Mr. Chair, I am sure the member knows that we have a monument in Canada for victims of totalitarian communism. We know that the Ukrainians as a people suffered under a forced famine where goods and food were taken from them and sent to Europe to the Germans. We have seen documentation. My family suffered. That was a horrendous time in history. Millions of people died at the hands of the Soviet regime. Even prior to the Soviet regime, my father grew up in the Vinnytsia area of Ukraine. My grandfather was a middle-class farmer. Secondary schooling was in Russian. The language that my father mastered, although he spoke Ukrainian as a child, was Russian. He became a military officer in the czarist army. There was that pressure even then.
As my colleague mentioned, finally Ukraine had a chance to break out of the yoke of repression. We need to support this movement regardless of our origins so Ukraine can peacefully transition into a free and democratic state. I implore all of us to offer our support in any way we can.