for the global
cooperation that will be required to address the twin threats of climate
change and the collapse of bio-diversity, not to mention increasing the
threat of nuclear war."
 Gregory
Kealey
Dr. Kealey is
a historian specializing in Canadian social, labour, intelligence and security
issues. He was editor Labour/Le Travail (1976-97) and co-editor
(2016-17); general editor, Canadian Social History Series
(University of Toronto Press) since 1980; co-editor, The Working
Canadians series (Athabasca University Press). He has edited 30+
books, written 21 book chapters, and published 30+ articles in refereed
journals.
His books include a collection of essays, Spying on Canadians
(2017), Secret Service (2012, with Reg Whitaker and Andy Parnaby),
Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism (1980), and
Dreaming of What Might be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1902
(1982, with Bryan Palmer).
Kealey taught history for 20 years at Dalhousie University and the
Memorial University of Newfoundland before joining the University of New
Brunswick in 2001.
He has served on many boards including as president of the Canadian
Historical Association and the Social Sciences Federation of Canada.
"As a historian of working people and of state repression of labour and
the left in Canada, the proposal to celebrate fascist and Nazi so-called
anti-communists is deeply offensive to all Canadians who struggled against
those specific ideologies. Such actions will only promote the menacing
rise of neo-Nazi, white supremacist forces in this country. Sadly Trudeau
is simply following the repressive anti-left policies of both his Tory and
Liberal predecessors for the past century."
 Michael
Keefer
Michael Keefer is a professor emeritus in
the University of Guelph's School of English and Theatre Studies, and a
former president of the Association of Canadian College and University
Teachers of English.
He has published widely on early modern
literature and issues of textual-critical theory, and has held visiting
research fellowships at universities in the UK and Germany.
His political writings include books on
neo-McCarthyism, essays on electoral fraud and other state crimes
against democracy in the US, Canada and elsewhere, and on Canada's
violations of international law in Afghanistan and Haiti, and on
Indigenous and Palestinian rights.
“Canada has a shameful record since World War II of providing state
support to fascistic immigrant organizations, most particularly those
allied with openly neo-Nazi parties that have had a key influence in the
governments that have ruled
Ukraine since the coup of 2014.
This policy orientation has been extended into active support for the
lawless overthrow, or attempted overthrow of democratically elected
governments (Haiti, Honduras, Bolivia, Venezuela), and for the
aggressions of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Most Canadians would
oppose these policies if they were kept informed. (That is of course an
outcome our mainstream
media resist tooth and nail.)”
 Michael
C. Klein
Michael deserted from the
US Army Medical Corps, and with his wife Bonnie, escaped to Canada in
1967 because he refused to be a US military physician during the Vietnam
War.
Dr. Klein is emeritus
professor of family practice at UBC, adjunct professor of family
medicine at McGill, and senior scientist emeritus at the Child and
Family Research Institute, Vancouver. Best known for exposing the
dangers of routine episiotomy, Michael's research is credited with
greatly reducing maternal birth trauma.
For seventeen years, he
led McGill's teaching centre, and the Family Medicine department at
Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, and the Family Practice department
at Vancouver's Children’s and Women’s Hospitals for a decade. Dr.
Klein received the Order of Canada and numerous Canadian, North American
and international medical awards. Canada's College of Family Physicians
named him one of the Top 20 Pioneers in Family Practice Research (2015).
Besides being an expert
in maternity and newborn care, Michael and Bonnie (a
filmmaker/writer/activist) raised two of their own: Seth, who leads the
David Suzuki Institute's Climate Emergency Unit, and Naomi, a professor
and best-selling ecosocialist author.
"I signed this
petition because of concern about Canadian communities that glorify the
Nazi past of their forebears, as well as the rise of right-wing groups
infiltrating the military here and elsewhere, and now the normalization
of the Peoples Party with their antiimmigrant and Canada First policies.
I believe right-wing ideologies are antithetical to the Canada that
embraced us in 1967. If unchecked, far-right ideology can destroy the
public space and the fundamental national notion of fairness and
equity."
 Pierre
LeBlanc
Pierre is a policy analyst, activist and journalist who has worked on
many human justice and equality issues both domestically and
internationally. Over 45 years, he has analysed, written and intervened
on the policies and actions of the Canadian government.
LeBlanc was an Official International Observer in Caracas for
Venezuela's presidential election (May 20, 2018), as well of the El
Salvador presidential election (2009). He was a founding member and
co-chair of Hands
Off Venezuela Ottawa-Gatineau and Ottawa-Gatineau Solidarity
with Democracy in Brazil.
Working as a UNESCO diplomat in Paris, Palestine and Israel, he
developed a Peace Dialogue Initiative with Palestinian and Israeli civil
societies.
He has also worked on conflict prevention initiatives in Macedonia and
Lebanon, is a leading authority on Canada’s official languages policies
and has worked extensively on the development of societal infrastructure
in his country.
He notes that "With Chrystia Freeland's ascension to Foreign Affairs
Minister in 2016, Canada’s already colonialist foreign policy took a
sharp turn for the worse. Her upbringing and early career with
right-wing Ukrainian-Canadian groups helps explain how she came to lead
the Lima Group and mislead Canadians. Through it, Canada has promoted
sedition and sabotage inside Venezuela and marshalled international
support for a throttling blockade and sanctions against the Venezuelan
people because they dared to elect a socialist party to power."
 Tamara
Lorincz
Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in global
governance at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her MA in international
politics and security studies is from the University of Bradford,
England (2015).
She received the Rotary International World
Peace Fellowship and was a senior researcher for the International Peace
Bureau in Switzerland. Tamara is a member of the Canadian Pugwash Group,
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom. She is on the international board of Global Network
Against Nuclear Power and Weapons in Space, and was a co-founding member
of the Vancouver Island Peace and Disarmament Network.
Tamara has an LLB/JD and MBA specializing in
environmental law from Dalhousie University. She is the former
executive director of the Nova Scotia Environmental Network and
co-founder of the East Coast Environmental Law Association. For several
years she was on the national board of Ecojustice Canada and the Nova
Scotia Minister’s Round Table on Environment and Sustainable Prosperity.
Her research
interests are the military’s impacts on the environment and climate
change, the intersection of security and peace, gender and international
relations, Canadian defence and foreign policy, feminist foreign policy,
disarmament, resistance to NATO, and military sexual violence.
"Canadians should oppose the purchase of new carbon-intensive combat
aircraft that will inevitably be used in NATO-led wars," says
Tamara.
"Canadians should
also oppose the federal government’s support for pro-NATO elements in
Canada and Eastern Europe that still glorify pro-Nazi heroes, movements
and armies that fought against Canada's WWII allies."
 Lisa
Makarchuk
Lisa Makarchuk has
been active in progressive movements since the 1950s beginning with
the campaigns to stop the Rosenberg's execution and to oppose nuclear
weapons. She moved to Cuba in 1961 and worked extensively in radio.
In 1968, Lisa helped organize an international event in Montreal
called the Hemispheric Conference to End the Viet Nam War.
Lisa also worked on
two conferences in Toronto: "Amnistia" which dealt with freeing
political prisoners in fascist Portugal and "Solidaridad" to demand
freedom for Franco's political prisoners.
By
the 1990s, when focused on Cuba, she co-ordinated activities of the
Canadian Cuban Friendship (Solidarity) Association, and helped
organize the Free the Cuban Five Cultural Committee, and the
International Festival of Poetry of Resistance in solidarity with the
Cuban Five.
She helps with The Envoy, a newsletter of the Canada Cuba
Literary Alliance and her poetry has been published in various
anthologies.
“The Canadian government's support of ultranationalist Ukrainian
organizations that
venerate
veterans of fascist armies as
'freedom fighters'
is repellent
to our values. These military formations allied themselves with the
very people our Canadian men and women fought in WWII.
With my Ukrainian
background and having lost many relatives in the fight against Nazism,
I view this action by the Canadian government with indignation
and strongly object to any support being given to sympathizers of this
ideology."
 John
McMurtry
John
McMurtry is
professor of philosophy and professor emeritus at the
University of Guelph. In 2006 that university's president described
John as an " internationally
recognized scholar ... who has made outstanding contributions in the
discipline of philosophy. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a
President’s Distinguished Professor, McMurtry is known for being engaged
both in the classroom and the community. He studies the philosophies of
politics, economics, education, literature, history and the environment,
and his work has been published in more than 150 books and journals.
Most recently, he has focused his research on the value structure
of economic theory and its consequences for global civil and environmental
life."
Dr. McMurtry's
principal work
is his three-volume study for the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) called Philosophy and World Problems which is
included in the Encyclopedia of Life
Support Systems.
His books
include:
Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an
Ethical System (1998),
Value Wars: The Global Market Versus
the Life Economy (2002) and
the
expanded second edition of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis
to Cure (2013).
"The
Canadian government," says John,
"should stop giving support to East
European émigré organizations whose ethnonationalist founders and heroes
include Nazi SS veterans, Holocaust perpetrators, CIA assets, and fascist
extremism and anti-communism over 85 years."
 Amy
Miller
Amy is an
award-winning director, producer and writer based in Montréal.
Through documentary
films, she expresses her dedication to transformative social change
and grassroots campaigns for justice.
In 2009 she founded Wide Open Exposure Productions. Its critical,
independent, documentaries raise awareness about urgent social,
economic and environmental issues around the globe.
Her feature films include Myths for Profit:
Canada’s Role in Industries of War and Peace (2009), The Carbon
Rush: The Truth Behind the Carbon Market Smokescreen (2012), No
Land. No Food. No Life. (2013), Tomorrow’s Power (2017),
Gaza: Health Under Siege (2018), and Lawyers (f)or Justice?
(2020). Screened in over 150 festivals internationally, these films
have been broadcast in over two dozen countries.
Before becoming a
filmmaker, Amy was a union organizer. At that time she took part in a
2002 squat by anti-poverty activists and anti-G8 protestors in an
abandoned downtown house in Ottawa. Their direct action against
government failures to deal with homelessness ended when police forced
them out with teargas.
In 2008-2009 she lived in Serbia, reported from
Belgrade for Free Speech Radio News and produced a short documentary
called Outside of EUrope about Ukrainian detention centres for
migrants and refugees.
"I am deeply
concerned about our government's financial support for
ethnonationalist Ukrainian associations in Canada that glorify their
fascist war heroes. Also disturbing is Canada's willingness to train
neoNazi soldiers in Ukraine where rabid antiRussian hatred is
increasing the likelihood of a NATO war."
Bianca is an activist, journalist and director of the Canadian Foreign
Policy Institute, which informs people about the country’s diplomatic,
aid, intelligence and military policies. With Yves Engler, she coauthored
the book Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social
and Ecological Decay (2011).
She co-founded and was a co-executive director of The Leap, an
organization that focused on the overlapping crises of climate change and
inequalities such as systemic racism and gender discrimination.
Prior to that, Bianca was the chairperson of the Canadian Federation of
Students (Quebec). She also worked as coordinator of the Centre for Gender
Advocacy, an independent, student-funded organization at Concordia
University. In that capacity, Bianca led programming and campaigns to
promote gender equality and empowerment, especially within marginalized
communities.
"Canada’s is stoking the Cold War,"
says Mugyenyi.
“This petition lifts
the veil on the myth of Canada's benevolence on the world stage. We need
to expose our government's support for right wing nationalism in Eastern
Europe and to oppose Canada's part in current NATO deployments in Ukraine
and Latvia."
 Kim
Petersen
Kim Petersen has spent much of his life in different countries. His
longest stint abroad was in China for 7 years where he was a high school
science teacher.
He has also lived in Japan (3 years), Korea (2 years), Jordan (2 years),
Thailand (2 years), Hungary (1 year) and in the Philippines, Palau, Maldives and Egypt. Living in
such varying cultures has solidified his view that we are all one humanity.
Kim's life experiences have influenced his writing. His articles
have appeared online and in many publications including
The Greanville Post, Znet, Counterpunch, Global
Research, Red Pepper, Briarpatch, Canadian Dimension,
Arab News and
in Dissident Voice, which he co-edited for a
decade.
His
essays in books include "Bleaching the
Atrocities of Genocide," in The Plight of the Palestinians,
edited by W.A.Cook (2010) and
“Western Imperialism and China” in Alternative Atlas (2006), which
critiques imperialism around the world.
He continues to write on peace, social justice, Indigenous rights, and the
emergence of China (a country notable for having eliminated extreme
poverty).
"Being anti-war and in solidarity with a shared humanity, it is
anathema to in any way support Nazi ideology, which is racist and violent.
In funding groups that glorify Nazi collaborators, Canada further destroys
its fictive image as a peaceable
kingdom."
 John
Philpot
John Philpot is an experienced international defence attorney before
international criminal courts (ICC, ICTR) and in Canadian Courts. He has
been active in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Canada.
John frequently speaks at international conferences and webinars, and is
co-editor of Justice Belied, The Unbalanced Scales of International
Criminal Justice (Baraka Books, 2014).
His areas of interest include the extraterritoriality of national
legislation and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions and blockades).
John is an advisor on international legal issues to governments and
non-governmental organisations, and was a judge at the Kuala Lumpur War
Crimes Tribunal.
He is a member of the Free Alex Saab Committee, the Cross-Canada Campaign
to Free Meng Wanzhou, Sanctions Kill, the African Bar Association, Just
Peace Advocates, la Coalition BDS Québec, and is president of the Rwandan
Political Prisoners Support Network.
"I grew up in the Cold War and remember how we were influenced by
Soviet interventions in Hungary and later in Czechoslovakia. At that time,
many did not understand because of the brainwashing of our generation.
Only later did many learn the truth about the Soviet victory over Nazism
and how it inspired decolonization movements worldwide which we have so
much admired.
"Knowing of Chrystia Freeland's pride in her Ukrainian grandfather and
their ultranationalist community which venerates Nazi-collaborators, puts
into perspective Canada’s strident role in the Ukraine, in the Lima
Group's efforts to overthrow Venezuela's elected socialist government and
in supporting sanctions against North Korea and Russia."
 Robin
Philpot
Robin Philpot
is a writer, translator, journalist and publisher.
His books
include Oka: dernier alibi du Canada anglais (1991), Ça ne s’est
pas passé comme ça à Kigali (2003), Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies
hard (2004), Le référendum volé (2005), Les secrets d'Option
Canada (2006, with Normand Lester), A People's History of Quebec
(2009, with Jacques Lacoursière), Derrière l’État Desmarais, POWER
(2013), and Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, From Tragedy to
Useful Imperial Fiction (2013).
He taught in
Burkina Faso and travelled throughout West and Equatorial Africa, before
moving to Quebec in 1974.
In 2009, he
co-founded Baraka Books and is its president and publisher. This
Montreal-based, English-language press publishes political non-fiction,
history, historical fiction and fiction.
In 2015, Robin
was named patriot of the year by the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste. He holds
a BA in literature and history from the University of Toronto.
"For much
too long, Canada has used the veil of multiculturalism to cover up its
support for right-wing émigré organizations with deep roots in pro-Nazi
movements. As Russian-American investigative journalist Yasha Levine says,
it’s called weaponizing immigrants. And unfortunately it is also used with
other émigré communities.
"Canada's
strategy is not limited to supporting those who currently glorify Nazi
collaborators, they also have friendly relations with neoNazi forces in
Ukraine. Moreover, the go-to spokespeople for Canada's corporate media
have often been informed by such emigre organizations, and they are
invariably proNATO war-mongers. I am very glad to sign this petition."
 Darrell
Rankin
Darrell Rankin
grew up in a union family opposed to the war in Vietnam and the US
corporate takeover of Canada. He skipped school with 5,000 other Edmonton
students in 1971 to protest the US Amchitka Island atomic bomb test.
It was his first rally at age 14. Since then, he has helped organize
numerous disarmament and anti-war campaigns and protests, writing on these
issues with a Marxist view.
He was part of
the Canadian Peace Congress’ 100,000-name petition campaign against
deploying Cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in Europe, an effort that
anticipated creating the Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA) in 1985. He is a
former CPA chair (1998-99) and treasurer (1999-2004), and was president of
the
Canadian Peace Congress (approx. 2005-2009).
He worked for
unions including the Canadian Labour Congress before working for the
Communist Party (1992-2013, except 1994). After thirteen years in Ottawa
and Toronto, he now lives in Winnipeg.
"My family
came from Ukraine when it was part of the Russian Empire. I have many
anti-imperialist and socialist relatives. They fought fascism and helped
build Canada’s union and anti-war movements.
"In
contrast, rather than face justice for their crimes, counter-revolutionary
and fascist-minded Ukrainian émigrés falsely claimed to be innocent
refugees after the 1917 revolution and their 1945 defeat."
"Canada
admits too many losers of this sort from places like Ukraine, Vietnam,
Germany, Hungary and the Baltics."
 Karen
Rodman
Karen
Rodman is the founder and executive director of Just Peace Advocates, a
Canadian-based international human rights organization focused on
Palestinian and Kashmiri struggles for self determination. She is also the
founder/CEO of Palestine Just Trade. Ordained a United Church minister in
2015, she has served as a volunteer, human-rights observer in Palestine
through the World Council of Churches.
Karen is
now retired from senior management leadership with the Ontario Public
Service after a more than three-decade career. She holds a B.Sc. in
Agriculture, and Master's degrees in Divinity and Rural Extension
Education.
"My hope is for self-determination for
Palestine and Kashmir to be realized, for civil society to hold their own
governments accountable for their obligations under international law, and
that we may wake up to embrace decolonization and anti-imperialism.
"This
petition reveals not only another example of Canada's shameful history,
but its ongoing support for far-right groups, movements and foreign
policies that are promoting a dangerous, new Cold War."
Richard Sanders
Since graduating in 1984 with an MA in anthropology (Western) and BA
(Trent), Richard has worked to debunk national myths portraying this country
is a "peaceable kingdom" promoting human rights, democracy and "Canadian values."
To expose Canadian complicity in war, he helped organize nonviolent
civil disobedience actions in the 1980s, produced hundreds of community
radio shows, and founded the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT).
COAT's work in 1989 sparked Ottawa's 20-year resolution banning all arms bazaars from
city property. For two decades, he coordinated COAT rallies,
marches, conferences and campaigns against weapons exhibitions, the
glorification of warplanes at family "air shows," Canadian complicity in
US/NATO-led wars, and pension fund investments in weapons manufacturing.
His research led to two NDP-sponsored Opposition Day debates in parliament
(on Canada's role in the global arms trade and the Canada Pension Plan's
war profiteering).
When he began COAT's Press for Conversion! in 1990, it dealt with converting war industries. Since 1999, this publication has
focused on antiwar themes ignored by the corporate media and often overlooked by mainstream progressives. His latest issue (#70) provides the
background research for his creation of this petition.
"My parents were both antifascist military veterans of WWII. During the
Cold War they organized civil-rights solidarity campaigns, protested
apartheid, atom bomb
testing, and Canada's role in
exporting weapons and
abetting US wars from Vietnam to
Iraq. They would have appreciated this petition to expose and defund Canadian
charities that glorify fascist, Nazi-collaborating war heroes."
 Lavina
Shaw
Although
almost 93, legally blind, and slowed down considerably, I still try to
keep up with social justice issues.
Although not Jewish, I am an
associate member of Independent Jewish Voices, would dearly love to see
justice for Palestinians, and represented my church on
Israeli-Palestinian and other global
issues. I was a member of Stop War, Amnesty,
and the chair of a Ploughshares chapter. I was also active in the Ontario
Provincial Service Employees Union and want unions to gain their
strengths.
I worked on
Social Justice Film Festivals for my United Church. We showed films, had
speakers and held panel discussions. I also organized a Thanksgiving
Service at a packed theatre. After drumming from representatives of the
Iroquois nation, there were talks, prayers and songs from Jews, Hindus,
Moslems, Catholics and Protestants.
I was
the first woman and first Canadian to be International President of the
Morse Telegraph Club, having started my career as a morse telegrapher for
Canadian National Telegraph and Canadian Pacific Telegraph at age 17 in
1945.
Chrystia Freeland's support for Ukrainian groups that celebrate
Nazi-collaborators, is cause to remove her from influencing Canadian
policies that might further raise dangerous tensions between NATO and
Russia. She is also very much against Maduro's socialist government in
Venezuela and was instrumental in organizing the Lima Group which embraced
the non-elected, fake "president" Juan Guaidó.
 Sid
Shniad
Sid Shniad worked as the research director at the Vancouver-based Telecommunications Workers Union from 1980 to 2009.
He been has been active in the labour, antiwar and social solidarity movements over the past 40 years, including the BC Organization to Fight Racism, the Vancouver-based antiwar coalition StopWar.ca, and the Canada-Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet). He is a founding member of the Palestine solidarity organization Independent Jewish Voices Canada and is currently on the executive of the West Coast Coalition Against Racism.
On the subject of this petition, Sid notes that "Reactionary forces in this
country are trying to re-write history by expunging the role played by
Nazi collaborating anti-communists in Eastern Europe. We cannot allow this
to happen."
"My life's
desire is to see justice for Palestine as well as the rebirth
of a militant, powerful, solidaristic labour movement focused on
confronting the horrors of neoliberalism."
 Jan
Slakov
Jan Slakov is
a long time peace and environmental activist, part-time teacher, nature
lover and gardener. She edited the Conscience Canada newsletter for over a
decade and currently serves on its board. She is also involved in
restorative justice work.
Jan’s father is Jewish, so she grew up knowing about the Holocaust. She
wondered how some people could go along with such horrors, and eventually
came to see that we all go along with things we know to be wrong, to
greater or lesser degrees. Honesty, transparency and courage are needed to
resist complicity with evil.
“Through my work and training, I see, over and over, how important it
is for groups and individuals to accept responsibility for harms they have
caused, if we are to repair harm and prevent further harm. I’m very
grateful for the work behind this petition which documents Canadian
government support for émigré groups with fascist roots. The price of
democracy is not just eternal vigilance; it also requires honest
responsibility for our failures and work to develop the tools of
nonviolence, so we won’t fall prey to the resourcelessness that prompts us
to engage in the very things we claim to oppose.”
 Youri
Smouter
Youri hosts a program called 1+1. His youtube channel "Yuri
Muckraker" is a space for "inconvenient truth telling and myth busting" by
activists and researchers ignored by the corporate media. Among his 50 guests
have been many Canadians including Yves Engler, Dimitri Lascaris, El
Jones, Barry Weisleder, Tamara Lorincz, Darah Teitel,
Arnold August, Jay Watts,
Lia Tarachansky
and Richard Sanders. Youri has also interviewed
Alfred De Zayas, Margaret Kimberley, Whitney Webb, Mnar Adley, Cindy
Sheehan, Rick
Sterling, Solomon Commisong and Rania Khalek.
Based in Belgium, with a Dutch father and mother from Congo/Zaire, Youri
lived in California before moving to Europe in the early 2000s.
"Eastern Europe is gripped by endless austerity, far-right forces
consolidating power, rival oligarchs and NATO. Even those on the Left have
been spoon fed false narratives about seemingly benign East European
civil-society groups who in fact advance reactionary politics. Many
leftists even have a blind spot for NATO's war racket.
"The research behind this petition reveals that Canada welcomed runaway
Nazi war criminals/collaborators and funds expat groups which continue to
lionize ghoulish WWII figures. This ongoing history is left untaught in
schools and the media.
"To end ongoing Cold War deceptions, decolonize our minds, advance
peace and prevent the carnage of future NATO wars, I encourage people to
sign and share this petition and to read the background material on which
it is based."
 Scott
Taylor
Scott Taylor is a former commando/infantryman who has
published Esprit de Corps military magazine since he founded it in
1988. He has been a war correspondent in such hot spots as Kuwait,
Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Cambodia, Western Sahara, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Libya.
In 2004, while reporting on the US occupation, he was
abducted by Ansar al-Islam in Talafar, Iraq. Taylor and his Turkish
colleague were tortured before being released five days later. That ordeal
was recreated in National Geographic's popular series "Locked Up Abroad."
Taylor is the award-winning author of eight books
(translated into six languages). In 1996, he won the prestigious Quill
Award and in 2008 was named Press TV’s "Unembedded Journalist of the
Year." He has hosted four award-winning documentaries. In 2011 Taylor won
a Telly Award for CPAC's documentary, "Afghanistan: Outside the Wire."
Since 2001, Taylor has been a syndicated columnist for the Halifax
Chronicle Herald.
For relentlessly uncovering top-level corruption in the
Canadian military, Taylor was dubbed the "Voice of the Grunts" (Globe
and Mail), a "Bone in the Brass' throats" (Toronto Star), the
"Scourge of the Generals" (Reader's Digest), and a "One-Man Army" (Toronto
Sun).
"It is disturbing that certain individuals are keen
to glorify Nazis and revise history through Holocaust denial,"
says Scott.
"What is truly a moral crime is that federal funding
is being issued to these communities who are keen to honour their fascist
forefathers."
 Bob
Thomson
Bob is an Ottawa-based researcher and consultant for
Canadian and international NGOs and government. He has extensive
experience in nonprofit governance, housing co-operatives, civil-society
electronic communications, and evaluating NGO programs and projects. He
has lived and worked in Peru, the Caribbean, France and Canada.
His 1973 role as whistleblower was a catalyst for
radical changes in Canadian foreign policy after Chile's military coup. As
a junior foreign-aid bureaucrat with the Canadian International
Development Agency, Bob leaked confidential reports from Canada's
ambassador calling killed and tortured activists “the riff-raff of the
Latin American left.” For this, Bob lost his job, but in 2013 received the
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's Integrity Award.
Bob was Caribbean representative of Canadian University
Service Overseas (1976-79). After receiving his Civil Engineering degree,
Bob earned an MA in International Affairs on "The Potential and Limits of
Agricultural Self-Reliance in Grenada" (Carleton, 1983).
As founder and
director of Fairtrade Canada (1994-2000) he promoted a fair-trade label
for Third World products.
In 2014, he
helped organize the Ottawa Peoples Social Forum. Currently "retired," he
writes a blog on what a post-growth world might look like.
"I signed this petition because as the federal
government supports some East European Canadian groups which minimalize
their forebears' links to the Holocaust, it also confuses anti-zionism
with anti-semitism, and conflates all of Islam with terrorism. This breeds
intolerance and hatred that obstructs community and government efforts to
work together to save our planet."
 Stanko
Vuleta
With a five-year degree in
electrical engineering, Stanko has worked in the telecom and
intellectual-property fields since leaving Yugoslavia about 30 years ago.
As long-time president of
Ottawa's Serbian Heritage Society, Stanko has opposed NATO's role in the
ethnonationalist dissolution of Yugoslavia, and Canada's illegal 1999
bombardment of his birth country.
"Three of my
grandparents were murdered by the Ustasha's Nazi collaborators in
Croatia's WWII regime.
My mother's parents
died in Croatia at Jasenovac, one of Europe's largest extermination camps.
Ustashi also killed my paternal grandfather, throwing him into a mass
grave in Cipuljic, the Bosnian village where I grew up. At thirteen, my
father joined the resistance.
My grandparents' only
crime was being Serb.
Croatia's fascist
dictatorship invented the term "ethnic cleansing" and massacred hundreds
of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma.
In 1991, reincarnated
Ustasha nationalists declared Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia.
Studying in Croatia, I saw graffiti forbidding "dogs and Serbs,” and heard
people singing Ustashi songs. Tens of thousands of Serbs were killed and
hundreds of thousands expelled. I fled Cipuljic where Serb homes were
torched.
To glorify wartime
Ustasha leaders, a Croatian-Canadian group donated to Ottawa's
anticommunism monument. Other East European groups use this monument to
honour their own fascist heroes. Canada provides 80% of its costs. In
2021, Finance Minister Freeland authorized an extra $4 million. As a teen,
her writing career began with a government-funded Ukrainian encyclopedia
in Edmonton that her Nazi-propagandist grandfather also worked on. Founded
by his WWII boss, it praises fascist Ukrainian nationalists.
Canada must stop
supporting Nazi-glorifying groups and their monuments."
 Abraham
Weizfeld
Politically active since 1966,
Dr. Abraham Weizfeld founded the new Socialist Bund Movement, and
co-founded the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians. His books include:
The End of Zionism: and the liberation of the Jewish People (1989),
Sabra & Shatila (1984), The Federation of Palestinian and Hebrew
Nations (2018) and Nation, Society and the State: The
reconciliation of Palestinian and Jewish Nationhood (2012). The
latter, his doctoral thesis in political science from the Université du
Québec à Montréal, faced major opposition but won in Québec’s Superior
Court.
In 1983, Abie founded the
Parliament Hill Peace Camp to oppose Canada's testing of US
cruise missiles. While living there for eight months he did
political research in the Arab League's Palestine Information Office.
After speaking at a 1976
conference on Palestine in Libya, Weizfeld participated in several other
international conferences including another gathering in Tripoli (1986) to
protest the US bombing and attempted assassination of Moummar Khadafi.
Now living part time in Nablus,
Weizfeld volunteers with the Tanweer Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment
Forum.
"My parents escaped the Holocaust by way of Russia during the Nazi
occupation of Eastern Europe. I learned the value of political discourse
from my Jewish Bundist mother who escaped the Warsaw ghetto and from an
uncle who resisted as a partisan in the Russian forests.
"While the Left today is
growing, it still struggles to defeat fascism which mobilizes
state-sponsored ethnonationalist fronts, economic forces, and the media to
counter revolutionary ideas and movements."
 Elizabeth
(Bessa) Whitmore
Bessa is a professor emerita at Carleton University's School of Social
Work and has been active in many groups from Ottawa's Raging Grannies to
the Women's Health Project which supports women raped during war.
She earned her Masters in Social Work from Boston University and worked in
the inner city during the 1960s and early 1970s. She taught at Dalhousie
University for 18 years before joining Carleton's faculty in 1991.
Received her doctorate from Cornell University in the early 1980s, she
developed her focus on participatory action research and evaluation.
Her interest in social justice, globalisation and social work stems from
many years of teaching, community work and research in Guyana, Nicaragua,
Chile, Ethiopia and Botswana.
Her publications include Understanding and Practicing Participatory
Evaluation (1989) and co-authored books: Seeds of fire: Social
Development in an Era of Globalism (2000) and Globalisation, Social
Work and Social Justice (2005). She also co-edited Activism that
Works (2011).
She has served as president, North American and Caribbean Association of
Schools of Social Work (2000-04), awards committee chair, International
Association of Schools of Social Work (2000-02), and on the program
committee, Joint International Conference of the International Association
of Schools of Social Work and the International Federation of Social
Workers (1998-2000).
"The
danger of these groups with profascist roots influencing foreign and
military policies of 'democratic' governments like ours is all too real.
It’s imperative that we speak out and mobilize to stop it. Silence is not
an option."
|
Bianca
