Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all our witnesses for your presentations today. I know you've travelled a great distance to be here. As someone who's proud of his Ukrainian heritage, it's great to see that we have people from Ukraine, Poland, Britain, and Russia advocating for more democracy and freedoms within Ukraine.
I know that my baba and gido left Ukraine almost 100 years ago and never had the chance to feel democracy within Ukraine. They came to Canada to get that. My family is quite proud that one of the family is in the Parliament in Canada today.
I've been in Ukraine as an observer in the election process, and I have great concerns about the laws—whether or not they're even constitutional, and whether or not there's independent jurisprudence within the court systems. You talk about the influence that the government has, that Yanukovych has within the constitutional courts, and how that's going to slant the electoral outcome. You talk about having more election observation.
I was there with a lot of my friends, who are joining us here today, as election observers in the last presidential election. There's only so much we can do, and if they're going to continue to change the laws, how are we going to ensure a fair and open process?
I've always been opposed to the amount of money that's spent on elections in Ukraine. There's no cap. There was as much money spent in Ukraine on the presidential election this last go-round, just between Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovych, as there was in the last U.S. presidential election. It was $1 billion. It's atrocious that they're spending that type of money that could have been spent in better ways to stimulate the economy and create jobs and economic opportunities in Ukraine.
How do we change those laws? How do we provide that influence as Canadians? I know there should be increased monitoring and increased long-term overview and oversight of the electoral process and the electoral commission system, which is extremely partisan. In my opinion it should become a government agency that's completely unbiased.
I'm going to ask Mr. Tarasyuk and Mr. Nalyvaichenko to speak to that.
Dr. Sherr, I appreciated your very candid comments about how we can engage with the Russian influence within Ukraine. Perhaps you can talk about the whole role that civil societies may play in influencing what's happening on the ground within Ukraine.