Anthony Rota's Longstanding Ties to the Hunka Family
Anthony Rota's Longstanding Ties to the Hunka Family
Political donations, North Bay Hospital Foundation and North Bay Pride all link Rota to Yaroslav Hunka.
In the last few days, Anthony Rota has apologized several times and has tried as hard as he could to downplay any association between himself and Yaroslav Hunka.
Although Rota has stepped down as the Speaker of the House of Commons, he has not resigned his role as an MP and many Canadians are still wondering how such a monumental embarrassment could happen.
The Prime Minister has refused to apologize and his Liberal house leader, Karina Gould is sticking to the story that “The government played no role. It did not know he would be there.”
In his statement on Sunday night Anthony Rota said:
“This initiative was entirely my own, the individual in question being from my riding and having been brought to my attention.”
The Liberals and Rota are going the extra mile to pretend like this was just one person’s misunderstanding. Rota is trying to make us believe that he just found out about Hunka on Friday like the rest of Canada.
But I believe Rota is being dishonest with the Canadian public. There are many instances that show a connection between Yaroslav Hunka’s family and Mr. Rota going back to the beginning of Rota’s political career.
First there is Yaroslav Hunka’s son, Martin Hunka who presumably accompanied him to the House of Commons on Friday.
Up until recently Martin Hunka was the Chief Financial Officer of Redpath Mining, a large multinational corporation who has it’s global head office in North Bay. Redpath might be the most significant private company headquartered in Rota’s riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming. In 2021, Rota announced significant funding for the Redpath Youth Centre in North Bay.
In Rota’s early years of Federal Politics, Redpath was a large contributor to his campaign.
In 2005, when Martin Hunka was the Vice President of Finance for Redpath, the company helped out Rota.
Then there is Martin Hunka’s prominent role with the North Bay Hospital Foundation. Hunka has been a board member since 2015 and is currently the Chair of this organization which Rota has been an active supporter of.
It appears that in the last few days, the North Bay Hospital Foundation has deleted the Facebook post below as well as removed Hunka from their list of directors online. No announcement of his removal was made.
Since Hunka became board member, Anthony Rota has attended and supported fundraisers for the hospital.
Martin is aware of his father’s past and has openly acknowledged his Nazi ties. When he attended a Ukraine rally in 2022, he told Baytoday.ca:
“For my dad here who is 97 this month, it has been a very difficult week. He is reliving the war that he fought, as history keeps repeating itself. He is reliving the war that he fought (WW2 against the Russians).” In the same interview, Yaroslav added: “In the last war, I joined the Ukrainian underground to fight Russia”
The third person accompanying him at the Ukrainian rally in 2022 is Hunka’s granddaughter and also has close ties to the MP as a board member and Secretary to one of Rota biggest allies, North Bay Pride.
Leshya Lecappelain was born Hunka but appears to have chosen to give up her maiden name to take her wife’s last name when they married in 2017.
Rota is extremely involved with North Bay Pride and surely would have crossed paths with this prominent Hunka family member. Shortly after Lecappelain joined the board, the group gave Rota an award.
In 2022, Rota gave the group $91,500. And then another $52,300 in 2023.
On top of the funding, Rota has attended multiple events for the group and frequently supports them on social media. North Bay Pride in turn does the same. Their Facebook page features Rota at least a dozen times in the last few years and frequently criticized the opposition party.
In conclusion, it appears Rota and the Hunka family may have more ties than he is disclosing. It is very hard to believe that this family was just recently “brought to his attention”.
Rejean Venne is a regular newsletter providing insight and analysis on Canadian issues. Please consider becoming a subscriber.
Awesome work.
That’s a lot of digging OMG. They are all connected and all for the money! Our tax money!!! So infuriating!!!!! 🤬