Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

So to be clear, it would not be your recommendation to offer asylum or honorary citizenship at this point in time.

[Jillian Stirk]

Well, that would be a decision for the government to make. At the moment, our focus has been on strengthening the institutions in Ukraine and focusing on the broader opposition, which is of course much more than one individual.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

I'll defer to Mr. Sopuck.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Sopuck, you have two and a half minutes, sir.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Thanks.

How is Canada thought of in Ukraine? The second part of that question is, does our opinion matter to the Government of Ukraine?

[Jillian Stirk]

Mr. Chairman, I think Canada is thought of very highly in Ukraine. Much of this goes back to the strength of the relationship between our peoples: the tremendous contribution that of course Canadians of Ukrainian origin have made in this country, but perhaps even more important, the contribution that many of them have made to the rebuilding of Ukraine. There are very strong ties at all levels of civil society. I would say that many of those organizations look to Canada as an example and feel that they could learn from our own experiences here in building a strong, robust civil society.

Civil society, I think, is very much engaged in.... I'm sorry, but what was the second part of the question?

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

In terms of the government itself, does our opinion matter to the Government of Ukraine?

[Jillian Stirk]

I believe it does. Again, because of the close relationship and the support the Government of Canada and indeed the people of Canada have provided to Ukraine, I think the Ukrainian leadership does care when we deliver these kinds of tough messages. They are anxious to have Canadian parliamentarians visit their country. They're always made very welcome there. I believe they do take our messages seriously.

We know that during the course of the trial, at the time when our minister and Prime Minister were writing--and indeed, other political leaders from the United States and the European Union were doing the same thing--President Yanukovych did step back and let the trial take a longer period to play out, to give Madam Tymoshenko a greater period of time to prepare herself. Whether or not that was directly related to those messages is not clear, but I do believe we can have an impact.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

In your remarks, you talked about the continued pervasiveness of corruption. Once a culture of corruption takes hold, it's very difficult to root out. Is there hope for institutional reform in Ukraine? Do you see any progress toward that?

[Jillian Stirk]

Mr. Chairman, I absolutely believe that there is hope for institutional reform, and I believe that there's certainly a will among the Ukrainian people to see that reform take place.

We've seen progress over the years since independence, but it has been a halting progress and has sometimes been reversed. Putting in place democratic structures, real respect for human rights, and rule of law after 70 years of Soviet rule is not something that can be achieved easily or overnight. So it's perhaps not surprising that there's not a clearer trajectory, but rather that this is a process which will take some time. There will be setbacks, but certainly I remain hopeful.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

I thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

We're going to finish up now.

Mr. Morin, you have five minutes, sir.

[Marc-André Morin, NDP, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it's hard to look at the present situation in Ukraine without putting it in the historical context of the collapse of the USSR. We've seen from history that the collapse of the Ottoman Empire caused World War I. There are also all the problems currently being experienced in the Middle East. The collapse of the USSR led to a host of events that were not very controllable.

Ukraine is unfortunately in an extremely uncomfortable geographic position. For hundreds of years, the Ukrainian people have always paid a heavy price in all the conflicts among the major international powers. The same is somewhat true today.

Russia is seeking to regain its political and military influence in the region. We also saw what happened in Georgia, for example, where the Western countries rushed in to support a regime. After 70 years of repression, those people had developed an animosity toward Russia and felt supported to the point where they could start a war. The end result is that tens of thousands of people were killed. That didn't do much to change the situation.

I wonder to what extent we're considering the actual welfare of Ukrainian citizens. Historically, they've been betrayed by all the major powers for 150 to 200 years. How far should we take that into account in our actions? For example, all the aid we can direct to Ukraine should be directed to civil society. That would have the effect of improving the well-being of Ukrainians directly instead of trying to disregard long-term philosophical, historical and political questions. We should be trying to act from a virtually humanitarian perspective.

The situation the people in Ukraine are currently experiencing is not a vacation. People are picking up old Russian military trucks and repairing them with whatever they have on hand. They deliver wheat to obsolete port facilities abandoned by the USSR. The hammer and sickle are still above the entrance to those facilities. These people get by through incredible creativity and ingenuity. I believe we have to find a way to help them directly in improving their living conditions.

That would be preferable to adopting the attitude of the Europeans and Americans. Our interests are different. We want to support the Ukrainian people because a lot of our citizens are of Ukrainian origin. We feel solidarity toward them. However, Europe does not have the same interest. Europe wants the Russian pipelines to cross Ukraine so they can get the natural gas they need to run their economy.

We should take a step back and look at the overall political context in order to see what we can do that would be more useful for those people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Just give us a quick response, please. We're almost out of time.

[Jillian Stirk]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Yes, I believe that Canada's contribution is really based on support for the Ukrainian people, and we are continuing in that vein.

Canada is the fourth-largest donor of bilateral technical assistance to Ukraine, and of course we have been active in that area since 1991. We also support, for example, the Chernobyl fund for nuclear safety and for cleaning up the results of that terrible accident in 1986.

We've also done it with groups in civil society to support and improve the situation.

As I said, we try to direct our efforts to supporting the Ukrainian people.

You really are right. It's absolutely very important to consider the situation of the Ukrainian people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Peter, did you have one quick question before we wrap up?

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Yes, I do. Thank you very much again.

We know that back during the Orange Revolution that.... I was in the Rada and when I was leaving the Rada, somebody showed me pictures of what they said were Russians in Ukrainian uniforms who were surrounding Kiev. We know that the military was surrounding Kiev at the time and was ready to move into Independence Square. From reports, we know, too, that the president-elect was being supported at that time by Russia. Russia did have a fair amount of influence in Ukraine at the time, so it was interesting to hear your comments.

Your comments today are predicated on Russia disagreeing with this action of the President of the Ukraine. In other words, Russia today is not supportive of what is happening. Could you be very clear on that for me, please?

[Jillian Stirk]

Thank you, Chairman.

What I intended to point out here was simply that the Russian government had criticized the judicial process involving Madam Tymoshenko. There may be a variety of reasons for that. It's very difficult to speculate on exactly what the Russian motives might be in this instance. Of course, as I said, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is a very complex one.

But I think it does underline one thing. I have to be careful how I put this. But when even Russia has concerns about the nature of the judicial process, I think it suggests to us that clearly this is politically motivated--

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

[Inaudible--Editor]...there as well.

[Jillian Stirk]

Certainly not with respect to this particular decision.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

To our witnesses, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to come out.

I'm not going to suspend the meeting, because we do want to take care of a little bit of committee business, so I'll just thank the witnesses once again for taking the time to be here this morning.

Committee, we have about 10 minutes before our next group comes in. You have a budget before you that really just pertains to the witnesses we have here for today, for the second part, and I also wanted to briefly discuss the possibility of what we could look at for next week, as we have a fairly light schedule. I want to get some suggestions on what or how we may handle that.

Does everyone have the budget in front of them? That should be the easy one to deal with. Are there any questions at all on the budget?

Okay? Then I'll just call the question: all those in favour of the budget?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay. Thank you very much. That was the easy part.

In terms of next week, I have a couple of suggestions and thought processes for that, but I also didn't want to take too much time to try to figure out what we may look at.

Ms. Laverdière.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

For next week, my understanding was that on Thursday, October 27, we were going to hear from the Global Fund, from Christoph Benn and Svend Robinson. This is still on the agenda, isn't it?