26 Facts About Lewis MacKenzie

Lewis MacKenzie was criticized for his role in the Somalia Affair and for Canada's peacekeeping failures in Bosnia.

Lewis MacKenzie was later a vocal opponent of NATO's involvement in the Kosovo War.

Lewis MacKenzie is named after his great uncle, Liverpool, Nova Scotia schooner captain Lewis Wharton.

Lewis MacKenzie enlisted with The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada and was commissioned in 1960.

Between peacekeeping missions Lewis MacKenzie served as an instructor at the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College and as director of army training at St Hubert, Que.

Lewis MacKenzie retired from the Canadian Forces in 1993, after a 33-year career.

Lewis MacKenzie was the first Canadian, military or civilian, to be awarded a second Meritorious Service Cross.

Lewis MacKenzie was criticised by the Somalia Commission of Inquiry for his contribution to the Somalia Affair after Canadian Forces in Somalia committed human rights abuses and breaches of international humanitarian law and members of the Canadian command were found to have engaged in a subsequent cover-up.

The Commission observed that Lewis MacKenzie testified in an honest and straightforward manner; it did not always accept everything that he said but accepted that he offered the truth as he saw it.

The Commission found that Lewis MacKenzie had failed adequately to investigate the significant leadership and discipline problems in the Canadian Airborne Regiment, to inform himself of the problems and to take decisive remedial steps to ensure they were adequately resolved.

The Commission further ruled that Lewis MacKenzie had important obligations as a commander and so bore responsibility for the failures that attached to the discharge of those obligations.

Lewis MacKenzie's role was pivotal and despite the fact that he was necessarily absent from his post due to obligations condoned by his superiors, errors in the chain of command below him remained his responsibility and flowed upwards from him to the highest levels of the command structure.

In February 1992, Lewis MacKenzie was named chief of staff of the United Nations peacekeeping force in former Yugoslavia, tasked with supervising the cease-fire in Croatia.

Lewis MacKenzie created and assumed command of the peacekeeping force's Sector Sarajevo in May 1992.

Lewis MacKenzie used his UN force to open Sarajevo Airport for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Lewis MacKenzie returned from the Balkans in October 1992 in controversial circumstances.

Lewis MacKenzie has since written and lectured on his experiences in the former Yugoslavia questioning the numbers killed in the Srebrenica massacre, an event that came after his period of service in the area.

Lewis MacKenzie has challenged the findings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and, in 2005, contested the conclusions and reasoning of the Appeal Chamber's 2004 judgment in the Krstic case that the crime of genocide was perpetrated at Srebrenica in July 1995.

Lewis MacKenzie has disputed that Srebrenica ever was a UN Safe area, and argued that the demilitarization requirements imposed on both the Serb side and the Bosniak side were never fulfilled.

When Lewis MacKenzie confirmed the source of the funds was indeed SERBNET, he donated the entire fee to the Canadian Federation of Aids Research.

Lewis MacKenzie is frequently sought by Canadian broadcast media as a security and military affairs commentator:.

On 19 April 2010, Lewis MacKenzie was interviewed on CTV's Power Play in relation to accusations by Ahmadshah Malgarai, a translator, who witnessed interrogations in which a witness allegedly recounted that the Canadian military murdered a 17-year-old Afghan.

Lewis MacKenzie dismissed those accusations as "crap" and "insulting" to the Canadian military, while he viewed the denial by the Canadian military as credible.

The Tories improved their standing and regained official party status, though Lewis MacKenzie finished second to Liberal incumbent Andy Mitchell.

Around 2011, Lewis MacKenzie unsuccessfully advocated for a plan to revive and modernize the Avro Canada Arrow interceptor aircraft as an alternative to the Lockheed Martin Lightning II multirole fighter then being considered for Canadian service.

Lewis MacKenzie said he was not working for Bourdeau Industries, the private proposer of the plan, but governmental accountability advocate Duff Conacher, interviewed by the CBC, questioned Lewis MacKenzie's activity as a possible conflict of interest and expressed concern that it was possible for him to deliver a company's proposal to the government without being a registered lobbyist.