With respect to the 2010 local elections, which took place about a week after Prime Minister Harper's visit, we have evidence of several dozen incidents. The Ukraine local elections are massive undertakings. Every mayor, reeve, councillor, and dogcatcher--I think there were hundreds of thousands of people--is on the ballot.
But for the important oblast administrative posts, there was intimidation. The candidates were being visited by their local, friendly Party of Regions representatives and told that if they were to run for a different political party--and we have documented cases of this, at least 30 or 40--the prosecutor general's office would be opening up criminal proceedings against them and making their lives and the lives of their families and loved ones difficult.
So it's understandable that the Party of Regions therefore won those elections in about 80% of the cases. This is something that Robert Mugabe would be proud of.
With respect to the issues on a free trade agreement, first of all, I think that Canada has a principled position. As we've had with the free trade agreement signed with Colombia, there was a rider for the protection of human rights. I think that in this case what is more fundamental is that if we're signing free trade agreements, we do that with democracies, and there was a fundamental understanding, even in our agreement with Colombia, that the country was democratic.
I take the points of my two colleagues here that unless there is a demonstration of a commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and the minimum standards for democratic and fair elections, we should hold off, as well as inserting those types of protections in any negotiations.
With respect to additional engagement, one of the services that CBC International and Radio-Canada previously had provided was a service similar to what Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty do, which is Ukrainian-language programming. That was probably a small budget item, but it would be very useful for the Canadian perspective to be broadcast in Ukraine in the Ukrainian language. It's actually sad that the BBC recently cut that service--and yes, we still do the Russian-language programming.
I think we should do some work on long-term election monitoring. The types of fraud that may be perpetrated involve some insidious things. But also, if the mass media is controlled, as Ms. Shymko suggested--for example, by the head of the secret police, the SBU--it's very daunting that he owns television stations and that in the most recent distribution of cable licences he got another seven or eight licences. Also, other cabinet ministers got licences for their private companies. I think we need to be very cognizant that the media and the state-controlled media aren't broadcasting what's happening at the level of the international community. The response to Ms. Tymoshenko's conviction, luckily....
Ms. Latendresse asked a question in the House of Commons the other night—I was there for four hours. She asked whether everything we were talking about here in Canada was of any value in Ukraine. The results are very clear. Hundreds of articles have been published in Ukrainian newspapers, on the Internet, in Ukrayinska Pravda. Many have publicly reported the fact that there was an emergency debate and that ministers and representatives of all parties unanimously condemned what has happened in Ukraine with regard to Ms. Tymoshenko.