The speaker of Canada’s House of Commons resigned Tuesday after again apologizing for presenting a 98-year-old Ukrainian who served with a Nazi SS unit as a “hero” after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of Parliament.
The speaker, Anthony Rota, introduced Yaroslav Hunka, a voter from his constituency, as a “Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” on Friday, drawing a standing ovation from lawmakers and other guests as well as a fist bump from Mr. Zelensky. Who is Jewish?
But over the following days, several Jewish groups expressed outrage and outrage, saying that Mr. Honka was a member of a Nazi volunteer unit known as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which fought alongside Germany during World War II and pledged allegiance. For Adolf Hitler.
After days of calls for him to step down, Rutte announced his resignation on the day he was due to host an annual garden party at his official country residence.
“This House is above any of us,” he told his fellow lawmakers. “I repeat, I am deeply sorry.”
Mr. Rutte apologized for the first time at the weekend for inviting and introducing Mr. Honka, noting that he “subsequently became aware of more information.”
The calls for him to step down came first from Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the center-left New Democratic Party. These events accelerated on Tuesday in the run-up to a lunchtime meeting scheduled by Mr Rutte with leaders of all parties in the House of Commons.
Before Mr Rutte’s announcement, the Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Industry Minister and leader of the government in the House of Commons told reporters that he should step down.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said: “What happened was completely unacceptable and a truly devastating event.” “I hope and believe that the speaker will think about how serious and harmful this is and do the honorable thing.”
She repeatedly said the incident was particularly harmful to Jews in Canada and around the world, adding, “It is also a painful situation for the people of Ukraine.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Rutte said he had not told the governments of Canada or Ukraine about his plan to invite Mr. Honka.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered no support for Mr. Rutte and what he called his “deeply embarrassing” decision, but he also did not explicitly call for Mr. Rutte to leave his position as speaker.
“It is good that Speaker Rutte has personally apologized, and I am sure he is now thinking about how to ensure the dignity of the House moving forward,” Mr. Trudeau said.
While Mr. Rutte is a member of Parliament from Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party, he is not a political power broker like his counterpart in the US House of Representatives. Speakers in the Canadian House of Commons serve as non-partisan arbiters of the chamber, independent of the government. The President of the Council, not the government, controls all activities and behavior in the Chamber, as well as its employees.
That did not stop Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader whose party is ahead of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals in the polls, from also blaming Mr. Trudeau for the incident.
“Trudeau (and his Liberal president) have brought shame to Canada,” Mr. Poilievre wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “The Liberal Speaker will have to resign. But this does not excuse Justin Trudeau’s failure to vet his massive diplomatic and intelligence apparatus and prevent Nazi tributes.
In the House of Commons, the opposition Conservative Party said the incident was Russian propaganda. Collaboration between supporters of Ukrainian independence and Nazi forces during World War II was a key component of Moscow’s false narrative that the current government in Kiev had been infiltrated by neo-Nazis.
Before Mr. Rutte made his announcement, several opposition party members in Parliament called on Mr. Trudeau to apologize on behalf of Canada to Jews, Ukraine and the world in general.
The 14th Waffen SS was made up of volunteers from the Galicia region, which extended across parts of what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. After the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine in 1939, the creation of the unit in 1943 attracted Ukrainians eager to fight for their independence, said Dominic Arel, chair of Ukrainian studies at the University of Ottawa.
“Having been trained by SS officers, you can imagine the kind of political indoctrination they received,” he said. Even if their goals were independence, Mr. Arel said the unit “fought for the Nazis and were trained by them.” There’s no doubt about that.”
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