In a staggering—but unsurprising—display of hypocrisy, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine last weekend even as his government continues to back Israel’s genocidal bloodbath in Gaza.

After conferring with the other G-7 leaders in Italy on their plans to escalate the US-NATO-instigated war on Russia and their joint efforts to militarily threaten and economically hobble China, Trudeau travelled to the Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland for a grossly misnamed Summit on Peace in Ukraine. Convened by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the summit was aimed at providing political cover and rallying support for an expansion of the war, including missile attacks inside Russia and the deployment of NATO forces inside Ukraine.

Canada’s prime minister used the occasion to further demonize the Putin regime. He cited accusations that some Ukrainian children have been forcibly removed from their homes to Russia in the course of the conflict as evidence that Moscow is guilty of “an element of genocide.”

“Regardless of what a given person or a given country around the world might think of the causes of the war, or the responsibility that Russia wields, everyone can agree that taking kids away from their families, trying to erase their language, their culture—that’s an element of genocide,” Trudeau said on Sunday. “That’s pure colonialism. These are things that Russia needs to be accountable for.”

This was followed up by a photo-op with Zelensky, who presides over a far-right martial-law regime, and other of his imperialist sponsors, including the French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. In the midst of the photo-op, Trudeau blurted out “Slava Ukraini! Geroiam Slava!” (Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Heroes!)— a chant popularized by the Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera and his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) during World War II. Fascistic and right-wing elements of the Ukrainian diaspora are a key constituency of the Trudeau government. Chrystia Freeland, the granddaughter of a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator, is Trudeau’s deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. 

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

Trudeau’s trade union and New Democratic Party-backed minority Liberal government is a leading backer of the far-right Zelensky regime and the fascist forces on which it is based. Since 2022 Ottawa has committed more than C$4 billion in military aid to Kiev, while pledging to fund the war for “as long as it takes.” Since 2015, it has provided training to tens of thousands of Ukrainian military forces, including neo-Nazi elements. 

It was no coincidence then that 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS which played a leading role in the Holocaust, was invited by Trudeau’s office to attend Parliament last September during a visit by Zelensky and honored with a standing ovation by all those assembled. In the face of an international outcry, the entire political establishment quickly backpedaled and tried to claim its celebration of a Nazi war criminal was a “mistake.” In reality, the episode exposed both the sordid history of Canadian imperialism’s alliance with the far-right Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Nazis in their war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and genocide of European Jewry, and the current reliance of the NATO powers on these forces’ political descendants in their proxy war against Russia.  

In April, the Canadian-backed Zelensky regime arrested Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk on bogus charges for opposing the war and fighting to unite workers in Ukraine and Russia against all the belligerent governments and capitalist ruling classes. Following his arrest the World Socialist Web Site has been banned in the country. 

While Trudeau tries to muster support for the NATO-instigated Ukraine war with claims that Russia is committing genocide, he has refused to demand that Israel immediately halt its relentless bombardment and starvation of the people of Gaza, let alone denounced the Netanyahu regime and Israeli military for perpetrating a genocide.

Since the war’s outbreak on Oct. 7, the Trudeau government has sent over C$28 million in military aid to Israel. And since forming government in 2015, military exports to the country have exceeded C$114 million. 

In just nine months the Israeli Defence Forces have killed more than 37,000 Gazans, mostly women and children. Tent camps have been bombed, almost the entire population displaced, and every university, nearly all hospitals and most residences damaged or destroyed in the narrow, densely populated enclave. Far-right Israeli officials have made clear their genocidal intent and the Netanyahu government has enforced a blockade on food, water and medical supplies, pushing the population to the brink of famine.  

While video footage provides daily evidence of an ongoing genocide, Trudeau, the rest of Canada’s political establishment and the corporate media recycle Israeli government and IDF claims that Israel is acting in “self-defence” and that the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians is not deliberate. At they same time, they smear those taking to Canada’s streets or occupying university campuses to protests the genocide as contributing to a purported resurgence of antisemitism.

Trudeau and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly like to cloak Canadian imperialism’s predatory actions and ambitions with declamations about human rights and the importance of international law. But even while hypocritically claiming to support the work of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), they signaled their dismay when it chose to hear the case South Africa has brought before it charging Israel with genocide. Similarly, when the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last month, Trudeau called the move “troubling.”

Trudeau’s Liberals worked with the NDP in parliament in March to transform an NDP-initiated resolution ostensibly denouncing the IDF’s onslaught on Gaza into an endorsement of Israel’s genocide. 

There is no contradiction between the ease with which Trudeau accuses Russia of genocide on specious grounds, while he turns a blind eye to the obvious horrors in Gaza. He is pursuing on both fronts the interests of Canadian imperialism—casting Ukraine on the one hand as the innocent victims of Russian aggression and on the other backing Israel’s aggression against the Palestinians to the hilt and joining in the threats of wider regional war against Iran. Meanwhile, the Canadian navy has joined in the military build up and sabre-rattling against China across the Asia-Pacific. 

While he routinely mouths humanitarian platitudes, Trudeau has made clear that Canadian imperialism is intent on securing its place alongside its imperialist allies in the US and Europe in the developing global war for the imperialist redivision of the world. Appeals to this government to change its stripes are a dead end. Those opposed to the genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and danger of nuclear war must turn to the working class, which alone has the power to paralyze the war machines of the capitalist powers, in the fight to build a mass international antiwar movement on the basis of socialist internationalism.