Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be able to join the committee today.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for their very honest and forthright presentations.
I'm proud to be part of a government that, going back over the last two decades, has seen Canada being such a strong supporter of Ukraine, starting with Brian Mulroney recognizing the independence of Ukraine in 1991. I was proud to be part of the official delegation led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper just a short while ago.
Also, of course, Parliament and the government supported my bill to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. As we know, the headache that Ukraine suffers from today is a result of that genocide, the Holodomor. What we see here is that ethnic Russians who were brought in to replace all the millions of Ukrainians who were killed are now influencing this whole political process, based upon ethnicity rather than what's good for Ukraine.
I was there to witness the last presidential elections. I was in Bila Tserkva and I was in Kiev and I saw some of the shenanigans that were being played out. I was shocked, along with many of my fellow people from the Ukrainian community who are here today, at how that election process played out. There was a lack of accountability. There was no transparency on who gets on the deputy list. I was looking forward to some of these reforms, especially with regard to having more direct representation, but with the way it has been presented and the way it's going forward, you have to question the constitutionality of the whole process.
I was there with the Prime Minister, along with our colleagues in the back of the room here, who witnessed how the press has already been brought underneath the thumb of the Yanukovych regime. Essentially, when Prime Minister Harper and our group were moving from the tomb of the unknown soldier, from making a presentation of the wreath at the memorial there and then walking a very short distance to the Holodomor memorial site, the local media left. They weren't welcome at that site. Only the Canadian media were there. It was the same thing when we were in Lviv, where the Prime Minister made the strong declaration that the Holodomor was a genocide. No local media were allowed in that room. Canadian media were there. So we could see that influence already.
I have to just ask about this. Canada has a number of agreements with Ukraine, such as the youth mobility agreement. We're negotiating a free trade agreement. We have the financial transaction agreements. I know where leading Ukrainian Canadians stand on wanting to keep engagement. I guess my question to our witnesses here is.... We're complaining about the actions that have been taken in relation to freedom of the press, to human rights, and to a free and open democratic process, yet everybody is saying “no sanctions”.
If you think, at least, in my opinion.... Yanukovych and his entourage are sitting there as cabinet ministers, saying, “Look what we've got away with already: we've got Tymoshenko in jail and we've got Lutsenko in jail, so let's look at who else we can throw in. We're going to take away all our political opposition, we're going to take away freedom of the press, and we're going to take away individual rights and freedoms.” And nobody is saying anything. I say that if you don't take sanctions, you're rewarding them. I'm looking forward to some feedback on that.