Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

In Washington I organize a monthly Ukraine policy forum, In June of this year, a few months ago now, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, in an off-the-record meeting, suggested that it's time the west leaked potential ideas for visa blacklists. They don't have to be concrete lists yet, but you can imagine that the impact of such a potential visa blacklist would be massive in Ukraine.

The west has far greater potential leverage over Ukraine than Belarus, because in Belarus there are no oligarchs. There are no people with huge houses in London, but in the Ukraine there are. These oligarchs are the main financial and political base of Viktor Yanukovych. If they begin to rebel against him, he's had it.

I think it needs to be a coordinated response to the effect that Canada, the U.S., and the EU will be participating. It doesn't have to be real yet, but if it's just leaked that we are discussing this possibility, it would have a big impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here today. I do hope it's not a problem if I admit to being over the age of 60 myself.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

There is another forum that this issue probably should be taken to, and it's of course the OSCE, which has been very much involved in elections over the years. I have been in Ukraine myself with them, I believe six times now. It's an organization of 56 countries: Canada and the United States, of course, and 54 European countries. Ukraine is a member and Russia is a member.

I was in Kazakhstan--in Astana--at one of their forums when the delegation from Ukraine put forward a resolution on the Holodomor. As an indication of what happens at these forums, once again Russia was in a bit of difficulty. Russia, through several of the countries, wanted to water down that resolution and effectively neutralize it, to change it from being a resolution that the Holodomor was the act of one man, Stalin, which it was, to its being an act of nature, which it was not.

I had the opportunity to work with the delegation from Ukraine, to stand on my chair and confront the actions that Russia was aggressively taking through several other countries. We were able to get that resolution through unchanged. Not a single word changed in it at the end of the plenary, and they went back to Ukraine with it completely intact, but this is an indication of Russia's influence, whether it's influencing Ukraine from the inside or from the outside.

So you really do have quite a handful in this scenario. I'm wondering if you shouldn't be taking this issue to the OSCE and having it discussed at one of their upcoming meetings, because this will be an ongoing scenario. I would think that it would be well worthwhile having it out in the forum of 56 countries, with a resolution perhaps being passed and accepted. It's a message.

But with that in mind, perhaps you could tell us what you envision as some of the influences coming from Russia, including influence by Russia on other countries, in the upcoming election expected in 2012. What could we expect and what should we be watching for? I'm sure many Canadians will be returning for a monitoring of that election. What can we expect?

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

I don't think it is necessarily a question of Russian bad influence that's going to lead to fraud in an election. Most people already believe that next year's elections will be fraudulent in Ukraine. They've already rigged the draft election law to suit them, and they're going to move from a full proportional to a mixed election system, with 50% elected in proportional and 50% in single mandate districts. That, they hope, will give them 50% to 60% of seats. Currently they're running at 15% popularity, so this is a big jump, which will of course marginalize the opposition.

They're already past masters at undertaking this fraud. One has to remember--and this is something that western policy-makers often have ignored--is that Viktor Yanukovych has never admitted to election fraud in 2004. He believes the Orange Revolution was a CIA operation designed to prevent his coming to power. You might laugh, but that's what he believes. That conspiracy mindset is very deeply Soviet and part of that world. It's the mindset of Vladimir Putin also.

Viktor Yanukovych, as governor, as prime minister, and as president, has overseen four elections since 1999. In all four elections there was election fraud. Free elections are just not part of his culture. You need to have a massive OSCE presence on the ground, as there was in 2004, and you need to spell out the concrete results of election fraud to them, not in the very diplomatic terms that the EU has been using until now, but in concrete terms, including what we talked about: potential visa blacklists.

As the EU ambassador to Ukraine says, if elections are fraudulent, then the window closes. Ukraine will then be perceived as a second Belarus and Viktor Yanukovych as a second Lukashenko. That will be the impact of fraudulent elections next year.

We can also expect, if the elections are fraudulent, that this would lead to potential protests and potential street violence. We have a very different scenario from 2004. When a president is leaving office, as in 2004, he's not likely to want to use violence to prevent the Orange Revolution from taking place because he doesn't want to leave office with blood on his hands, but these guys are not planning to leave office. They want to maintain office, and for them the most important thing is to ensure a massive parliamentary majority next year so that he can be re-elected in 2015.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

You comment on the manipulation of the election law in their favour. Understandably, Ukraine is a sovereign country. Who would have the authority or have the wherewithal be able to criticize laws in and out of the country? Has that issue been examined by any kind of body of people, inside or outside of the country, who can give some kind of an opinion on a methodology and whether that is going to be a negative factor in the upcoming election? Has there been any paper done on this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

What I am going to do here, Taras, is let you finish the question. Bells are ringing now, but I'm also going to let Mr. LeBlanc finish up with a couple of questions as well. Go ahead, Taras.

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

Yes, I did include an article in my testimony that I published this week on this question. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe has condemned the draft law. The Ukrainians asked the Venice commission themselves to comment on their draft law.

One of the major criticisms has been not only that they're going to increase the threshold to 5%, but also that the draft law was drafted by the president. The EU ambassador to Ukraine said that there is no European country where election laws are drafted by presidents. This just doesn't happen in a democratic country. Election laws are drafted by parliaments.

Also, the draft election law was not drafted with discussions with opposition parties. Opposition parties and civil society--and in effect, the west--have been ignored in the drafting of its election law. The aim of the law is to create a large majority in their favour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. LeBlanc.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Chairman, I'll be brief.

Thank you to the three witnesses. It has certainly been very interesting and very informative, and I appreciate the perspectives that all three of you offered.

I have two specific questions for Mr. Zalusky. In your comments, you reflected on the most recent election in the Ukraine. I heard you express some concern about the transparency or the legitimacy of the most recent election. I wonder if you could expand. We've heard a lot about some of the fears of the future election. I think all of those are well founded, but I wonder if you want to expand on your comments with respect to the most recent election.

A second question is on your brief, which I read. You talked about specific things that you think the Government of Canada should be looking for in any discussions around a potential free trade agreement. I wonder if you could expand on that as well and give us a sense, even more broadly, of specific things that the Government of Canada can do in the free trade agreement context or with respect to other initiatives. Some of your comments in the brief referred to work CIDA is doing. I wonder in the minute or two left if you want to expand on that.

Thank you.

[Taras Zalusky]

With respect to the 2010 local elections, which took place about a week after Prime Minister Harper's visit, we have evidence of several dozen incidents. The Ukraine local elections are massive undertakings. Every mayor, reeve, councillor, and dogcatcher--I think there were hundreds of thousands of people--is on the ballot.

But for the important oblast administrative posts, there was intimidation. The candidates were being visited by their local, friendly Party of Regions representatives and told that if they were to run for a different political party--and we have documented cases of this, at least 30 or 40--the prosecutor general's office would be opening up criminal proceedings against them and making their lives and the lives of their families and loved ones difficult.

So it's understandable that the Party of Regions therefore won those elections in about 80% of the cases. This is something that Robert Mugabe would be proud of.

With respect to the issues on a free trade agreement, first of all, I think that Canada has a principled position. As we've had with the free trade agreement signed with Colombia, there was a rider for the protection of human rights. I think that in this case what is more fundamental is that if we're signing free trade agreements, we do that with democracies, and there was a fundamental understanding, even in our agreement with Colombia, that the country was democratic.

I take the points of my two colleagues here that unless there is a demonstration of a commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and the minimum standards for democratic and fair elections, we should hold off, as well as inserting those types of protections in any negotiations.

With respect to additional engagement, one of the services that CBC International and Radio-Canada previously had provided was a service similar to what Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty do, which is Ukrainian-language programming. That was probably a small budget item, but it would be very useful for the Canadian perspective to be broadcast in Ukraine in the Ukrainian language. It's actually sad that the BBC recently cut that service--and yes, we still do the Russian-language programming.

I think we should do some work on long-term election monitoring. The types of fraud that may be perpetrated involve some insidious things. But also, if the mass media is controlled, as Ms. Shymko suggested--for example, by the head of the secret police, the SBU--it's very daunting that he owns television stations and that in the most recent distribution of cable licences he got another seven or eight licences. Also, other cabinet ministers got licences for their private companies. I think we need to be very cognizant that the media and the state-controlled media aren't broadcasting what's happening at the level of the international community. The response to Ms. Tymoshenko's conviction, luckily....

Ms. Latendresse asked a question in the House of Commons the other night—I was there for four hours. She asked whether everything we were talking about here in Canada was of any value in Ukraine. The results are very clear. Hundreds of articles have been published in Ukrainian newspapers, on the Internet, in Ukrayinska Pravda. Many have publicly reported the fact that there was an emergency debate and that ministers and representatives of all parties unanimously condemned what has happened in Ukraine with regard to Ms. Tymoshenko.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'm sorry, but we have to wrap up. We have votes, so I'm going to have to call the meeting to a close. We have less than 20 minutes to get over there.

Thank you very much. I apologize for the restricted time.

The meeting is adjourned.