History matters. When a 1986 royal commission examined the question of war criminals in Canada, it based much of its evidence and many of its conclusions and recommendations on a report by Alti Rodal. But what if Rodal’s research was faulty and his judgments wrong? After Howard Margolian’s Unauthorized Access, and especially its endnotes, no one will be in any doubt that Rodal’s study is left in tatters. So, presumably, are the loud claims of advocacy groups who have accused the federal government of letting war criminals in wholesale and doing little about prosecuting them.

Margolian has done his research. This is without question the most thorough examination of the archival record, and it outlines many factors influencing Canada’s postwar immigration decisions. Yes, some 2,000 Nazi and Nazi collaborator war criminals likely got into the country in the 10 years after the Second World War. But there were 1.5 million immigrants in the same period, after years of stifled immigration, and the bureaucracy simply could not handle the flood with full security screening for all. Moreover, virtually all East European records were unavailable, because the Soviet Union refused to release them.

Then, too, domestic lobby groups, mainly of Ukrainian, Mennonite, and Baltic origin, pushed relentlessly to get their compatriots here, regardless of their crimes – and the hands of many were drenched in blood. As well, businesses wanted cheap labour, so corporations added their voice to the clamour. In the circumstances, Margolian argues convincingly, the Canadian government did extraordinarily well in its efforts to keep out the Nazi murderers and those who helped them.
This is an important, well-written book, one of those rare scholarly studies that actually could change the public debate. Whether it will, whether those with fixed positions will accept that good history is more important than parti pris history, is unfortunately another question entirely.