Mr. Chair, the difficulties that Ukraine has been going through sourcing its fuel and its gas supplies was mentioned earlier. The challenge was to turn away from the sources supplied to Russia to being supplied, or helped out, by the European Union. Earlier today, at committee meeting, there was a discussion on this and it evolved around the knowledge that Ukraine has huge resources of shale gas and other gas supplies that have not been developed. I felt that Russia holding Ukraine up for that trade contract over gas was repulsive.
This resource that is in the ground is being numbered into the multi-multi-billions. Does my colleague think perhaps that resource could be mortgaged, or bridge financed, to give Ukraine the short-term financial assistance it needs? This would not be just a gift to Ukraine, but an actual investment by some of the western countries that know how to put these financial packages together. With some $15 billion in resources sitting under the feet of Ukrainians, it would do well to have $10 billion of that released by some form of mortgaging by international companies that could co-operate on it.
What does the member think?