I would like to refer all of you to slide number 44 in the presentation. It has an exact quote from the Bucharest 2008 decision on Ukraine and on Georgia. The direct quote from the summit decision says that the membership action plan is “the next step for Ukraine and Georgia on their direct way to membership”. The summit actually asked the foreign ministers to make a first assessment of progress at their December 2008 meeting. The foreign ministers were meant to decide on the membership action plan applications for Ukraine and Georgia.
Thirteen years later, we still have not seen any progress on that, and I can tell you that probably if we had seen that swift action in 2008 we would not have seen the Russian aggression into Georgia and into Ukraine. That can be an argument for those who say that we probably should not provoke Russia with any decisions we make—it actually works the other way around.
This time, we want to see a very good and genuine conversation about future co-operation between Ukraine and NATO, and I think we should recognize that Canada is in a very special position for that specific conversation.