A report on Canada’s handling of Nazi war criminals suggests politics played a key role in the 1967 decision to preserve the citizenship of a man convicted of war crimes in the Soviet Union.
Details in newly unredacted pages show that when he was the justice minister, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau advised against attempting to revoke the citizenship.
He warned it could cause widespread fear among all naturalized Canadians, and nothing in the Citizenship Act required someone to disclose all previous acts that might call their character into question.