New broadcast by Chris Cook with John Helmer, Victoria, B.C., Canada
Interview starts at Minute 37:15:
“Leave aside the ideology, leave aside the issues, leave aside the big policy politics: there’s one thing you don’t do when you make a foreign minister your country’s representative – you don’t put a liar in the job.”
For the current state of the Russia-Canada relationship, click to open. And for Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Galician history and war record, click.
The history of the Galician hijacking of the history of Ukraine from Jews, Poles and Russians can be read in the academic publications of John-Paul Himka, now retired from the post of professor of Ukrainian history at the University of Alberta. Follow his research on the role Freeland’s grandfather, Michael Chomiak’s newspaper played in the destruction of the Galician Jews here. Chomiak’s records in Alberta were the principal source. Freeland, according to Himka, read the manuscript in advance “pointing out problems and and suggesting improvements.” As printed in his newspaper Krakivtsi Visti (“Cracow News”), Grandfather Chomiak’s idea, with German support, was to liquidate the Jews and Poles and cleanse Galicia on both sides of the Polish-Ukrainian frontier in the west. Granddaughter Freeland’s idea is to cleanse the Russians from the east.
In remembering and retelling the story of what happened, Himka (right) 
concludes in another paper, there is “a blank spot in the collective memory of the Ukrainian diaspora”, and a “double standard in discussing war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Ukrainians as opposed to those perpetrated against Ukrainians. Memoirs and eyewitness accounts, for example, are considered untrustworthy evidence for the former, but trustworthy for the latter; that is, Jewish or Polish first-hand accounts of Ukrainian war crimes are dismissed as biased, while an important Ukrainian victimization narrative, the famine of 1932-33, has relied primarily on just such eyewitness accounts.”
concludes in another paper, there is “a blank spot in the collective memory of the Ukrainian diaspora”, and a “double standard in discussing war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Ukrainians as opposed to those perpetrated against Ukrainians. Memoirs and eyewitness accounts, for example, are considered untrustworthy evidence for the former, but trustworthy for the latter; that is, Jewish or Polish first-hand accounts of Ukrainian war crimes are dismissed as biased, while an important Ukrainian victimization narrative, the famine of 1932-33, has relied primarily on just such eyewitness accounts.”
In Himka’s narrative of what Chomiak’s Galician readers, associates and friends did in Lviv in 1942, one of the results was the confiscation of the newspaper, printing plant and other assets of the newspaper which Chomiak took over from the Jewish publisher, Moshe Kanfer. He was forced to flee to the Jewish ghetto at Lviv, and then transported to his death at the Belzec concentration camp; for details, read this. The consequence was Chomiak’s enrichment. (Minute 22:15).
The next year, on February 18, 1943, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, gave his Berlin sports palace speech calling for “total war”, “confidence in the Führer more passionate, more unshakable than ever”, and all “the men and materials need[ed] to give Bolshevism its mortal blow”. Russians and Jews were the same target. According to Goebbels, “the goal of Bolshevism is Jewish world revolution. They want to bring chaos to the Reich and Europe, using the resulting hopelessness and desperation to establish their international, Bolshevist-concealed capitalist tyranny.” Against them and that, Germany “intends to take the most radical measures, if necessary, in good time.”
Chomiak not only ran the Cracow newspaper. For Emil Gassner’s media department of the German administration, Chomiak also ran a weekly for Chelm, 350 kilometres to the east on the Ukrainian frontier. Here is Chomiak’s endorsement of Goebbels’ speech and his repetition of the death sentence for Russians and Jews.
In 1939 about half of the Chelm population of 30,000 was Jewish. By the time Chomiak left for Vienna, there were none. Cracow’s Jewish population was 70,000, one-quarter of the city, in November 1939. By the end of the war in May 1945, 4,282 were found to have survived.
Gorilla Radio is broadcast weekly by Chris Cook on CFUV 101.9 FM from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The radio station can be heard here. The Gorilla Radio transcripts are also published by the Pacific Free Press. For Chris Cook’s broadcast archive, click to open.
http://johnhelmer.net/gorilla-radio-vancouver-justin-trudeaus-falling-star-chrystia-freelands-rising-missile/
By John Helmer, Moscow
Chrystia Freeland (lead image), appointed last week to be the new Canadian Foreign Minister, claims that her maternal family were the Ukrainian victims of Russian persecution, who fled their home in 1939, after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin agreed on a non-aggression pact and the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. She claims her mother was born in a camp for refugees before finding safe haven in Alberta, Canada. Freeland is lying.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland’s maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo) Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army’s winning phase of the war, Chomiak celebrated in print the Wehrmacht’s “success” at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda, at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Just before Vienna fell to the Soviet forces in March 1945, Chomiak evacuated with the German Army into Germany, ending up near Munich at Bad Worishofen. On September 2, 1946, when Freeland says her mother was born in a refugee camp, she was actually in a well-known spa resort for wealthy Bavarians. The US Army then controlled that part of Germany; they operated an Army hospital at Bad Worishofen and accommodated Chomiak at a spa hotel. US Army records have yet to reveal what the Americans learned about Chomiak’s war record, and how he was employed by US Army Intelligence, after he had switched from the Wehrmacht. It took Chomiak another two years before the government in Ottawa allowed the family to enter Canada.
The reason the Polish Government is now investigating Freeland is that Chomiak’s wartime record not only victimized Galician Jews, but also the Polish citizens of Cracow. In a salute to Freeland as a “great friend of Poland” by the Polish Embassy in Ottawa last week, Warsaw officials now believe a mistake was made.
Last July, Freeland, then trade minister, was in a large delegation of Canadians accompanying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland. Freeland is not included in the press photographs; Trudeau wept. A statement issued by one of the Canadian Jewish organizations in the delegation said: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau signifies the importance of remembering the six million Jews and countless others who died at hands of the Nazi regime. The Holocaust will forever stand as the ultimate expression of human hatred. That is why every Canadian should use this as an opportunity to reflect upon their personal role in combating the forces of antisemitism, racism and bigotry wherever they are found.”
Trudeau (above) and his staff, as well as Foreign Minister at the time Stephane Dion, and the Jewish representatives appear not to have known this was familiar territory for Freeland and her family. Michael Chomiak and his wife Alexandra, parents to Freeland’s mother Halyna, spent the war from 1939 to 1945 working and living just 68 kilometres away in Cracow.
According to the autobiographical details Freeland has provided herself to the Canadian media, Freeland’s family were victims of war. “My maternal grandparents,” she wrote in May 2015, “fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939… they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.” In November 2015 Freeland told the Toronto Star: “Michael Chomiak was a lawyer and journalist before the Second World War, but they knew the Soviets would invade western Ukraine (and) fled … and, like a lot of Ukrainians, ended up after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany where my mother was born.”
Centre: Michael Chomiak and wife Alexandra, with their children in Canada in 1952. Freeland’s mother Halyna is second from left. Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/11/29/how-chrystia-freeland-became-justin-trudeaus-first-star.html
According to Freeland, “they were also committed to the idea, like most in the (Ukrainian) diaspora, that Ukraine would one day be independent and that the community had a responsibility to the country they had been forced to flee … to keep that flame alive.”
The Edmonton, Alberta, newspaper obituary for Halyna Chomiak Freeland says she had been “born on September 2, 1946 in Bad Worishofen, Germany in a displaced person’s camp.” The Alberta provincial government library reports it holds Michael Chomiak’s papers. He is described as having “graduated from Lviv University with master’s degree in law and political science. In 1928, as a journalist, he started work in the Ukrainian daily Dilo, and from 1934 to 1939 he served on the editorial staff. During the Nazi occupation, he was the editor of Krakivski Visti, published first in Cracow and then in Vienna.”
There is much more to the story which Freeland has not revealed. The details can be found in Polish and Ukrainian sources; from the archived files of Krakivski Visti (“Cracow News”); 
and from the evidence of Jewish Holocaust museums around the world. Chomiak was editor in chief of the newspaper after a Jewish editor was removed. The newspaper itself was set up in January 1940, publishing three times weekly in Cracow, until October 8, 1944. It was then published in Vienna from October 16, 1944, until March 29, 1945. The precision of the dates is important. They coincide with the movement of the German Army into Cracow, and then out of the city and into Vienna. The newspaper itself was established by the German Army; and supervised by German intelligence. Chomiak was employed by an officer named Emil Gassner (above). His title in German indicates he was the German administrator in charge of press in the region. When Gassner moved from Cracow to Vienna, he took Chomiak with him.
and from the evidence of Jewish Holocaust museums around the world. Chomiak was editor in chief of the newspaper after a Jewish editor was removed. The newspaper itself was set up in January 1940, publishing three times weekly in Cracow, until October 8, 1944. It was then published in Vienna from October 16, 1944, until March 29, 1945. The precision of the dates is important. They coincide with the movement of the German Army into Cracow, and then out of the city and into Vienna. The newspaper itself was established by the German Army; and supervised by German intelligence. Chomiak was employed by an officer named Emil Gassner (above). His title in German indicates he was the German administrator in charge of press in the region. When Gassner moved from Cracow to Vienna, he took Chomiak with him.
Chomiak’s publication was an official one of the German administration in Galicia, known at the time as the General Gouvernement. The printing press, offices and other assets which provided Chomiak with his work, salary, and benefits had been confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish publisher, Moshe Kafner. Kafner was a native of the region; he and his family were well educated and well known until the Germans arrived, and replaced Kanfer with Chomiak. Kanfer was forced to flee Cracow for Lviv. From there he was taken by the Germans to the Belzec concentration, where he was murdered some time in 1942. From Chomiak’s office to Belzec the distance was 300 kilometres.
Left: SS guards at Belzec; right: Ukrainian guards about to kill a Belzec inmate
Krakivsti Visti was “the most important newspaper to appear in the Ukrainian language under the German occupation during World War II,” according to this history from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, published in 1998. Chomiak — reports the Harvard history by John-Paul Hinka from a contemporary source — “had the ability to sense what could be written and how in the severe German reality, and he gained some trust among the German officials, without which the work would have been impossible.”
In print, according to this archive of Krakivsti Visti, when Chomiak was in charge, there were reports of the “success” of the German Navy in killing 13,000 US Army soldiers, when their transports were torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic enroute to England. Chomiak editorialized: “this last German attack [was] a smashing blow to the solar plexus of the alliance.”
Chomiak also reported the US “colonization” of Australia and Canada . “Americans who are now living in Australia believe that the economic possibilities of Australia are even much better than those of the USA, and many US soldiers are thinking about staying in Australia after the war… as they feel much better there than in their own Fatherland… There are such close relations between the USA and Canada and Australia that there will be a special trade and tax [agreement] between these countries after the war. In other words, the United States does not hide the intention of the US to begin full economic penetration of Canada and Australia.”
By the standard of Trudeau at Auschwitz, Freeland’s grandfather also produced race hatred to Nazi order, including antisemitism and racism against several other nationalities, including Americans, Poles and Russians.
Chomiak not only justified the death camps surrounding Cracow. He attempted to foster Ukrainian sentiment against the Poles in the region. The German objective was to support the Ukrainian takeover of Galicia and cleanse it of its Jewish and Polish populations. For this reason Chomiak and his newspaper were given special favour by the German administration; Chomiak himself was reportedly held in high esteem by the Nazis. In the Harvard history it is reported “there can be no doubt that Krakivs’ki visti enjoyed more autonomy than any other legal Ukrainian-language publication under the German occupation.”
Himka, a Ukrainian-Canadian academic, composed his history of Krakivtsi Visti from Chomiak’s personal papers in Alberta. He mentions the newspaper’s backing for ethnic cleansing of Poles. He omits to mention Jews. Chomiak’s antisemitic record can be found in the files of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. For details, read this.
Chomiak didn’t flee from the Ukraine in 1939, as Freeland claims. Five years were to elapse before he left Cracow; that was when the German Army pulled out in defeat, as the Soviet Army advanced from the east to liberate the city. Gassner was moving the media operation to his home town, Vienna.
Chomiak closed down Krakivsti Visti in Vienna in March of 1945 for the same reason. The Soviet Army was days away, and a new Austrian government replaced the Third Reich in April of that year. With the retreating Wehrmacht Chomiak then moved westwards into Germany. But a full year is missing from the official records available publicly. That’s between March of 1945 and April of 1946, when the displaced persons camp was opened in the Bavarian town of Bad Worishofen, where Freeland says her mother was born.
As the name indicates, Bad Worishofen was (still is) a thermal waters resort for wealthy Bavarians and day-trippers from Munich. Freeland claims her mother was born as a victim in a refugee camp. In fact, she was born in a hospital administered by the US Army, while her parents were living in a spa hotel managed by a US Army intelligence unit.
A US Army parade in Bad Worishofen after the US took the town on April 27, 1945; http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/mindelheim/Der-Tag-an-dem-der-Frieden-kam-id33776287.html
During the war there had been a Luftwaffe training aerodrome at Bad Worishofen. But it was so insignificant operationally, it wasn’t bombed by the allies. More or less intact, along with the spa hotels, the town welcomed new paying guests from the US Army when they arrived in April of 1945.
According to US records, a US Army Intelligence “training unit” was established, as well as a US Army hospital. The trainees weren’t Americans; they were East Europeans, including Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and others who had been fighting on the German side.
On June 28, 1945, the 2nd Hospitalization Unit of the 30th Field Hospital left a forward position at Ebsenee, Austria, where it had been caring for the survivors of the Ebensee-Matthausen concentration camp.
The war in Europe now over, the hospitalization unit regrouped in the rear at Bad Wörishofen, where its role was to support the 80th Infantry Division. The unit history says: “As usual, living quarters proved excellent (buildings), with many conveniences added to make living conditions very comfortable.” Among the people the American Army doctors now cared for were Mr and Mrs Chomiak.
The camp for displaced persons or refugees at Bad Worishofen was not formally established for another year, until April 1946. Ukrainians who were there at the time say the camp housed mostly Lithuanians, and also 490 Ukrainians. The term camp is a misnomer. The records show that many of the Ukrainians were living in spa hotels when they were subject to the administration of the camp. Although the subsequent records of the Ukrainians are voluble on what happened there between 1946 and 1948, including testimony from Ukrainians who moved on to the US and Australia, there is no reference to the Chomiak family at all.
“All the camps in Bad Worishofen were liquidated in May 1948 due to consolidation of the various camps by IRO (International Relief Organization),” remembers this Ukrainian.
It is not (yet) known when Chomiak presented himself to US Army Intelligence, offering the same services he had been performing for Gassner and the Wehrmacht. Journalism, however, wasn’t what the US occupation authorities wanted from him. In return, Chomiak received accommodation; living expenses; and the hospitalization which produced Freeland’s mother in September of 1946.
Two years were to elapse before Chomiak left Bad Worishofen for Canada, arriving there in October 1948. He already had a sister in Canada, but no job of a professional kind to which his university education and experience qualified him. In Alberta Chomiak worked as a manual labourer. Why the Americans didn’t offer him intelligence and propaganda employment in the US may be revealed in the Chomiak files in Washington. The Canadian government file on his admission in 1948 is likely to include some of the details Chomiak revealed about his work with the Americans. Unless he kept that secret.
Last week the Polish Embassy in Ottawa issued this tweet in celebration of Freeland’s promotion:
This week Polish political analyst and journalist Stanislas Balcerac has opened the dossier on Freeland and Chomiak. The Polish Foreign Minister, Witold Waszczykowski, has been asked to investigate, and to decide if, according to Balcerac, “the circumstances and family loyalties of Mrs Freeland may affect the support that Canada provides the pro-Bandera Government of Ukraine, so they can have a direct impact on Polish interests.”
Regarding Bandera (right), the record of Chomiak’s involvement with him when they were under German,
then US supervision, Freeland did not reveal in the Financial Times when she reportedBandera as one of the Ukraine’s all-time heroes. “Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus, was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on orders from Moscow in 1959….The Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That would be a mistake.”
then US supervision, Freeland did not reveal in the Financial Times when she reportedBandera as one of the Ukraine’s all-time heroes. “Yaroslav the Wise, the 11th-century prince of Kievan Rus, was named the winner in a last-minute surge, edging out western Ukrainian partisan leader Stepan Bandera, who led a guerrilla war against the Nazis and the Soviets and was poisoned on orders from Moscow in 1959….The Soviet portrayal of Bandera as a traitor still lingers. That would be a mistake.”
Freeland was asked directly to clarify her own claims about Grandfather Chomiak’s war record. Her press spokesman, Chantal Gagnon, asked for more time, but then the two of them refused to answer.
“The sins of the grandfather can hardly be attributed to the granddaughter,” says Polish investigator Balcerac, “—except for two, race hatred and lying. Chomiak made a lucrative war selling hatred of Jews, Poles and Russians. Freeland is doing the same preaching race hatred of Russians. To mask what she’s doing, she has lied about the Nazi record of her family. The Chomiaks weren’t victims; they were aggressors.”
A Washington source adds: “Chomiak was recruited by US intelligence to wage war in the Ukraine against the Russians. Let’s see what the US Army and intelligence files reveal about his role, and let’s compare that to the one Freeland is now playing in Canada.”
By John Helmer, Moscow
Chrystia Freeland, a leading figure in the Ukrainian and Canadian campaigns against Russia, was promoted last week in Ottawa to become Canada’s foreign minister. She is now one step away in her plan to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, sources in Ottawa, Washington, and Moscow report.
There was a hitch in the plan, though. Freeland had been hoping for a senior ministry when Trudeau took power in November 2015. Instead, he gave her the low-ranked international trade portfolio to keep her out of Canada as often as possible. Freeland then counted on Hillary Clinton to win the US presidential election last November, in order to persuade Trudeau she had better relationships in the coming Washington administration than the incumbent foreign minister, Stéphane Dion. The election of Donald Trump, with whom Freeland has no relationship and no agreement either, disappointed but didn’t deter her.
Trudeau has also accepted the Freeland scheme, and also for a Clinton reason. Trudeau will be safer in the prime ministry, Ottawa sources believe, if Freeland follows the Clinton role model into public acrimony, private hysteria, then defeat.
The usually dignified Dion departed his office last week, not by saying he wished Freeland well, but that he wished her luck. He meant Freeland, whom he blamedalong with Trudeau for his abrupt ouster, would need it.
“For one year”, Dion (right) said, intimating that he had been caught unawares,
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave me the honour of being his Minister of Foreign Affairs. As is his privilege, he has just entrusted this great responsibility to another person. I wish Chrystia the best of luck.” Freeland’s supporters crowded into the Canadian media to celebrate. Dion’s supporters say he was ambushed repeatedly during his short tenure, made to take the blame in public for policies decided by others, while being kept away from decisions that were Dion’s prerogative to take, but his rivals pre-empted. This version of Dion’s ambush gives all the credit for the conspiracy to Trudeau. Another Canadian source suggests Trudeau isn’t clever enough, and that more than half the credit for the plot should go to Freeland herself.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave me the honour of being his Minister of Foreign Affairs. As is his privilege, he has just entrusted this great responsibility to another person. I wish Chrystia the best of luck.” Freeland’s supporters crowded into the Canadian media to celebrate. Dion’s supporters say he was ambushed repeatedly during his short tenure, made to take the blame in public for policies decided by others, while being kept away from decisions that were Dion’s prerogative to take, but his rivals pre-empted. This version of Dion’s ambush gives all the credit for the conspiracy to Trudeau. Another Canadian source suggests Trudeau isn’t clever enough, and that more than half the credit for the plot should go to Freeland herself.
In Brussels, sources who report on NATO say that among the military alliance leaders Trudeau’s reputation for low intelligence “approaches, if it doesn’t exceed” that of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who was NATO secretary-general between 2009 and 2014.
Officially, the Russian reaction to Freeland’s appointment as foreign minister has been as non-committal as possible.
“We don’t know,” said the ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova on December 12, “what the [Canadian] priorities will be. I think that it is necessary to be guided by specific acts and the specific program which, probably, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada will build. After that, we will comment and, perhaps, take some actions.” Responding to the fact that the Russian Government announced counter-sanctions against Canada, including a travel ban on Freeland in 2014, Zakharova said: “I would like to remind everyone that in spite of the fact that many headlines say ‘the Foreign Minister of Canada is included in the Russian sanctions lists’, the situation is a little not so. [Freeland’s name] was not placed on the sanctions lists as the Foreign Minister of Canada; she was included in the lists in 2014 as a response measure of the Russian side. First came the sanctions lists accepted [from the US] by Canada concerning Russian citizens, including Russian officials. Respectively, the Russian list was retaliation for this action of Canada’s. I think that for the answer to when and under what circumstances people [like Freeland] can be removed from this list, it is necessary to look at the rule of reciprocity.”
“We don’t know,” said the ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova on December 12, “what the [Canadian] priorities will be. I think that it is necessary to be guided by specific acts and the specific program which, probably, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada will build. After that, we will comment and, perhaps, take some actions.” Responding to the fact that the Russian Government announced counter-sanctions against Canada, including a travel ban on Freeland in 2014, Zakharova said: “I would like to remind everyone that in spite of the fact that many headlines say ‘the Foreign Minister of Canada is included in the Russian sanctions lists’, the situation is a little not so. [Freeland’s name] was not placed on the sanctions lists as the Foreign Minister of Canada; she was included in the lists in 2014 as a response measure of the Russian side. First came the sanctions lists accepted [from the US] by Canada concerning Russian citizens, including Russian officials. Respectively, the Russian list was retaliation for this action of Canada’s. I think that for the answer to when and under what circumstances people [like Freeland] can be removed from this list, it is necessary to look at the rule of reciprocity.”
For the current lists of Canadian sanctions against Russia, click to open.
Freeland reacted swiftly, announcing on the government television network CBC, “we wouldn’t look at lifting sanctions. The sanctions were imposed by the previous government but with strong support from us in opposition in response to very clear violations of international law by Russia with the invasion and annexation of Crimea and for a war against Ukraine in the Donbass.”
A year ago, Foreign Minister Seregei Lavrov had said Canadian sanctions were the result of a Russophobic government pushed by “rabid” Ukrainians”. “Canada is an influential, respected member of the [community of] international relations. We have had ups and downs in our relations from time to time. We saw such downs in the period of the government of Stephen Harper. The last two years were generally a period of lost opportunities with respect to Canada, when suddenly the previous [Harper] government sharply took a Russophobic line and curtailed bilateral ties, imposed sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities, suspended cooperation in the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic issues.”
“We were surprised by the complete absence of any pragmatism in those impulsive actions that the previous government made. It took a course with totally blind adherence to the requirement of rabid representatives of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada.”
Lavrov added that Russia was hoping that Trudeau’s takeover from Harper would correct the “mistakes of predecessors.”
In the year which has followed, President Vladimir Putin has almost totally ignored Canada and Trudeau. The Kremlin announced that he had sent greetings to Trudeau on December 30, 2015, and again last month. In the 2015 message Putin had toldTrudeau “he expects to see constructive development of Russian-Canadian ties in the coming year in all areas – from trade and the economy to sport, with our traditionally fierce but friendly hockey battles.” In Putin’s latest message, he added a birthday greeting for Trudeau (born on December 25, 1971), expressing “confidence that the strengthening of bilateral cooperation and the development of partnership in opening up the Arctic and in other fields meet the interests of the both countries’ people.”
During the election campaign of 2015, Trudeau had called for “pushing back against the bully that is Vladimir Putin”. Trudeau also claimed that after the election, when he met Putin at the G20 summit conference in Turkey on November 16 of that year (pictured below), he had “a fairly direct exchange with him where I pointed out that his actions in Ukraine were illegitimate and irresponsible.”
The Russian side says the conversation was brief, and no such statement was made. According to Putin, “the prime minister himself said when we were at G20 in Antalya that he thinks how we should re-establish the relations in full. We welcome this . . . and will get down to this task, to work together.”
Last Friday Freeland told Canadian reporters she had met Putin at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting in Peru last November. This was the first time she had made the disclosure. “I’ve spoken with the top guy in Russia quite recently,” Freeland told her state radio. “We spoke in Russian and we had quite a long conversation.” The Kremlin records no such conversation took place, a spokesman for the president adding: “Vladimir Putin did not have a meeting with Freeland.”
Unofficially, the Russian assessment – based on contacts with the Foreign Ministry, veteran diplomats, and Russian oligarchs with Canadian business interests — is that Canada is a minor country whose international role-playing is either that of a foil to the US, as when Pierre Trudeau , Justin’s father, was prime minister and opposed the US on the Vietnam War; or the role of a puppet and echo of Washington. The Russian oligarch connexions have included Roman Abramovich’s attempt at goldmining with Peter Munk, founder of Barrick Gold; Oleg Deripaska’s scheme for acquiring the Opel car company with Frank Stronach of the Magna Corporation; and Alexei Mordashov’s goldmining ventures with Frank Giustra. The contacts have all ended unsuccessfully, as the Russians see it.
From left to right: Peter Munk, Peter Mandelson, then EU commissioner for trade; Oleg Deripaska, on an ill-fated trip to visit Deripaska’s assets in Siberia. Their trip was exposed by a London newspaper and subsequent UK court rulings; for details of Munk’s and Deripaska’s scheming, read this.
Russian and Canadian sources also believe Freeland had been plotting Dion’s ouster since the two of them both contended for a senior ministry post in November 2015. Dion won; Freeland lost. Freeland is a bad loser and goes into hysterical rages when crossed, her associates at the Financial Times remember. Hillary Clinton, too — according to US press reports of her behaviour on election night last November, when she reportedly wept, swore, screamed, and was incapable of making the traditional concession speech.
Look carefully again at the official Canadian government photograph of the swearing-in of Trudeau’s first cabinet on November 4, 2015:
That’s Foreign Minister Dion to the right of Freeland, who sits between Dion and the prime minister. In the normal Canadian protocol, Freeland ranked 13th and should have stood in the second row behind Trudeau. Two other economic policymakers who were appointed above Freeland in rank – Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Minister of Economic Development Navdeep Singh Bains were obliged to stand behind her in the second row. Freeland also employed the Nancy Reagan ploy of being the only woman to wear red. For details of Freeland’s first see-red plot, read this.
Freeland’s political scheming has been spelled out by sources who know her and her husband, a New York-based journalist named Graham Bowley who reports mainly on the art market and the troubles of former comedian, Bill Cosby. Bowley also doubles as an expert on Russian cyber-warfare, and on how undemocratic Clinton’s defeat was in November.
Freeland wasn’t exceptional in expecting Clinton to win. Local polls show that 79% of Canadians thought the same. Sources in a position to know claim Freeland had been plotting Dion’s downfall in the expectation that she would appear to be the natural counterparty in Ottawa for Clinton in Washington. Without Clinton to boost Freeland’s further chances for a shot at the Canadian prime ministry, the sources believe Trudeau and his advisors are setting her up to fail with the Trump Administration.
Trudeau’s reading of the domestic polls is that foreign policy issues like the conflict with Russia and the wars in Syria and the Ukraine are of next to no importance to Canadian voters. Legalization of marijuana is more important, according to this poll in mid-December. The Canadian priority is the economy, the poll also reported. Two-thirds of Canadians now think Trudeau’s performance in office is more style than substance. That percentage is up eight points since the government’s one-year anniversary, just over a month ago.
Trudeau’s grip on popularity is misleading, reported the Toronto Sun two weeks ago. “According to a Nanos-IRPP Mood of Canada survey released this week, just 15% of people rate the performance of the federal Liberal government as ‘very good’, a plunge of 22% in just one year. Overall, 54% of Canadians believe Trudeau and his Liberal government are leading the country in the right direction, down 9% over the same time period. ‘This concept of Justin Trudeau being exceptionally popular is actually empirically untrue because his scores, for example, on the performance of the federal government are very similar to (former Conservative prime minister) Stephen Harper at the same point in Stephen Harper’s mandate,’ Nanos said Wednesday. ‘So I think this survey is a bit of a reality check.’”
Canadian political analysts believe Freeland’s ambition to capitalize as Trudeau weakens will not be advanced by either Trump or Putin. According to one of the sources, “in her frustration, Freeland will make the personality mistakes for which she’s known. Trudeau, having neutralized Freeland’s capacity to do him harm, will then get rid of her, like he has Dion – with the offer of an ambassadorship she will consider beneath her dignity – and her pocketbook.”
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