Mr. Chair, in response to the events in Ukraine, and shortly after Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the initiation of aggression in eastern Ukraine, the government put in place a practice of severely, drastically curtailing engagement between the Canadian government and all of its officials and Russian government officials.
There is really very limited bilateral contact of any sort taking place. As you noted, the interaction took place on the margins of the G-20 summit in Brisbane, but apart from very few circumstances in which we feel that for the purposes of advancement and promotion of Canadian interests some normally low level of contact is required, we're not engaging in bilateral contact with the Russian Federation at the senior level.