November/December 2000 Vol. 32, no. 11-12

SAVOIR FAIRE
Citizenship and War Criminals

Nicolas Savard,
Research and Information Services

In July 2000, as part of its SAVOIR FAIRE series, the National Library of Canada invited Pierrette Landry, a Ph.D. candidate at the Université du Québec à Montréal, to come and make a presentation entitled "Citizenship and War Criminals".

Ms. Landry became interested in this issue during her doctoral studies, which focus on the history of the screening policies for immigrant workers recruited after the end of World War II. Addressing the subject of war criminals is still delicate, especially when speaking of Nazi war criminals. Public opinion often holds that Canada was not strict enough in applying its policies aimed at restricting the entry of these "undesirables" into the country. Perhaps the Canadian authorities did lack thoroughness, but as Ms. Landry showed, the government policies and departmental guidelines were in place and the federal officers did apply them.

In her presentation, Ms. Landry discussed the three procedures that were used and are still used today to handle war criminals that attempt to find refuge in Canada. First, she discussed the use of the Immigration Act and various federal departments’ decrees aimed at prohibiting these people from entering the country. With the help of these administrative instruments, Canada selects the immigrants it is prepared to accept and establishes criteria to define the category of "banned citizens" to whom the borders are closed.

Second, the speaker addressed the issue of the Security Panel, an interdepartmental panel created in 1946 that is responsible for reviewing immigration policies and directives from federal departments or agencies. This panel issues and reviews the instructions for civil servants responsible for screening immigrants.

The third theme addressed by Ms. Landry was the current treatment of the war criminals that have found refuge on Canadian soil. Canadian authorities no longer attempt to judge these people for the crimes they committed in a foreign land, instead they raise the fact that Canadian citizenship was obtained fraudulently. The fraud was committed by omitting certain information at the time of application or by providing false information to the officers working for the Department of Immigration. Since citizenship was therefore obtained illegally, it can be revoked and the accused can be sent back to their country of origin, where they will answer to the crimes that they are charged with having committed. This is, according to Ms. Landry, a hypocritical procedure on the part of the Canadian authorities. On what grounds can we suddenly revoke the citizenship of someone who fully satisfied Canadian requirements 30, 40 or 50 years ago? Is it not appropriate, she wondered, to ask whether fraud really occurred? Might the present Canadian authorities be motivated by guilt rather than by a desire for justice?

Lastly, Ms. Landry spoke of the impact of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals (Deschênes Commission). The immediate effect of the tabling in 1986 of the Commission’s report, which is part of the National Library of Canada collection, was to bring about an amendment to the Criminal Code, an amendment to the Immigration Act, as well as the creation of special units in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and in the Department of Justice, units responsible for investigating war criminals potentially on Canadian soil.

Ms. Landry therefore maintains that it is incorrect to claim that Canada was a sieve that allowed many war criminals to come and settle here. Actually, the laws and regulations were quite strict and the high number of decrees and directives issued on a daily basis prove that Canada took, and still takes, the war criminal immigration issue very seriously. What probably failed, according to Ms. Landry, were the procedures adopted by the officers responsible for screening the new immigrants.

Supported by, among other things, thorough research in the immense collection of the National Library of Canada, Ms. Landry’s presentation shed light on a sometimes dark and often intriguing aspect of 20th-century Canadian history.

The next seminar in the SAVOIR FAIRE series will be held on December 12. The speaker will be S. Timothy Maloney, Director of the Music Division at the National Library of Canada, who will talk about his research on Glenn Gould.