Federal court orders Carney government to release more Nazi war criminal documents

The Federal Court has ordered Canada to release another group of Nazi war criminal documents from the 1985 Deschênes report laying bare the government's controversial immigration policies that allowed several thousand collaborators into Canada after the Second World War.

The federal Library and Archives Canada has fought the release for years citing privacy laws protecting longstanding diplomatic intelligence agreements with allies including Ukraine, Russia and even the United States to keep the information secret.

Much of the Deschênes report has been made public, albeit with redactions, but the second part, with the list of names, has not. For decades, B'nai Brith Canada and others have lobbied and used court challenges to force the government to be more transparent about the chapter in Canadian history.

In his ruling ordering the release, issued Sept. 1, the Federal Court justice Simon Fothergill described almost all the information on the eight disputed pages as "innocuous", citing the passage of time. However, B'nai Brith Canada's lawyers weren't successful in winning the release of one other page, which deals with a secret pact between U.S. post-war intelligence and Canada's RCMP.

Government lawyers argued releasing it would heighten current tensions between Canada and the American government during this period of great tension over tariffs.

The judge rejected Ottawa's "bald" statement, writing it was "not a sufficient basis to refuse disclosure of very specific information related to efforts by the United States to resettle suspected Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada following World War II."

B'nai Brith Canada's director of research Richard Robertson told The CJN in an interview Sept. 3 that the trade war argument was "incredibly frustrating" but the human rights organization views the latest court win as "all part of moving the needle".

"All Canadians, should know that the parts of the [Deschenes] report that have been released indicate that our government colluded or even went as far as working at the direction of the United States to allow Nazi war criminals to enter Canada, "Robertson said. "And this is something that the government has seemingly tried to withhold from Canadians, and so decisions like this bring us just that little bit closer to understanding this whole story and enabling us as a society to learn from our mistakes and to heal from some of the trauma that they caused."

The documents have not yet been released to B'nai Brith Canada, and the judge did not set a timeline for this to be done.

On today's episode of The CJN's North Star podcast, hear the background to this case, in an encore presentation of an interview host Ellin Bessner did in February 2025, with historian Howard Margolian, who worked with the Justice Department to investigate Nazi war crimes, and with Sam Goldstein, a former legal director for B'nai Brith Canada.

Related links:

Read B'nai Brith Canada's statement on the latest legal battle, and read the judge's written decision issued Sept. 1, 2026.