Headed by retired Superior Court of Quebec judge Jules Deschênes, the commission delivered its report in December 1986, after almost two years of hearings.
[7] On February 7, 1985, Justice Minister John Crosbie announced that Deschênes would head an independent Commission of Inquiry, with the task of investigating the charge that Nazi war criminals gained admittance to Canada by illegal or fraudulent means.
"[7]The commission was given wide powers to collect evidence, and required to report its findings and recommendations by December 31, 1985,[7] but was granted several extensions during its investigation.
The CLC was created in February 1985 by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee and several other eastern European and Baltic community organizations for the purpose of lobbying and interacting with the Deschênes Commission.
Historian Irving Abella stated to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes that it was relatively easy for former SS members to enter Canada, as their distinctive tattoos meant they were reliably anti-communist.
[14] Bernie Farber, then the director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, stated that Nazis in Canada, of which there were estimated to be 3,000, was the country's "dirty little secret".
In the late 1990s, the issue of war criminals living in Canada and the Canadian government's lack of interest in searching for and prosecuting these individuals was the subject of investigative reporting by NBC, CBS, the CBC, Global Television, and The New York Times.
[15] Olga Bertelsen published an article critical of the commission, claiming that the Soviets framed an innocent man, Ivan Demjanjuk, as part of a larger attempt (referred to as Operation Payback) by the KGB to sow discord between Canadian Jews and Ukrainians, a position that is shared by Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.
[18] Demjanjuk himself was ultimately found guilty by multiple courts in Germany, Israel, and the United States, and died behind bars.
It is thus difficult to determine whether the commission's conclusion that the number of suspected war criminals who either had or were residing in Canada was in fact exaggerated, given how much potential evidence was not considered.
[21] Catherine Chatterley, Founding Director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA), organized a petition signed by over 70 leading international scholars asking the Government to release all documentation related to Nazi war criminals.
[26][27] At the end of November 2024, historians Per Anders Rudling and Jared McBride called for the full publication of the Dêschenes Commission report and the release of all documents relating to war criminals, following the example of the United States.