Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank Mr. Oliphant for his suggestions, but I do maintain the view that this is a motion. It's an adjournment motion in the context of an amendment to a motion, but the purpose of moving the original motion was very much about setting the agenda of the committee. It did so with some level of specificity. It didn't prescribe which dates those meetings would take place on, but it said that the committee should proceed with a study on a particular issue. That issue substantially was about abortion, as well as some other things. The context is that the Liberals are wanting to make the focus of discussion at the foreign affairs committee of Canada abortion, when we have the invasion of Ukraine and threats to Taiwan. We have various other challenges around the world. The Liberals' desire to reopen the debate on abortion in the context of the Foreign Affairs committee specifically, and let's acknowledge, in a whole bunch of other committees as well, is a question fundamentally of the agenda of the committee.
So what I'm doing is I'm putting forward an adjournment motion that says, let's focus our attention for the time being on the earth shattering events taking place in Ukraine, the implications for women and men there and around the world.
I do think it's important to acknowledge that perhaps before the direction from PMO came in saying, “Drop everything, because we want to be talking about abortion at every committee we can”, Liberal members were very pointed in talking about just how urgently it was to attend to the issue in Ukraine.
I might even quote remarks by Dr. Fry, who said on February 14, with the prescience of doing so prior to the further invasion, in I believe this committee:
We are seeing a global movement to get rid of democracy. We know that Taiwan and Ukraine are democratic. We see Russia doing what it's doing in Ukraine and we see China taking steps against Hong Kong and Taiwan. They're invading air space, moving very close to naval lines, etc. Is your sense that this is part of a joint action to get rid of democracy in the two major regions, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
And then she said again:
We are concerned about the big picture and that long-range plan to rid of world o democratic institutions and democratic nations?
If members agree that this is part of a strategic effort to make the world less safe for democracy, and I am inclined to generally agree with Dr. Fry's perspective, then, my goodness, folks, we are the foreign affairs committee. This is very much what we should be seized with. We should be seized with the urgency of what's going on.
The parliamentary secretary, Mr. Oliphant, said the following on April 5:
It has been more than a month since President Putin chose to unleash war on Ukraine. With every day that passes, the number of civilians, including children, killed and wounded continues to climb. We have witnessed Russian attacks on apartment buildings, public squares, theatres and maternity hospitals. In addition, recent reports and images of what Russian forces carried out in Bucha are horrifying and they are deeply shameful. Let me be clear. We believe that this amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and we are committee to holding President Putin and those supporting him accountable for their actions.
Mr. Oliphant said at the time that we were witnessing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and since then—I can't remember the exact date on which Ms. McPherson's motion came forward—the House has recognized that Russian forces are committing genocide in Ukraine.
I think Conservatives were saying some of these things a little bit earlier in the process, but if you just take what we've heard from Liberal members in recent days, they're saying there have been war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide as part of an effort to eradicate democracy and democratic institutions. That is the account being given by Liberal members in terms of where we are and where we might be going.
There are other committees in this place, but I would say, as the House's one foreign affairs committee, we have a responsibility to say, “Let's take this issue on in a serious way. Let's be engaged with the continuing emergence of events and let's be engaged with continuing developments as things go forward.”
I made the point, and I think many members have as well, that there is what is happening in Ukraine, and also what those events in Ukraine mean for the rest of the world and the kind of precedent-setting issues from this happening. Russia and China are very different states in many respects, but they are both governed by revisionist leaders who do not support the idea of an international rules-based order. They believe that nations should be able to exercise dominance and power, if they have that power to exercise, within their self-determined sphere of influence.
The position of Canada and its allies has been to assert that the relations among nations should be governed by rules and a set of principles and mechanisms of arbitration so that when nations have disputes, they don't need to resort to violence as the only way of mediating those disputes. That is the core idea of a rules-based international order, and it's one that makes everybody everywhere better off.
Hence, in invading Ukraine, the Putin regime is trying to upend that international rules-based order, and that order only exists if it is defended and protected and if there are consequences for those that violate it. Otherwise, nations will seize on this precedent and try to go further.
We have a separate study in the committee on the issue of Taiwan, but I think we always sort of understood that there was a notional linkage or implications between these issues and what has happened, and happens, in Ukraine and Taiwan. These have implications for other nations that might be a victim of subsequent aggression. If we allow the disregard of the principles of law and order in international affairs and the substitution of the rule of force in their place, then the consequences will be extremely dire.
Nonetheless, the invasion happened, and I think some people were very much surprised by the nature and scale of it—although I think there was still a significant expectation that there would be some kind of aggression by Russian forces against Ukraine.
I think one core goal we have to identify, and I think this has come out very well in some of the testimony we've heard already, is Putin's desire too boost his popularity at home, given his concerns about his declining popularity prior to the invasion and his desire to try to energize his image. We saw similar efforts by this regime before, going back to early horrific violence that Vladimir Putin was responsible for in Chechnya. These acts of violence appear to have created a kind of short-time “rally around the flag” impression, and there was not, in some of these early instances, a significance response from the rest of the world.
I think it looks like the Putin regime in a certain sense has miscalculated the level of strength and severity of the response from Ukraine and the effectiveness of the response from the rest of the world. The situation has been the initial stated war aim of effectively demilitarizing the entire country. What a lot of people expected and what our witnesses talked about was the desire of the Putin regime to install a puppet government of some sort. That doesn't look like it has any chance of succeeding.
I just remember in the first week of the war regularly checking the Kyiv hashtag to see if the capital was going to fall and what the situation was looking like. Ukrainians heroically resisted, and what was I think planned to be quick is obviously continuing. The Ukrainians deserve a huge amount of credit for their heroic resistance.
The international community has stepped up in various ways, and the Conservative position in response to that initial invasion was to say that we are supportive of the steps the government has taken to date. We continue to be supportive of the steps that have been taken, and we've also continued to put ideas forward for additional steps. Also, we've continued to say that we need to, in the appropriate way and at the appropriate time, certainly take note of how not strong enough or not forceful enough action prior to the invasion likely put us in a position of greater vulnerability.
Going forward, there's an issue that we need to look at in terms of how we support Ukraine, and I think we could find witnesses who support our efforts on all of these fronts. There was an urgent need for more weapons, for more lethal weapons that will effectively protect Ukrainians and try to support the ongoing heroic resistance. Again, “more weapons earlier, but better late than never”, and this continues to be a key ask. We had the pleasure of hearing from Ambassador Deshchytsia from Ukraine talk about the urgent need for more weapons. I think what we could do as a committee is that we could hear that testimony. We could hear specifically from those with expertise in weaponry and hardware and be able to then come back and make concrete recommendations to the government around the steps that we should take.
I'm always in favour of parliamentary committees grabbing their role and being very substantive and specific in recommendations. I think that sometimes the temptation for committees is to take the easy way out and say that the government should study such-and-such an issue. A committee has just been through a detailed study of an issue and says, “Well, it looks like we should do such-and-such, but we're not going to actually recommend that the government do such-and-such a thing, and we're going to recommend that the government do a further study on that particular point.” My view is that it's usually a missed opportunity for the committee members to take their collective knowledge and expertise, build on that and go from a recommendation for further study to actually providing those specifics.
When it comes to this vital need for lethal weaponry, we can go further in hearing more testimony and being specific. The issue I am hearing about over and over again in my riding with respect to how we can support Ukraine is the issue of energy security and recognizing the role that Canadian energy can play in displacing Russian gas and Russian energy products that are going into Europe. The Russian economy is heavily dependent on the export of natural resources. Europe is number one: Europe receives the majority of Russian gas and Russian oil products. Russia is also a significant exporter of coal, some of which goes to our democratic partners in the Indo-Pacific region, such as South Korea.
As nation with a very different economy in many ways from that of Russia, but also one that is a natural resource-producing country, Canada has an immense amount of potential to see the critical role we can play in the context of supporting Ukraine in its fight. It's to enable our democratic partners to impose tougher energy-related sanctions against the Putin regime. We can enable them to do that by exporting more of our oil and gas products to Europe and to the Asia-Pacific.
We have these long debates about pipelines and process in this country. I think those are important conversations, but we have to proceed with a recognition of the urgency here. The factors that we weigh out when we're making these decisions.... Yes, we have to take into consideration the economic effects, the effects on jobs and opportunity and issues of engaging indigenous communities that are affected by natural resource projects, many of which are supportive of those projects as well as environmental impacts. However, this global security dimension has not been a sufficient part of the discussion up until now. It needs to be part of the discussion to a much greater extent going forward. Recognizing the crisis that we're in, how do we move quickly?
The interesting thing is to see the government's response and how it's shifted over time. Initially, when we were raising these energy security issues, my colleague Mr. Chong had a motion before the House right after the invasion that flagged energy security as being a key piece of this. The government, sadly, didn't support that motion. Initially, the government was saying that the alternative was renewables.
I guess my response to that would be to just say that the alternative is everything. When Europe is continuing to effectively allow the Russian economy to function because of its own need for energy products and when we can displace those energy products through our own exports, we have a crucial role to play. It has a significant impact. It's one that just requires a recognition of the urgency, such that we can't wait for the development of new technology. No one is against new renewable technologies, but the urgency of the situation requires us to take an all-of-the-above approach.
It's good for the environment for Canada to produce and export more of its relatively cleanly produced energy products as an alternative to Russian exports. If we're able, in particular, for example, to provide alternatives to Russian coal in the Indo-Pacific region through the export of Canadian natural gas, that's a win-win-win. It's a win for the economy. It's a win for the environment. Most importantly, it's a win for the preservation of a democratic, free and rules-based world that I think all of us are so deeply concerned about passing on to our children and grandchildren. This is why the conversations we have around what our response should be, particularly in the case of Ukraine, are so important.
I've certainly met with a number of ambassadors who have highlighted the energy security issue as well. It's an issue throughout Europe. It's different for different countries. For instance, Poland produces a lot of coal. Providing Canadian natural gas as an alternative and providing Canadian technology around carbon capture and storage—the technologies we're developing as well as energy export.... It doesn't have to be security versus environment. We can think about both at the same time, but we need to move quickly on this energy security dimension. I would like us to be able to hear witnesses speak about that to this committee as well.
Another issue with respect to Ukraine that I think we need to think about and hopefully propose recommendations around is this proposal for a no-fly zone. In this connection, it was great that President Zelenskyy was able to come and speak to Parliament. His primary ask was for us to close the sky. I believe it was Ms. May from the Green Party who said “I do not support that”. Conservatives presented an alternative proposal that was a modified version of a no-fly zone. Basically, other parties, despite declaring solidarity and a commitment to stand with the people of Ukraine, didn't engage on the question of that specific proposal. It left a bit of a dissident impression, where there was an ask that was made of the government and there still hasn't been—at least in that moment, in the context of that debate—a clear response.
What Conservative leader Candice Bergen proposed was that we work to establish enforced humanitarian corridors. A reasonable step that we could take that would entail a much reduced risk of further escalation would be to say we are going to enforce and defend humanitarian corridors as an avenue for civilians to be safe and move to safety.
We have seen the horrific toll that this war has taken on Ukrainian civilians. Is there a role that NATO could play? Is there a role for Canada in putting ideas forward and leading within NATO to say that we should have that established no-fly-zone-type defence of limited areas of humanitarian corridors?
In the context of some of the negotiations that have been happening, Russian authorities have talked about this, but there hasn't really been a follow-through. This is a major challenge that I think this committee needs to hear recommendations on and make recommendations back to Parliament. This is the role...this is the potential of the foreign affairs committee to engage with the immense seriousness of what is in front of us with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is the potential to say, rather than play the PMO-directed political strategy of trying to make every single parliamentary committee, it seems, talk about abortion, let's actually talk about the fact that we have this war happening and let's zero in on the specific recommendations we could make in response to that war. Let's zero in on the specific recommendations we can make on lethal weapons, energy security, establishing a no-fly zone and/or having the enforcement of these sorts of humanitarian corridors.
These are the kinds of recommendations that we could bring forward if, as a committee, we say we want to work together, we want to do this seriously and we want to set an agenda in a collaborative way, but we want to focus on this critical issue confronting the world, rather than focus on some effort to stir up a domestic controversy.
I think we also need, as a committee, to really dig into the shifts in the Putin regime's rhetoric round its strategic positioning. In a sense, we should be careful to not put too much into what we hear from the Kremlin. We know that there is an effort to push misinformation and disinformation to try to throw us off track of what their intentions are. Nonetheless, it's important for us to be aware of and take note of the things that are being said and to then study what the implications of those things might be.
The initial stated reason for the invasion—and I'm reluctant to even repeat it, because it's so absurd—was the so-called denazification of Ukraine. These were totally ridiculous allegations that were made by the Putin regime. And then there was demilitarization. I think what's important to understand about the initial stated aspiration of the regime was that it was related to the entire country. It was expressed in terms of what was happening in all of Ukraine; it was not the articulation of specific regional objectives.
It started with, as everybody knows, an invasion from all sides, but an effort to strike across the Belarusian border and hit Kyiv. That failed, and we've seen a shift in some of the rhetoric towards more discussion of a more regional agenda. What does that mean? I don't think it means that in any sense we should weaken our resolve or our recognition that the threat is to the entire country, but we should also take note of how there is this apparent shifting in position. It responds, I think, to the intensity that Ukrainians have shown in defending their own sovereignty, the solidarity and strength that they've brought to the table and also the ability of the rest of the international community to step forward to speak about what's going on and to apply pressure in various ways.
I also think we need to be prepared for this to continue because the conflict isn't going to melt away. We need a longer term strategy, and I think that strategy needs to facilitate the maintenance and further escalation of economic sanctions, as well as sanctions targeting individuals who are involved in these acts of aggression. I think we need to recognize that and really escalate the pressure that's on. I'm taking note of that.
Mr. Chair, in making the case for the importance of the work that we need to do on Ukraine, I wanted to highlight a number of instances of the horrific atrocities we've seen in Ukraine. Members talked earlier in this debate about gender equality, the importance of combatting violence against women, and what we are seeing in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the horrific victimization of women, the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
It's unfathomable the horror of what we're seeing going on. As members have all agreed, there are war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide being committed, and I want to highlight a number of these stories that I think should bring into sharp focus the work we need to do and only we can do as the foreign affairs committee in responding to this. There was a recent story from the BBC of woman talking about how Russian soldiers raped her and killed her husband. She details the story. She's 50 years old, her name is Anna, she lives in a rural neighbourhood outside of Kyiv, and when the Russian soldiers came through, she was raped at gunpoint and her husband was killed. This is just one story of the violence. There's a picture here that basically they have a wooden cross in the yard where they buried her husband, after the Russians have pulled out of the area.
That's one story among many of the unrelenting violence that we've seen.
Another story I was able to find, entitled “U.N. told 'credible' claims of sexual violence against children as Russia's war drives a third of Ukrainians from their homes”, reads as follows:
Britain's ambassador to the United Nations said Thursday that there were “credible” claims Russian forces have committed sexual violence against children in Ukraine, as U.N. agencies said Vladimir Putin's invasion had driven more than 6 million people to flee the country. The U.N. refugee agency reported the grim statistic, which, combined with the roughly 8 million Ukrainians who have been displaced within their country, means a third of Ukraine's people have been forced from their homes.
The war's effect on Ukraine's youth has been particularly devastating, and Britain's U.N. ambassador said that appeared to extend to sexual violence committed against children by the invading forces.
British Ambassador Barbara Woodward, citing the U.N. humanitarian agency, said at least 238 children were believed to be among the thousands of civilians killed since Russia launched its war, with 347 more injured.
“There are credible allegations of sexual violence against children by Russian forces,” Woodward added. “As others have said, mass displacement has left children exposed to human trafficking and sexual exploitation.”
Last month, Ukrainian lawmaker Kira Rudyk told CBS News that sexual violence was being used systematically “in all the areas that were occupied by the Russians.”
“Rape is used as a tool of war in Ukraine to break our spirits, to humiliate us and to show us that we can be helpless to protect our women and children and their bodies,” Kira Rudyk, a member of Ukraine's Parliament, told CBS News. “It is happening systematically in the occupied territories.”
It's just horrifying to hear about these things happening. It's important for us to recognize the role we have as a committee in trying to combat this. I think the way we do it is by specifically focusing on how we can support Ukraine to win the ongoing war.
Recognizing this use of sexual violence as a tool by occupying forces in all of parts of Ukraine that are, according to this testimony, occupied by Russia should underline for us just how much of a role we need to play in preventing the further advance of that Russian aggression and in preventing the further occupation of Ukraine, and how we need to prioritize our engagement with this issue ahead of the political agendas that we may be being told should be pushed. This is the work we need to do: How can Ukraine win and ensure that more Ukrainian women and children don't have to live with the lifetime trauma that comes with these kinds of horrible events?
I'll continue reading from this article: At the Security Council on Thursday, U.N. children's agency...Deputy Executive Director Omar said “children and parents tell us of their 'living hell,' where they were forced to go hungry, drink from muddy puddles, and shelter from constant shelling and bombardments, dodging bombs, bullets and landmines as they fled.” He called the war “a child protection and child rights crisis.”
“Children in Ukraine have been displaced, hurt, orphaned, or killed,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Richard Mills told diplomats. “Of the nearly 14 million people forced to flee their homes since the conflict escalated, approximately half are innocent children; children who deserve a chance to live, grow, and thrive, but instead, are struggling every day to survive in horrific circumstances.”
Briefing diplomats at the Security Council, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Joyce Msuya said “civilians — particularly women and children — are paying the heaviest price” in the war.
Msuya said the situation was deeply worrying in the Luhansk region, in eastern Ukraine's industrial heartland of Donbas, where Russia is currently focusing its assault. She said there were an estimated 40,000 people cut off from electricity, water and gas supplies there alone.
The U.N. Human Rights Council met in a special session in Geneva on Thursday, meanwhile, where High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said “1,000 civilian bodies had been found in the Kyiv region alone...some had been killed in hostilities, but others appeared to have been summarily executed.”
“These killings of civilians often appeared to be intentional, carried out by snipers and soldiers. Civilians were killed when crossing the road or leaving their shelters to seek food and water. Others were killed as they fled in their vehicles,” Bachelet said.
CBS News partner network BBC News documented one such alleged killing on Thursday. The network obtained video from multiple security cameras around a business outside of Kyiv that appear to show several Russian soldiers shooting an unarmed civilian security guard in the back, and then looting the business.
One of the soldiers is seen breaking a security camera with the butt of his rifle, apparently upon realizing that he and his colleagues' actions were being recorded.
That's really hard information to share and to think about, but the kinds of atrocities that we are seeing in Ukraine are horrifying and unfathomable. They require the committee to urgently grab hold of this issue and, as part of its broader agenda, look at the issues of the atrocities that are going on.
I want to share from this story in The New York Times, called “'Clear patterns' of Russian rights abuses found in Ukraine, a report says”. It states:
Investigators from almost a dozen countries combed bombed-out towns and freshly dug graves in Ukraine on Wednesday for evidence of war crimes, and a wide-ranging investigation by an international security organization detailed what it said were “clear patterns” of human rights violations by Russian forces.
Some of the atrocities may constitute war crimes, said investigators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who examined myriad reports of rapes, abductions and attacks on civilian targets, as well as the use of banned munitions.
On Wednesday, civilians were still bearing much of the brunt of the seven-week-old invasion as Russian forces, massing for an assault in the east, bombarded Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, striking an apartment building.
In an hourlong phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s leader, President Biden said the United States, already a major provider of defensive armaments to Ukraine, would send an additional $800 million in military and other security aid. The package will include “new capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine”...
I'll just skip down a bit in the article to where it say this:
An International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes has been underway since last month, and a number of countries have been looking at ways for the United Nations to help create a special court that could prosecute Russia for what is known as the crime of aggression. Other possibilities include trying Russians in the courts of other nations under the principle of universal jurisdiction, the legal concept that some crimes are so egregious they can be prosecuted anywhere.
I note as well, and the members may be interested to know this, that the Subcommittee on International Human Rights is doing a study specifically on the issue of violations of international law and mechanisms by which there could be prosecution for those violations. I know some members of this committee are members of that committee. I think that's an important study as well.
Ironically, the same thing is happening at SDIR that is happening here, it seems, which is—I'm not sure what deliberations have happened in public or not, but I'm jumping off of what was said publicly here by Ms. McPherson—that in the midst of its study on human rights violations and atrocities being committed in Ukraine, there's an attempt to shift the agenda to a discussion about abortion. We have similar things happening here as in SDIR where—
