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They weren’t an army division. They were actually a criminal organization.

Of course, there’s much more to the SS division’s sordid past than that. The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division murdered many, many Jews and Polish civilians. For this, they were applauded by Heinrich Himmler, who was the leader of the Nazi Party and the architect of the Holocaust.

In a speech, Himmler said of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division: “Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost — on our initiative, I must say — those residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name, namely the Jews … I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles … I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”

Which they were. Which they did. For their homeland, which was Ukraine.

One such atrocity took place at the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka. According to those who were there, civilians were locked in barns, which were then set on fire. Those who tried to escape were killed.

On another occasion in the spring of 1944, 2,000 women and children had sought refuge in a monastery in the Polish village of Pidkamin, which is now part of Ukraine. The SS Grenadiers captured it and murdered hundreds.

Canada’s Deschenes Commission later concluded that it was unfair to call everyone in the 14th Division a war criminal. But the fact is that the commission never travelled to Europe to interview its victims.

The Nuremberg prosecutors who did found that the Grenadiers were led by men who had participated in the mass murder of Jews and civilians. And were indeed homicidal maniacs.

As Esprit de Corps magazine concluded: “Over the decades, as Holocaust historians publish more details about the atrocities of those who served in the SS Galicia Division, it has become clear to critics that the Deschenes commission was simply a whitewash of a military unit that subscribed to and served the ideology of Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler.”

And one of them — one of the Nazis — was praised in the House of Commons this week. Our Church of Government defiled by the presence of a man who subscribed to the ideology of murder, Naziism.

The fact that he was there was bad enough. But this writer had a different question: What the hell was he doing in Canada in the first place?

The answer: He came here with 2,000 other Nazis. And the Canadian government welcomed them with open arms, too.

Flight Lt. Bohdan Panchuk was their sponsor. Writes historian and Postmedia journalist David Pugliese: “Panchuk was able to get members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia into Canada by lying about their past.

Members of the unit had surrendered to Allied forces and were being held in a camp in Italy. In an attempt to hide the SS connection, the unit had changed its name in the last few days of the war to the First Division Ukrainian National Army. ”

To get them into Canada, Panchuk depicted them as anti-Soviet fighters. If Canadian officials had bothered to probe deeper, they would’ve found the truth. In fact, most of the men had SS tattoos under their left arms.

Ukrainians who lived in Canada knew who they were. They raised the alarm. But nobody listened to them. The 2,000 Nazis thereafter started to arrive throughout the 1950s and got to work whitewashing their past.

Which brings us to now. And the main question.

The main question is not how this Nazi came to be in the House of Commons. By now, we all know he was invited there by the moron who is the Speaker of the House of Commons, who the Liberals and Conservatives refused to fire.

No, the more important question is this: How did this Nazi get to Canada in the first place — and why is he still here?

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You’re on the Internet.

You express opinions. You write a letter. You show up at a meeting.

If you’re Irish and Catholic, let’s say, you express sympathy for those who want to unite Ireland, and leave the United Kingdom.

Or, let’s say you’re Italian, and you’ve passionately expressed support on Facebook for any one of the many separatist movements that have been active in Italy for a long time.

Or, you’re of German ancestry, and you’ve written letters to the editor about making Bavaria or Saxony a separate country.

Or you’ve publicly expressed support for the Basques in France. Or the ones in Spain. Or any of the currently – current, not historic – active separatist movements in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia or Switzerland. (And that’s just Europe.)

That’s not an exhaustive list, of course. In just about every country in the world, there is a constituency who wants to break away and form their own homeland. Here in Canada, we’ve had people like that in Quebec and Western Canada for a long, long time. Some of them even have seats in our Parliament. They won them, fair and square.

We may not like it when nationalists express a desire to separate. It makes people pretty upset. (In this writer’s case, our family literally left our longtime home of Quebec to get away from separatist xenophobia and prejudice. We moved to Alberta, which welcomed us.)

That’s generally how we do it here in Canada: peacefully. Most of us don’t like the Bloc Québecois or the Parti Québecois or things like the Western Canada Concept. At all.

We oppose them with our words, as my former boss Jean Chretien successfully did for 40 years. Or we oppose them, too, with our actions – rallying against their referendum, or defeating them at the ballot box.

What we don’t do is kill them.

As someone did to Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He was a 45-year-old plumber, and he was active in his Sikh temple in Surrey BC. He was married and had two kids, and he drove a gray Ram 1500 pick up.

At around 8:30 p.m. on June 18 of this year, Nijjar was in his truck at the Sikh temple where he and his family worshipped. Two men wearing masks stepped up to his truck, and fired shots through the window, killing him. They then ran to a car, where a third man was waiting for them, and drove away.

Three months later, no one knows who killed Nijjar. No one has been caught.

His family and friends figure they know. As the indefatigable Stewart Bell has reported, local gang members had told Nijjar that Indian intelligence agencies had put a bounty on his head. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, too, reportedly told Nijjar that he was under threat from professional assassins.

He was scared, his family was scared. He’s been scared for a long time, in fact. Because Nijjar wanted a separate state for Sikh in India.

That’s why he came to Canada for the first time in 1997, as a refugee. He said he feared for his life, and that he had been detained and tortured at the police station in the city of Phillaur. Canadian officials didn’t believe him.

He got married to a Canadian. Canadian officials didn’t believe him about that, either. But he eventually got to stay here.

He never gave up on a separate Sikh state.  One time, Nijjar even went to Geneva to ask the UN Human Rights Council to accept that anti-Sikh violence was genocide. He wrote a letter asking for support to the United Nations in New York, too.

And then, just a few months after Nijjar did those things, India issued a warrant for his arrest. They said he was “mastermind/active member” of something called “Tiger Force.” Which was it? The “mastermind,” or just a “member?”

Didn’t matter. India kept after him. They issued another notice via Interpol. They put out a reward for him, because they wanted him captured. They wanted an end to his advocacy.

Three months ago, in a parking lot at a place of worship, they allegedly did. Canada’s government says they have information implicating India in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India’s government, predictably, has denied it.

There’s been a lot of commentary about whether Justin Trudeau can be trusted. There’s been commentary about Nijjar being a bad guy. There’s been commentary about how inadvisable it is to pick a fight with a big country like India. And so on.

I don’t give a sweet damn. I don’t care if Hardeep Singh Nijjar agitated for Sikhs, or if he was dislikable, or what this will do to trade with India.

Ours is a country of laws. No one – no person, no country – is allowed to come here and murder one of our citizens, on Canadian soil, in cold blood. No one.

If we allow that to go unpunished, we cease to be a country of laws.

Oh, and this: any of you out there, writing letters to the editor about some separatist ambitions in your ancestral home lands?

You can become a target, too.

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Hero to zero.

That’s the transformation that takes place in politics, if you overstay your welcome. And it happens pretty fast, too.

That’s why they say a week is a long time in politics. Because it is.

One day you’re on the cover of Rolling Stone, being touted as the literal personification of wokefulness — and the next day you’re miserable and cooling your heels in India, because your plane broke down and no one wants to shake your hand anymore. Boom. From hero to zero, just like that.

Politics is weird in that way, and unforgiving. Brian Mulroney won two big majorities, and ended his tenure with the support of 12% of Canadians. Paul Martin was supposed to be a juggernaut, a Toronto Star columnist decreed, and then went from juggernaut to after-thought.

Stephen Harper was supposed to be Mr. Economics, started fretting about niqabs and “barbaric practices,” and thereby got clobbered by no less than hopey-wokey Justin Trudeau. (That barbaric practices nonsense, by the by, was cooked up by Pierre Poilievre’s brain trust. Hero to zero can happen to anyone, and does.)

And so on and so on. One minute everyone wants a selfie with you, applauding when you hijack a plane. And, the next minute, they’re looking at the tops of their shoes when you enter the room.

Trudeau has experienced metamorphosis in reverse. He started off as a beautiful and delicate butterfly, flitting from one social justice flower to the next. And now he’s turned into a caterpillar, chewing away at leaves and detritus in the dark. He is in profound danger of being stepped on by voters.

Fifteen points! Young people! Liberal strongholds! Those are the things he’s lost, in his devolution into something less than he was. Without them, he’s hooped.

How did it happen? Lots of reasons. Serial scandals, over-promise and underdeliver, circumstances and events. But, mainly, it’s because he’s become the party guest who won’t leave.

The hosts are sweeping the floors and putting away the silverware, but Justin still sits over in a corner, loudly recalling past glories and the time Melania Trump gave him a look you could pour on a stack of waffles. He won’t leave.

He doesn’t listen to many, ever, but he was indeed advised by a few smart folks to start inching towards the exits. One majority and two minorities is plenty, he’s been told, something about which to be proud. That’s a decade. As good as it gets.

But he demurred. He declined. He deferred. And, now, it feels like it is too late to install a fresh new Liberal face, and rescue the brand of the Liberal Party of Canada. Smart Liberals know that another victory is impossible. They just want to save the furniture, now.

Trudeau, the caterpillar who thinks he’s still a butterfly, doesn’t get it — or he doesn’t care.

This writer’s working theory is that — like many men — his father’s shadow looms large over Justin’s path through life. He wants to equal, or surpass, his father’s record. (It happens. Ask George W. Bush about it.)

Whatever the reason, he is just about out of time. If he doesn’t leave — and for the love of God, Justin, please leave — he’s done like dinner. He’s got to Christmas to rescue the party. Maybe.

Hero to zero. It’s a political cliché, sure.

But it’s also Justin Trudeau.

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The Weekend from Hell™️.

All of us have had one, at one time or another. A fender-bender on the way to an important appointment. A flooded basement. A positive Covid test. Getting dumped by text.

Justin Trudeau’s Weekend from Hell™️ was different. His wasn’t private. It was right out in the open, observed by millions.

Such are the foibles of leaders of countries, and such are the foibles of Justin Trudeau these days. Try as he might, the Liberal leader can’t seem to catch a break.

As his Weekend from Hell™️ unfolded, it was almost (almost) possible to feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

Trudeau went to India for the G20. Based on the photographic evidence, nobody really wanted to talk to him or shake his hand. He looked miserable. And his plane was grounded there for nearly two days.

Meanwhile, back home, his main adversary, Pierre Poilievre, was having the best weekend of his political life. Ahead 14 points in the polls. Old rivals lining up behind his leadership. Party united. A multi-lingual, photogenic spouse charming everyone. And a picture-perfect convention in Quebec City.

And, to top it all off, Trudeau’s rust-bucket plane was wheezing back to Canada, and his timely arrival to a caucus retreat in London, Ont. was in doubt. Late for his own meeting. Ouch.

That’s not all. Over in the Liberal Party house organ, the Toronto Star, columnist Althea Raj was reporting that mutiny is brewing. While none of the quoted Liberal MPs were willing to go on the record, quite a few were prepared to dump on Trudeau anonymously.

Said one: “We don’t feel that we have a partner in the Prime Minister’s Office that is doing what it needs to be doing to help us at this time.”

Another: “This is a prime minister who never likes to even allow you to finish your sentence in national caucus…[If] you’re going to say something he’s not going to like, he always cuts you off.”

Said two different MPs: “People are really disillusioned.” Another: “Really, really, disillusioned.”

Finally, at least one said it was time for Trudeau to leave: “Do the right thing for himself and for the Liberal Party.” And go.

Like we said: it was Justin Trudeau’s Weekend from Hell™️.

Can he reverse it? Can he become competitive again?

As we all know, a week is a lifetime in politics. Conservatives have a well-documented history of shooting themselves in the foot. Trudeau is an excellent campaigner. And, as my colleague Brian Lilley likes to say, voters are fickle. They change their minds.

But right now, one thing is certain: a stench of death can be detected around Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.

And we suspect many more Weekends from Hell™️ are on the calendar.

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Mark Bourrie is acting up again. So, here's some facts about him that were filed in Court as evidence in Bernier v. Kinsella (which Bourrie lost). Bourrie tried to get them removed. The judge declined. #cdnpoli @ShillersLLP pic.twitter.com/t2fmeq2Mbl

— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) June 6, 2023

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Watch Dominic LeBlanc.

Watch what he does.

As everyone knows by now, reputable pollsters are saying that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are as much as 14 points behind Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. 14 points!

Depending on how the votes break, and where, that’s not just a Conservative majority. That’s a Conservative landslide victory.

And, as much as the winged monkeys who make up TruAnon try to do so, Abacus and Angus Reid can’t be dismissed as fly-by-night bucket shops. They do good survey work – including, over the years, for Liberal governments.

So, it’s real. The Tory leader’s lead hasn’t been an erratic leap upwards – it’s been slow and steady. In just about every demographic, in just about every region, Poilievre is ahead. Sometimes far ahead.

So what’s the big deal about Dominic LeBlanc, you ask? Pull up a chair.

And, first things first: I know LeBlanc well. His office was right next to mine when Jean Chretien was opposition leader. Dominic was an Atlantic desk advisor, and I wrote speeches and helped prepare Chretien for Question Period.

We were close, back then – close enough that Dominic’s father, the legendary Romeo LeBlanc, became godfather to my daughter. We’re not close anymore, however. (Dominic didn’t even bother to send along a note of sympathy when my mother died in July.)

That’s politics, I suppose. But one relationship cannot be denied: Justin Trudeau and Dominic Leblanc are very very close.

It’s hard to know if Justin Trudeau actually has a best friend. But if he does, it’s LeBlanc. Whenever Trudeau gets into trouble – a frequent occurrence – LeBlanc is one of the trusted ones who regularly gets sent in to do cleanup. As he did, this week, announcing a public inquiry into Chinese election meddling.

It’s a question that was asked   often this week, as the magnitude of Trudeau’s electoral problems becomes more clear: who has the guts – or the clout – to tell Justin Trudeau it’s time to take a walk in the snow?

Because, make no mistake, if the Liberal brand is to survive, it needs a change in leadership. It needs a Trudeau – Liberal leader for more than a decade – to retire to speech-making and memoir-writing.

At this stage in his mandate, unfortunately, Trudeau surrounded by the C team. None of his aides have the seniority or wherewithal to tell him that he needs to quit.

So that task must now fall to Dominic LeBlanc.  He’s the only one who can do it, at this stage.

Will he? He certainly has personal motivation to do so. The Reid and Abacus surveys found that Trudeau’s Liberals are in big trouble in Atlantic Canada generally, and New Brunswick specifically. And LeBlanc watches the numbers in New Brunswick like a hawk.

He knows that if the so-called “red wall” crumbles in Atlantic Canada, the Liberal Party of Canada is heading for second place, or worse. And Dominic LeBlanc doesn’t want that for himself – or his best friend.

As the Conservative convention kicks off in Quebec City, the delegates are understandably cheering their good fortune. But some of the smart folks in Pierre Poilievre’s office will be keeping an eye trained on Dominic Leblanc, too.

Because if he tells his best friend to leave – and his best friend does – it’s a whole new ball game.

Watch Dominic LeBlanc.

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