Evidence of meeting #60 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ukraine.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON
Thank you for being here this morning.
It was also wonderful to see you yesterday at the National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony, with your entire Ukrainian delegation, including the ambassador.
As chair of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights, I want to come back to the topic that my colleague Mr. Kmiec raised, for a bit of a deeper assessment of the human rights situation.
On the third anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, our foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland unreservedly denounced the severe repression of human rights in occupied Crimea. Can you talk about the situation being faced by the minority communities in Crimea?
Russia banned the self-governing body of the Crimean Tatars, the Mejlis, and our foreign affairs minister has noted how we are deeply troubled by politically motivated application of anti-terror and anti-extremist legislation, which has led to the harassment of human rights activists, arbitrary detentions and disappearances, and the persecution of Crimean Tatars and other minorities.
We understand that an estimated 10,000 Tatars have left Crimea since it was annexed. Can you shed some light on the human rights situation and the threats that minorities are facing in this region?
Oksana Syroyid
Yes. As you were just mentioning, just yesterday there was the case of one more Crimean Tatar who has been arrested and sentenced in Kuban, actually.
The situation is drastic. You understand that this is the consequence of what Russia has aimed to do. Of course, the human rights situation for both the Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian minority is awful. Very rarely do you hear somebody mention that there's a Ukrainian minority there. Unfortunately, those people are prosecuted just for being a minority, just for being Tatars or for being Ukrainians. There's no other reason.
I believe that what we have to do, all together, is to put more attention on the primary reasons it's happening. Maybe people eventually will get that this is just because Russia entered Crimea, is trying to build a military base there, and is trying to empty this land of anyone except Russian soldiers. This is primary objective of the whole occupation of Crimea. It's to establish the military base and empty the land so that it is filled only with Russian soldiers and Russian weapons. If we don't speak about this, about the primary reason for this occupation and annexation of Crimea, we can collect all this information about human rights violations, yes, but eventually we will lose the focus. Eventually we will not be able to have an impact on the situation, to change the situation, even when we return Crimea back....
In my understanding—this is my personal view—I believe we have to pay way more attention to the primary reasons for the occupation and the illegal annexation of Crimea.
His Excellency Andriy Shevchenko Ambassador, Embassy of Ukraine in Canada
May I briefly add a comment on the same issue?
Andriy Shevchenko
In the very same statement, Minister Freeland also specifically raised the issue of OSCE access to Crimea specifically to monitor the human rights violations. There is no access at the moment. Recently, in the last two weeks, the Council of Europe passed a very important resolution on Crimea, which provides very important legal guidelines on how we should read the situation. I strongly encourage you to look into this very important piece of legislation.
The Council of Europe specifically mentioned that we badly need access for human rights monitoring groups in Crimea. We hear absolutely terrible stories every day about people who are missing, people who are under repression: Crimean Tatars, Ukrainians, and different religious representatives. We badly need access into the peninsula for human rights monitoring groups. Russia, as an occupying power, is responsible for this territory and for maintaining basic human rights there, so I encourage all of us to work together so we can ensure the success of human rights monitoring groups.
Thanks for raising this issue.
Oksana Syroyid
By the way, speaking of the OSCE, on the one hand, we are trying to encourage the OSCE to be there and to monitor human rights, but on the other hand, in the recent election monitoring report from the Russian elections done by the OSCE/ODIHR, they even don't mention the Russian occupation of Crimea. They never mention it. They just mention that they didn't monitor elections in Crimea and don't even specify the reasons why.
The Ukrainian parliament reacted to this, but nobody else did. Everybody accepted this monitoring. In principle, by accepting such a report, we are legitimizing what is happening there. It is important to fight and to provide access in order to monitor human rights, but in the same way, it's important not to forget the reason why it's happening.
Liberal
Michael Levitt Liberal York Centre, ON
The Canadian government has committed over $88 million in assistance to support democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Can you talk about the state of civil society in Ukraine, for example, and what we can be doing? How can Canada be helping beyond just the dollars? What is the current state of civil society?
Oksana Syroyid
Ukraine has fantastic civil society that is maturing a lot now. I think you know that in the most critical period of time after the revolution of dignity, civil society substituted a lot of governmental institutions. They actually were doing the work that government or parliament should do. It could not last forever, so actually we had to step in and do our job.
Civil society has to stay as the watchdog for this activity. They are developing more capacity as think tanks, and some of them are developing more capacity as advocacy organizations. This is fantastic, as of course are all those efforts by international support, in particular by the Canadian government.
I cannot overestimate them. If it wasn't for your support in particular, those civil society organizations would die. Unfortunately, they would not be able to survive, especially under the previous government of Yanukovych.
Unfortunately, the current government also learned bad things from previous experiences. Quite recently, the parliament passed a very shameful law that forced civil society organizations to submit electronic declarations of their members. We were the only party that strongly opposed this. This was the revenge of those politicians who were forced by civil society organizations to be transparent with their incomes. We believe that this practice will not last long. It's a very bad practice.
I think that our civil society will handle this. To prove this, I can tell you that even though the law was passed only this year, a lot of civil society leaders, especially those who work in anti-corruption areas, had started to submit their electronic declarations even before the law was adopted. I believe this is a very good sign.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bob Nault
Thank you very much.
We're going to go to Mr. McKay, please. I'm trying to get everybody in, if I can, so I apologize for cutting you off.
Mr. McKay.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for your testimony.
I have two questions. You started your presentation talking about whether Ukraine is an object or a subject. You've been to Washington. Reading the tea leaves, it would appear that for the U.S. administration, Ukraine is more of an object rather than a subject—that you are simply a strategic asset to be deployed from time to time in order to smooth over relationships between the Russians and the Americans. I'm interested in your observations with respect to your visit to Washington in a bit more detail.
My second question is with respect to the issues raised by Mr. Kmiec regarding the provision of lethal aid and the radar images. That has been an issue of some concern, particularly at the Department of National Defence, and there's a concern that things don't end up where they should end up. I'd be interested in your advice to the Department of National Defence specifically, and to the Government of Canada generally, with respect to how the government can receive some assurances that this important military material doesn't go where it shouldn't go. We have an obligation to our own citizens to make sure that if we provide this material, it's not used for anything other than what was intended.
Oksana Syroyid
Thank you very much.
We have the same concerns, and we are ready to face them and to fix them. We believe it is our task as a parliament to do so.
I understand the nature of the concerns. Unfortunately, Ukrainian parliaments still lack appropriate parliamentary oversight over defence and security. This is task number one to fulfill.
Now we are saying openly to our MPs that we are all lobbying for defence weapons for Ukraine, and this is what the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian army are expecting as well. It's our task to ensure that these weapons are used appropriately and efficiently.
What shall be done? First, we are now working closely on the bill on national security. It has to ensure that there is appropriate civilian control, that is, parliamentary oversight over defence and security, the defence budget, and a transparent change of command for the Ukrainian army. Second, there is the reform of the military industry, which I believe also will contribute to this. The third issue is—and we've also been discussing this with our U.S. partners, and I believe we can extend this discussion to involve you—to establish appropriate inventory and monitoring of the use of international assistance in the area of defence and security. This should also be part of Ukrainian legislation.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Excuse me. Can you repeat that again? You want to establish an appropriate—
Oksana Syroyid
I said, “inventory and monitoring”, meaning how the foreign defence assistance is used in Ukraine.
I believe if you have this, we will be able to ensure it. I know the U.S. Government, for example, is now undertaking an audit of what has so far been provided to Ukraine, and they would like to monitor it further.
It's a process, and we are very open to work on this and to fix it. We absolutely are aware of all the challenges.
Oksana Syroyid
You probably know pretty well that the policy towards Ukraine as well as towards Russia is not settled yet. To a big extent, it's on the level of assumptions based on the public speeches of the president, the vice-president, the secretary of state, and so on.
Our task was to communicate what is going on and to understand where the major trends are. It was a challenge for us. A lot of positions are not filled yet, and some of those positions are supposed to be responsible for the policy towards Ukraine.
Liberal
Andriy Shevchenko
We strongly encourage you to use your connections to help us educate the U.S. administration on issues of global importance such as Ukraine.
We very much appreciate those of you who are in touch with your American colleagues. I know about Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's visit to Washington this year, and I know some other members of the committee travelled there as well.
Thanks for this.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I want to return briefly to privatization. Then I want to ask you about your foreign relations with other countries.
I want to ask you about the advisers. I know that when Poland gained its independence from the Soviet Union, Janusz Lewandowski was the Polish minister in charge of privatization. They had hired amongst others Jeffrey Sachs, David Lipton, and Bartlomiej Kaminski, who was a professor at the University of Maryland, to help them in their privatization drive.
Has the Ukrainian parliament directed the hiring of foreign experts to help in the privatization?
Mr. Miroshnichenko, you have said for two years now that there has not been any privatization of state-owned enterprises. That was always this problem in Poland. Górnicy and others made it very difficult, but it was essential to reach higher GDP growth as well as the greater employment, higher incomes, and the taxation that comes from it.
Have you hired foreign experts? Are you actually using them? Is the government using them, or are they just there for window dressing?
Oksana Syroyid
There are two issues. First, we do have advisers. They do provide good advice, but they advise on the strategy for privatization. However, before going to a particular implementation of privatization, you have to have framework that ensures transparent privatization. Unfortunately, privatization in Ukraine was a bad story. It was not a success story, except for maybe Kryvorizhstal.
We don't want to undermine the legitimacy of the process. We understand that a lot of people would like to use privatization to enrich themselves. This is how the oligarchy has been established in Ukraine: through privatization. We cannot do this anymore. That's why our first task is to establish transparent management of state property, and then the privatization procedure for both small and strategic enterprises, and the transparent management of and accountability for the State Property Fund. Unfortunately, two heads of the State Property Fund died, and we have reason to suspect that this was because of their professional activity. This is the reality so you can understand the grounds and the environment of privatization in Ukraine.
We just want to make sure it is transparent. Afterwards, we believe that any advisers would be very useful.