Toronto—Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) president Mark J. Freiman issued the following statement in response to yesterday’s Federal Court of Appeal ruling that the Cabinet must reconsider its decision to revoke the citizenship of Helmut Oberlander to assess whether he was conscripted against his will.
“CJC deplores the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal in the Oberlander matter. It is frustrating that two judges of the Court of Appeal have seen fit to delay yet again a case involving a member of an Einsatzgruppe (Mobile Killing Squad) that goes back almost 15 years, this time on a hyper-technical point of interpretation. Oberlander’s defence claimed he was conscripted into the Einsatzgruppe. Cabinet assessed this argument and rejected it in recommending revocation. The Court of Appeal has now decided to send this matter back to Cabinet for reconsideration based on its view that Cabinet was unreasonable in not assessing essentially this very same excuse under the rubric of “compulsion,” a concept that Mr. Oberlander himself did not see fit to raise in his own defence.
Ultimately, the issue is not how he came to be attached to a Mobile Killing Squad, but rather that he then lied about it to gain entry into Canada and to obtain Canadian citizenship.
In this regard, the dissenting opinion of Justice Sharlow is clear and appears to CJC to be exactly correct. It is deeply troubling that the Federal Court of Appeal has imposed yet another indeterminate delay on this already drawn-out judicial process. It is important for Courts not to lose sight of the merits of cases and not get enmeshed in technical minutiae that serve no function but delay.
CJC considers the Court of Appeal’s decision to be wrong as a matter of justice as well as incorrect on its technical merits. We strongly urge the Government of Canada to seek leave to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.”
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CONTACT
Jordan Kerbel
National Director of Public Affairs
Canadian Jewish Congress
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