Deschênes Commission

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The Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, often referred to as the Deschênes Commission was established by the government of Canada in February 1985 to investigate claims that Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals. Headed by retired Quebec Superior Court judge Jules Deschênes, the commission delivered its report in December 1986 after almost two years of hearings. It was criticised for dealing only with alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada.

The commission investigated numerous claims and concluded that hundreds of files should be closed as the accused war criminals were either dead or had never entered Canada, or because there was insufficient evidence of guilt. The government was directed, however, to investigate a handful of files of suspected war criminals in greater detail. Mr Deschenes also concluced that allegations about thousands of alleged Nazi war criminals were "grossly exaggerated" and specifically identified various Jewish Canadian special interest groups as having been responsible for inflating this issue, identifying the Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center's Canadian representative by name.

As a result of the Commission, Minister of Justice Ray Hnatyshyn introduced amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to enable the government to prosecute any war criminals found in the country. The amendments also allowed for the prosecution of other past and future war criminals under Canadian criminal law. This was described as a "made in Canada" solution and was welcomed by the Jewish Canadian and other intervening groups, like the Ukrainian and Baltic Canadian communities.

However, subsequent prosecutions were unsuccessful due to a lack of any compelling evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of those alleged to have been war criminals. As well, the first individual to be prosecuted under the new war crimes law, Imre Finta was acquitted in 1990 and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the decision on appeal (see　R. v. Finta)．　

As a result of the difficulty of prosecuting alleged war criminals in Canada, given the lack of criminal evidence sufficient to prove guilt, the Liberal government of Jean Chretien, in 1993, opted for deploying less stringent rules of evidence than are used in criminal court cases, arguing that if a person misrepresented his or her wartime activities upon entering Canada than they could, even decades later, be denaturalized and deported. This policy has precipitated considerable controversy and has yet to be applied completely to any individual in Canada. As well the argument has been made that the Government has not paid any attention to alleged Soviet war criminals (former members of Smersh, the NKVD and KGB) living in Canada, the suggestion being that the focus is selective and therefore unjust.

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