Evidence of meeting #13 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russia.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
I gather from your answer that we couldn't begin to speculate about what that probability might be.
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, As an Individual
We won't be able to see it because it's a closed political system. If his opponents are scheming, they are hiding from him and from us.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Okay.
Can I hear about the nuclear chain of command? I want to try to get one more question in after that.
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean, As an Individual
I share Professor Dyczok's take. Almost everything is possible.
On the chain of command, if you want to use a nuclear weapon, you need the approval of three guys: Mr. Putin, Mr. Gerasimov and Mr. Shoigu, the defence minister. This is why Mr. Putin called them earlier. In the very early stages, he had a special meeting with Mr. Gerasimov and Mr. Shoigu, and basically asked them to put the nuclear strategic command on high alert.
We didn't know at that point if that would mean the mobile launching base would be put on the railway. There was no observation of any movement, just adding more staff around, so we don't....
He needs three guys and he controls these two guys, so—
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you. I have 30 seconds.
What is China doing? What is China's agenda? What can we do to counter Chinese engagement in this situation?
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, As an Individual
China is just waiting to see how it's going to benefit. It's not going to support Russia or oppose Russia. It wants Russia to become weaker and then it will take over Russia's position in the international.... That's what China is waiting for.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Why does China want Russia to be weaker?
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, As an Individual
It is because it can then fill in Russia's place and have a more prominent role.
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean, As an Individual
It's gaining access to cheaper natural resources. China is definitely the winner in this confrontation.
Russia is now stocked with this eternal friendship, as they called it at the start of the Olympic Games. Everything is moving, but China is siding with Russia in this battle against American unilateralism and the call for a multipolar world, so this eternal friendship might....
I don't think Russia is too comfortable with the asymmetric relationship they're engaged in with China in the long term, but at the same time, China is laughing because this is what is at stake.
If the west is trying to take both Russia and China at the same time, we have a problem. We don't have the economic and military resources to take these two superpowers at the same time. Nixon—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thanks very much, Professor. We'll have to leave it there.
Thank you, Mr. Genuis.
Dr. Fry, you have three minutes.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'm going to cut to the chase, because there are a couple of things.
As everyone knows, this is a catch-22 situation. You talked about the bar fight, and the guys standing behind Russia are Iran, possibly India, North Korea and China. These are the guys with the big guns. We are coming to that bar fight with knives. We have only one guy with a gun, and that is the United States of America.
In the beginning, when the Budapest agreement was put forward, that deed took away nuclear power from Kazakhstan, from Ukraine and from a lot of other people, so—
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, As an Individual
Belarus.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
—we don't have any big, new nuclear powers in Europe.
The second thing we must look at isn't whether he can press the button or not. It may very well be that these other guys standing behind him all have an argument with the west and with the United States, and they all want to prove a point. At the moment, we are hearing that nobody wants to push him in case he does this, so we are at a standoff here. Nobody wants to push him, yet he needs to be pushed a little further. Economic sanctions, unless we remove the Russians completely from SWIFT, are not going to work.
What do we have in our armament?
I am concerned about nuclear war. I think the last time we came as close as this was during the Bay of Pigs. Were it not for the political will of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev at the time, there would have been a nuclear war.
We know that we're on the verge of this. This has to be a consideration, but it shouldn't stop us from doing anything. What are the things that we, as the west, as the “allies” can do?
You're absolutely right. This is a standoff. At the end of the day, in the long term, it may very well be that Mr. Putin will not press buttons, and that all he really wants is to retain Donbass, Luhansk and Crimea and to get hold of Transnistria, etc. He may just be looking to do that, but he's putting big guns in front of him to get it done.
Associate Professor, Departments of History and Political Science, Western University, As an Individual
I agree with you. This is a standoff, and the existing tools we have as members of the international community are inadequate. That was my point.
This is the time to come up with new ideas. I'm racking my brain, and I think we all need to.
I don't know that we're coming to this with knives, because an important part of what's going on here is an information war, and I don't think that should be discounted.
There's a lot of speculation, which you've just mentioned, on what Putin wants. He's made it very clear what he wants, and he's repeated it over and over again. There's that long article he wrote about how Ukraine is not a nation; Ukraine is really part of Russia. In previous statements that he's made, in his mind, Ukraine is part of Russia and he's trying to establish control over Ukraine and achieve regional hegemony. It's not about Crimea or Donbass, it's about restoring Russian greatness. If you're watching his statements, he's restoring Russian glory, and the way he's spinning it—
Liberal
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
I didn't get a chance to [Inaudible—Editor]. That was a very short three minutes, Mr. Chair. I'm not pushing you on it. I would have liked to hear from Professor Breault on this, but there you go.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Professor Breault, if you have a 20-second addition, I will give that to you, and then we'll have to go to Mr. Bergeron, just in the interests of time. We are very tight this afternoon.
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean, As an Individual
I'm a bad guy here, because the point is not whether we are right or wrong to try to oppose the dictator. It is, do we have the means? The answer is that we don't.
What is ending is that unipolar moment in which we thought NATO could play a role worldwide. What Russia and China are going to impose is a step back. The fact is that they will have their own sphere of influence, like they did when they engaged in 1968 in Prague, in 1956 in Czechoslovakia, and when they were in Afghanistan. All of this was terrible, but at that time we were acknowledging their strength and we said, “That's in their courtyard.”
I think this is—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you so much. We'll have to leave it there, just because time is running very furiously this afternoon.
Mr. Bergeron, you have the floor for two minutes.
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Perhaps I will have the chance to give Dr. Breault the opportunity to complete his answer.
These days, we are hearing from Ukrainian parliamentarians. They are telling us that the peace negotiations, in their opinion, are just a smoke screen and that Russia has no intention of concluding anything with Ukraine. They say that Russia claims to want to make a strategic withdrawal to concentrate on the Donbass, but this is still just a smoke screen, a cop-out, a ruse. They claim that the objective is still to take Kyiv.
What do you think about that?
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean, As an Individual
I believe that the current talks are doomed to failure, because the Ukrainians are not prepared to make any concessions either. For the survival of civilians in Ukraine, I would have liked to hear the Ukrainians accept the idea of neutrality and say that the idea of becoming a member of NATO is not acceptable. One could understand that.
Why not drop the Donbass, which is so pro-Russian? Why not recognize Russian sovereignty and focus on what would still be a great Ukraine, which could aspire to integration into the European economic space?
Why is the problem of corruption and lack of transparency not being addressed? I am sorry, but Ukraine is not a democracy. Opposition newspapers have been closed down, and I remind you that a few months before Mr. Zelenskyy knocked on NATO's door again, the ties between the International Monetary Fund and Ukraine were broken because Ukraine was not transparent enough.
So I hope that the Ukrainians will clean up their government. I think they should have made some concessions to save human lives. We encouraged them by supplying them with weapons. Now, in a way, they are the victims of our effort to limit President Putin's room for manoeuvre on the international stage. That breaks my heart.
Bloc
Assistant Professor, Royal Military College Saint-Jean, As an Individual
I find it appalling to have to answer in the affirmative, Mr. Bergeron.
That will have to be the case if we want this situation to be resolved, unless we find another solution or there is a palace revolution. I would like to believe in such a revolution, but I do not.
In order to save human lives, we should perhaps explain to the Ukrainians that they should consider the options that are presented. We sometimes hear them say that they even dream of going all the way.
My words go against the grain and I'm embarrassed to say them, because they go against what I want deep in my soul.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sven Spengemann
Thank you, Mr. Bergeron and Dr. Breault.
We have Madam McPherson, please, for two minutes.