Western Standard - September 28, 2023


Nazi in Parliament scandal is a sign of a broken government

Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Yaroslav Hanka Hitler Vladimir Putin Anthony Roda Zelensky Seinfeld Dingbat Nazi
MPC Daily Market Update Sep 27, 2023 Damage caused by school closures for COVID

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

199.41

Word count

1,008

Sentence count

70

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A Nazi was invited to the House of Commons, and the whole house applauds. This was a public relations coup for the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, but did they know who the guest was before the vetting process was complete?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 world really was watching. And we had Ukrainian President Zelensky. He was a guest to the House
00:00:06.440 of Commons. The liberals were celebrating another injection of 600 million Canadian tax dollars
00:00:11.820 going into the Ukrainian war effort. It was a big feel-good moment. Then the entire house rose and
00:00:17.840 they gave an ovation and an applause to a Nazi. Yeah, I didn't have a slip of the tongue. I'm not 0.71
00:00:25.480 talking about a figurative Nazi or a comical Nazi like the soup chef in a Seinfeld episode. Not some 0.59
00:00:30.880 goose-stepping neo-Nazi idiot with a shaven head and a swastika tattoo. No, this wasn't even a conscript 1.00
00:00:36.720 from the German army in World War II or a simple member of the Nazi party from those times. No,
00:00:42.220 the fellow they were applauding actually served in one of Hitler's SS Waffen units in World War II.
00:00:47.640 This was a true, dyed-in-the-wool, literal Nazi. I mean, that term is thrown around so much that
00:00:54.340 we really have to couch it this time with, no, this is the real thing. Now, due to the passage
00:00:58.440 of time, thankfully, it's actually quite difficult to find real Nazis these days. But credit where
00:01:03.780 due, the government managed to dig one up and bring him into the House of Commons. House Speaker,
00:01:08.900 I should say former House Speaker, Anthony Roda, has fallen on his sword for the issue now and
00:01:13.320 claims the invitation of the Nazi was solely his own action. Now, while Roda certainly appears 0.86
00:01:18.060 culpable, it beggars belief that this Nazi slipped through the vetting into the House of Commons 0.97
00:01:23.020 with no examination. It's no coincidence that a Ukrainian veteran happened to be introduced to
00:01:28.280 the House by the Speaker on the same day the President of Ukraine happened to be there.
00:01:32.860 It was a staged, jingoistic event that was supposed to show a common front of support for Ukrainians
00:01:38.020 against Russian aggression. The problem was with which war Yaroslav Hanka fought against the Russians
00:01:44.800 in. Now, I'm going to speculate on what probably happened. I could be wrong. This is what I figure
00:01:49.120 happened. I imagine an order went out to Liberal members just to ask him, try and seek out a Ukrainian 1.00
00:01:53.380 veteran, you know, who stood up to the Russians to celebrate in the House while we have Zalysky here.
00:01:59.980 Some staffer went scurrying about and managed to find Yaroslav Hanka. There's probably a young
00:02:04.120 staffer. If you go to Ottawa, you see them all the time. You know, they're usually rushing around in
00:02:07.200 ill-fitting suits. And it didn't occur to him that if a person's 98 years old, Ukrainian, and fought
00:02:13.980 against the Russians. It's almost a sure thing he served in one of Hitler's Waffen-SS units. And he 0.85
00:02:20.300 volunteered to join that unit. He wasn't conscripted. I've seen some Liberal supporters doggedly trying to
00:02:25.680 point out how Hanka wasn't among the worst of the Nazis. That's absurd. And it's not doing their cause any
00:02:30.820 favors. I don't care if nowadays Hanka is the sweetest father and grandfather on the planet, you know, and did a
00:02:37.180 good job later in life. I don't care if he was the friendliest Nazi in his unit, that he never forgot 0.63
00:02:42.540 anybody's birthday or won the Mr. Nazi congeniality award every time there was an SS convention.
00:02:48.520 He was a Nazi and never should have been invited to the House of Commons, much less applauded. 0.91
00:02:54.060 Some actions and life choices lead to a permanent stigma being applied. Joining one of Hitler's SAS units
00:03:00.320 during World War II is one of those life choices. The leader of a nation in the middle of a war was a
00:03:05.960 guest in the House of Commons, and he unwittingly found himself joining the rest of the room
00:03:09.400 and applauding a Nazi. The damage done went beyond just humiliating Canada and a guest on the world 0.79
00:03:15.000 stage. Vladimir Putin was surely laughing for hours as Canada managed to create a public relations coup
00:03:20.860 for him. While Justin Trudeau wasn't directly involved in this latest national embarrassment,
00:03:25.900 it still happened on his watch. The Prime Minister's office surely was behind the planning for this grand
00:03:31.740 event, and if their office didn't vet attendees, it must be asked why they didn't.
00:03:35.960 Could any MP just bring in whoever they please and have them recognized by the House without any
00:03:40.200 question or vetting? I doubt it. This is just one debacle piling onto a year of embarrassments from
00:03:45.940 the Trudeau government. Every policy they touch becomes a mess, and every event becomes a controversy.
00:03:51.440 We're seeing a government in its dying stages. They're tired out and in disarray. They're directionless
00:03:56.860 and basically leaderless. Rather than trying to address the issues, of course, Trudeau went into hiding,
00:04:02.000 or he's trying to distract from things. The Liberals tried and failed even to get unanimous
00:04:06.840 consent to have the whole incident stricken from the public record. Yeah, they actually wanted to get
00:04:11.900 that thrown out just so we pretend it never happened. Thankfully, a Conservative member said,
00:04:15.620 no, no, no, no, no. That's going to stay in there, as embarrassing as it is.
00:04:18.860 The Canadian government under Justin Trudeau is dysfunctional and unsustainable.
00:04:22.900 Trudeau's days as Prime Minister are clearly numbered. Even if Trudeau never gets it,
00:04:26.460 his caucus had better bloody well figure it out and fast. The scandals are piling up faster,
00:04:31.000 and the embarrassments are hitting new heights with every month that they allow him to keep
00:04:35.860 sitting as the Liberal leader. If Trudeau isn't removed by the next election, the Liberal Party
00:04:39.660 is going to be utterly decimated. While that sounds appealing, I don't like to imagine the damage that
00:04:43.940 Dingbat could cause if he had two more years in power. Wake up, guys. Think about that. I mean,
00:04:48.900 just just back off and think for a moment. We had a standing ovation and applause for a true literal
00:04:57.840 living Nazi in our House of Commons. You can't make this sort of thing up. This government's just a mess. 0.93