House Speaker Anthony Rota to deliver a speech in Parliament regarding the repercussions of the Ukrainian veteran situation.

House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota will address Parliament on Monday, a day following his apology for extending an invitation to a Ukrainian war veteran who had served in a Nazi-aligned unit to Ottawa for a speech.

Rota had invited Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian residing in North Bay, Ontario, to witness Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s address to Parliament last Friday.

Initially, Rota had hailed Hunka, a constituent of his Nipissing—Timiskaming riding, as both a Ukrainian and Canadian hero, eliciting a standing ovation in his honor.

Subsequently, Rota expressed his regret, assuming full responsibility for including Hunka on the guest list.

Hunka served in the 1st Galician Division, which was a unit affiliated with Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS during the Second World War.

House Speaker Anthony Rota issued an apology for orchestrating the recognition of a Ukrainian constituent by Members of Parliament during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit. Yaroslav Hunka had a history of service with a Nazi-affiliated unit during the Second World War.

“In my remarks following the address of the President of Ukraine, I recognized an individual in the gallery. I have subsequently become aware of more information which causes me to regret my decision to do so,”

“I particularly want to extend my deepest apologies to Jewish communities in Canada and around the world. I accept full responsibility for my action.”

Dan Panneton, a director with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

The fact that this individual, and by proxy the organization he was a member of, was given a standing ovation in the House of Commons is deeply troubling,

I think association with this unit makes you a Nazi collaborator. To be part of this unit, you swore allegiance to Hitler and you were involved with the massacre of civilians. So it doesn’t matter if you try and claim that you were defending against communism, you were still involved with the Nazi war machine. That makes you complicit, Panneton said.