How did a volunteer from a Nazi unit get invited to Parliament? Your questions, answered

Questions are still flying — in Parliament, the media and across borders — after a man who fought for the Nazis during the Second World War was invited into the House of Commons and cheered as a hero during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's momentous visit last week. 

Yaroslav Hunka, 98, waved and nodded to the gallery as he received two standing ovations from Parliament — and Zelenskyy, who is Jewish — for defending his native Ukraine. It later emerged he'd done so as part of a notorious Nazi unit. 

The diplomatic disaster has seen Speaker Anthony Rota resign and the prime minister apologize for the "deeply embarrassing episode." Russian propagandists, meanwhile, have capitalized on the optics and historians are calling for a reckoning of Canada's past treatment of Nazis.

Ahead of Zelenskyy's visit, Hunka's son contacted Rota's constituency office and asked whether it would be possible for him to attend. Hunka lives in North Bay, Ont., a city some 300 kilometres north of Toronto that is part of Rota's riding. 

Rota gave him one of the seats in his own viewing gallery. 

Generally, the process of who gets invited to such events is "pretty opaque," according to one former official, but the Speaker would certainly have sway.

"He certainly would've invited a number of people himself," said Roy Norton who, as chief of protocol, was Canada's most senior official overseeing high-level international visits and other diplomatic matters. 

Though Rota is also a Liberal MP, the role of Speaker is non-partisan and entirely independent of the government.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has blamed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the mishap, but Norton says the government would have had "zero role in inviting Mr. Hunka or, for that matter, who sat in the gallery." 

"I can say with absolute confidence, if I had asked" — as chief of protocol — "the Speaker's personal staff or the Speaker himself who had been invited to come and sit in the seats in Parliament, I would've been told to take a hike," he said.  

Neither Hunka nor his family have responded to repeated requests for comment from CBC News.

It's unclear. When it comes to vetting guests in the House, Norton says the process is equally murky. Staff might have had access to an RCMP database to look for criminal links, but it's more likely they would check out guests the same way everyday people do.

"You used search engines. Google," he said. 

"The Speaker's staff might not subject invitations from the Speaker to the same level of scrutiny that they would require of names submitted by other Parliamentarians ... the Speaker is supreme in Parliament," said Norton, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo.