Mr. Chair, the member and I had the opportunity, as she pointed out, to travel to Ukraine with the parliamentary foreign affairs committee in May 2012.
Although we could not have predicted exactly how things would play out in Ukraine, I think we saw the seeds of what has happened in the last few months, while we were there. We saw the deterioration of rule of law. We saw the deterioration of press freedom. We saw manipulations with the democratic process. All of those things built pressure to bring down the Yanukovych government and bring the results we have seen in the last few days.
The member mentioned other organizations. We took the time while we were there to go to Kharkiv in the east and Lviv in the west. We met with members of civil society, non-governmental organizations. There are a number of those that Canada supports through the international development agency.
When I was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I had occasion to meet with a number of them. I was very encouraged to see that those same NGOs that were providing support for democracy in the parliamentary elections last year were also on the Maidan participating in a protest. Many of them are still there today, and some of them are actually even becoming members of the new transition government.
Canada has played a big role in supporting the development of democracy in Ukraine, and it will be able to continue to do so. I hope it will continue to do so in the future.