Hospitallers Battalion, the medical section of Ukrainian Nazi Dmytro Yarosh’s ‘Ukrainian Volunteer Army’ (UDA), thanking the Canada-Ukraine Foundation for the equipment that came after a 300 000+ CAD grant to them was announced this August. The Facebook post is now unviewable.

Written by: Aidan Jonah

Ontario’s Minister of Education proudly announced yesterday that the government will be mandating Holodomor ‘education’ of Grade 10 students starting in 2025, to indoctrinate students through a “Canadian History” class to “understand the perils of communism” and embrace ‘democratic values’.

The Ontario government is also giving a $400 000 CAD grant to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation to support the CUF’s Holodomor bus tour. Yet the phrasing by the Ontario government phrases this funding as if it’s a big new step forward. In reality, this bus tour was funded by both the Ontario government led by Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives, and the Canadian government. The Canadian government’s support came between 2017 and 2020, while the Ontario government’s support in fact began in 2015, not 2017. This Nazi propaganda bus tour is run by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, whose COO trained Ukrainian Nazis, and which gave a $300 000+ CAD grant to a Ukrainian Nazi’s medical battalion this year.

The Holodomor is a Nazi myth

The Nazi myth of the famine in the USSR as both being an intentional attack on Ukrainians, and that Ukrainians were the worst off within the USSR because of the tragic, but not intentional famine, are both anti-communist lies. This is why this author rejects the idea of the “Holodomor”, as it represents the Nazi myth. In Marthad Umucyaba and this author’s TCF article this April, they explained how the Holodomor is a Nazi myth:

“In Ukrainian Nationalist and Eastern Baltic Nationalist folklore, to cover up Nazi collusion (in conspiracy with the rest of the NATO states), communism was a conspiracy to ethnically subjugate the Ukrainians and other nationalities in the Baltics.

The myth begins with the “Holodomor” and extends from there, to false allegations against the Soviet Union of committing the Katyn Massacre, alleged blockades against the Polish, and more. This was a primary focus of Operation Aerodynamic: inciting nationalist/Nazi ideology through these myths.

The myth was spread with the fake news of William Randal Hearst, backed by Ukrainian collaborators with Nazism. Organizations like the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, backed in large part by the anti-communist propagandists and closet Nazis in the Canadian and Ontario government (Chrystia Freeland, for example), continue to back this myth with no shame, and at a very high price, according to the ATIPs on the Canadian Heritage department.

There was never a deliberate attempt by the Soviet government to starve Ukrainians during the Great Famine of 1932-1933. The Kazakhs suffered worse from the famine than the Ukrainians, with no national myth being spread to this day about Kazakh genocide. Even in the territories of Greater Russia itself, people starved to death. This myth is put to rest by this fact: exports of grain to Ukraine by the Soviet government during the famine exceeded any other region.

There was nothing the Soviet government could do about the crop failures with the current level of development, the sanctions against them by the west, and the environmental conditions of grain rust and frozen topsoil. Grain rust, in particular, complicated matters further due to being difficult to detect visually, but deadly enough to destroy the grain completely.

This terrible myth created a false equivalency that justified glorifying Nazi collaborators in Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine, and thus, set the stage for today’s terrible events.”

An important resource for those who want to read further into how the Holodomor is a Nazi myth, is Douglas Tottle’s book, “Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard”.

Who’s getting the money to run the Holodomor bus? What has its impact been?

Ontario’s education minister Stephen Lecce said that the Holodomor ‘education’ and backing of the Holodomor bus would be part of “Ensuring the next generation embraces democracy & freedom, & never sits on the sidelines in the face of evil.”

The other campaigns of the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, which has run the Holodomor bus since 2015, makes the farcical nature of Lecce’s claim crystal clear.

CUF’s Chief Operating Officer, Oksana Kuzyshyn, trained the Nazi Azov Battalion in 2016. This August, CUF approved a grant $302 924 CAD in medical equipment to Hospitallers Paramedic, the medical section of Ukrainian Nazi Dmytro Yarosh’s ‘Ukrainian Volunteer Army’ (UDA). The equipment got to the Hospitallers Battalion in October 2023.

The CUF was created by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in 1994. The UCC has honoured the 14th Waffen SS Division in 2007, 2010, and 2021, and has refused to condemn the honouring of Ukrainian Nazi Jaroslav Hunka in Canada’s parliament this September.

The Holodomor bus itself has been consistently disingenuous to the core.

As Marthad Umucyaba and this author explained in a TCF investigation:

“Under the guise of “promoting Ukrainian culture, diversity, and tolerance”, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation (CUF) used the funds to spread a fictional documentary promoting a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator inspired myth: the “Holodomor”. This is the myth of a man-made and deliberate genocide of Ukrainians by Joseph Stalin, Georgian Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The documentary was called “Hunger for Truth”, courtesy of the late state propagandist and ex-journalist Rhea Clyman, who pioneered using the special effects and tabloid journalism that characterizes every anti-communist media outlet today”

“Software was also developed, called ‘Breaking The Sound Barrier: Raising Voices Into Action’. Children during 2018-2020 were playing with the software and had Nazi collaborator propaganda etched into their mind.”

This Nazi propaganda has managed to impact young students before:

“One example of the CUF bus tour’s impact is questionnaire answers from children at Markville Secondary School in 2016 (the tour was privately funded between 2015 to 2017). After visiting the ‘Holodomor’ bus, these children felt very ‘informed’ based on Nazi collaborator-authored fiction. Even letters where Stalin was railing against a class that was illegally extorting land from other peasants, hoarding crops, and exacerbating food insecurity were misinterpreted by children as evidence of his ‘genocidal’ intentions. These false beliefs weren’t their fault however. The disturbing reality is that children are being primed to respect and defend Nazi collaborators while hating the Soviet Union.”

University students have previously been targeted as well:

“A 2019 food ‘mis-direct’ campaign targeted all three Toronto universities” to “push the narrative that ‘food should not be used as a weapon in today’s world’”.

“Further campaigning saw the creation of a ‘Holodomor Fine Foods’ campaign and the baiting of students across Canada, using a supposed food website to lure them in and introduce them to the ‘Holodomor’”.

Even up to 2021, the Nazi propaganda bus tour had gotten extensive reach in Canada, having had “Had 40,032 students and educators take part in one of our 4 lessons including an online lesson for students developed during the COVID pandemic” and having “Attended 260 public events across Canada, engaging over 22,700 visitors with the Tour’s materials on the Holodomor.”

By August 2023, the CUF bragged that “the HMC has visited 525 schools engaging over 43,400 students and educators and connected with over 24,675 people across Canada at 289 community events.”

This Nazi propaganda bus tour got $750 000 CAD from the Ontario government in 2015, explicitly to target anti-colonial “students in urban, rural, northern, First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities” and other Ontario students, to weaken their political consciousness.

The anti-communist faction of the Ukrainian Canadian community, MP Baker being this faction’s major representative in Ontario’s parliament in the mid-2010s, has sought to build solidarity and connection (8:00 to 10:00, 17:00 to 18:15) between Indigenous nations who face an ongoing, actual genocide by the Canadian state, and their faction of the Ukrainian Canadian community which falsely claims that Ukrainians were targeted for genocide by the Soviet Union. There are echoes, in this faction’s effort to legitimize their claim, of Zionists attempting to build connections with occupied Indigenous nations within Canada, to legitimize Israel’s settler-colonial occupation of Palestine and assist them in claiming Indigeneity. Both groups seek to use the legitimate struggle of occupied Indigenous nations in Canada to further their own illegitimate colonial causes.

A 2015 Ontario government statement confirmed the Holodomor bus would ‘support’ many “Canadian and World Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities courses in secondary schools” and “Ontario's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy”, which “aims to create an inclusive education system that values diversity and respect for others.

The Manitoba provincial government is also listed as a founding sponsor, meaning they gave more than $150 000 CAD to the Canada-Ukraine Foundation for its bus tour around this time period.

The CUF’s Holodomor bus tour got $1.45 million CAD from the Canadian government for operations between 2017 to 2020 and another $750 000 CAD from the Ontario government-controlled Trillium Foundation in the same time period. Additionally, the bus tour got funding from the Ontario government in 2022 (though a budget line in the CUF’s 2022 annual report sets the “Designated Funds” from “Government grants” amount at $299 250 CAD), and now this $400 000 grant from the same Ontario government this November.

For close to a decade, there has been an extensive effort by Canadian federal and provincial governments to spread Ukrainian Nazi propaganda in the minds of young students, to shape their political consciousness in an anti-communist manner.

Which Liberal MP has consistently advocated for Holodomor ‘education’?

The Ontario PC government’s messaging about the Holodomor ‘education’ announcement of a new course and funding is designed to make this seem like a new initiative they uniquely took forward.

In reality, Holodomor ‘education’ has been pushed by a certain Liberal MP, who was a Liberal MPP before running for federal office in 2019, for a long while. This MP was a Vice-President in the Toronto branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress between 2005 and 2008, before entering provincial politics, and had “been either directly adjacent to or attended three UCC honourings of the Waffen SS 14th Division between 2007 to 2021 and wouldn’t condemn them”. For the 2007 UCC Toronto honouring of Waffen SS 14th Division veterans, Jaroslav Hunka was one of the Nazi veterans honoured. This MP also “had not condemned Canadian parliament’s standing ovations to Ukrainian Nazi Jaroslav Hunka, nor apologized for himself applauding Hunka with other parliamentarians.”

This Liberal MP is Yvan Baker, whose mother Myroslava Oleksiuk, was also in the UCC Toronto branch that Baker started his political journey in. Oleksiuk denounced Oakville’s Mayor Rob Burton for condemning a Nazi SS division memorial in Oakville, back in 2020 and ran a newsletter in the 2000s called ePOSHTA, which republished claims including that: “the Jews” were worse than the Nazis to Ukrainians (made by former Ukrainian World Congress president Askold S. Lozynsykj in 2002), that there are unnamed “lobbies” and “lobby groups” pushing for persecuting Nazi war criminals in Canada.

The ePOSHTA newsletter was financially supported by the Taras Shevchenko Foundation between 2007 and 2009, and Oleksiuk stated that part of the newsletter’s purpose was so “organizations like the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ukrainian World Congress and others could use ePOSHTA as a conduit to elevate the consciousness of the Ukrainian community on a broad range of issues.”

Then-Liberal MPP Baker successfully advocated for a bill creating a “Holodomor Awareness Week” in Ontario that came into being in 2015, worked to “ ensure that the #Holodomor was included in Ontario high school curriculum” and his advocacy played a definite role in the CUF’s Holodomor bus tour getting Ontario government funding. Remember that the CUF is the aid-front organization for the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the same UCC MP Baker was actively involved in before entering provincial politics, even serving as President of the UCC’s Ontario Provincial Council between 2010 and 2012.

When the CUF got a $750 000 grant from the Ontario government-controlled Ontario Trillium Foundation on April 20, 2018, then-Liberal MPP Baker was “Proud to announce [this news] this afternoon”.

In November 2021, MP Baker was the Master of Ceremonies for an event condemning the “Holodomor Famine Genocide”, where the Nazi propaganda Holodomor bus backed by Canadian federal and provincial governments was front and centre. MP Baker has continued to advocate for Holodomor ‘education’ to this day.

The political reality

Canada’s political elite, from provincial Progressive Conservative politicians, to provincial and federal Liberal politicians, to provincial NDP politicians in Manitoba, wish to spread hatred of communism, and are happy to use an extreme anti-communist faction of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora to push Nazi propaganda myths such as the Holodomor, with the aim of preventing the development of anti-imperialist political consciousness in Canada.

Even the faction of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora being used for this aim is the product of the Canadian government founding the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (now Ukrainian Canadian Congress) to unite fascists and monarchists in 1939, engaging in attacks and stealing of resources from the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians in the 1940s (a pro-USSR Ukrainian Canadian national organization), their intentional importation of Ukrainian Nazis (mainly Waffen SS 14th Division veterans such as Hunka, some used to attack organized labour) after WWII and the consistent financial backing and political support given to the UCC by successive generations of Canada’s political elite, while the AUUC has been consistently shunned.

Just this September, while all but two Canadian parliamentarians rose to applaud the Ukrainian Nazi, Jaroslav Hunka, and both Liberal MP Yvan Baker and Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, General Wayne Eyre, have still refused to condemn this honouring or apologize for their individual standing ovations to Hunka.

Ontario’s education minister Stephen Lecce said of the government’s implementation of mandatory Holodomor ‘education’ for Grade 10 students and additional financial support for the Canada-Ukraine Foundation’s Holodomor bus tour:

“This learning will help ensure students are never bystanders in the face of such horrors, understand the danger of totalitarianism, and help safeguard fundamental Canadian values of freedom and democracy over communist extremism.”

The political future in Canada is unclear, but it's clear that the Canadian federal and provincial governments’ apologia for Nazis and support for Nazi myths, is not something they want to give up. It will be up to Canadian citizens and occupied Indigenous nations within Canada to figure out how to oppose their Nazi apologia and the Nazi myths they help spread."

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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass in February 2021. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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