Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is indeed a pleasure to be here on a Thursday afternoon at the foreign affairs committee.
I'd like to start off by making an observation. Again, I am not familiar with Mr. Oliphant's riding, but I was a bit concerned about his commentary that we're nothing but substitutes, seat fillers. Quite frankly, given the international importance of the Russian aggression against this country, this is a humanitarian issue. This is a parliamentarian issue and we, as proud Conservatives, believe that this is serious business that this committee is undertaking.
When I was asked by Mr. Genuis to assist, I took it as a badge of honour. I took it as an opportunity on a grander scale to express my concerns as a proud parliamentarian in the 44th Parliament, a new parliamentarian, I might add. My riding is Brantford—Brant. It is the home of a significant Ukrainian population. I grew up with many Ukrainians in grade school and high school and have many Ukrainian friends to this day. I felt the impact on the local stage as to how this war has impacted.
When asked for the opportunity to come here and talk about my feelings, I didn't view it as simply a seat warmer or as a substitute. It gives me an opportunity beyond the restrictions of a 30-second QP question or an S.O. 31 to truly express my views. I wanted to put that on record, because I was offended by that.
I also want to thank my colleague, Ms. Dancho, who stood up for her Conservative male colleagues in relation to the statement of the member for Edmonton Strathcona, because I viewed it in much the same light that Ms. Dancho did. It was offensive. It was uncalled for. I see a few members who know my background, but for many members who may not know my background, I left a 30-year law career to pursue politics, and in the last 18 years of those 30 years, Mr. Chair, I was a Crown attorney who took great pride as a specialist in dealing with the most serious, extreme, violent matters in my community, particularly in the realm of spousal abuse, sexual assault and children exploitation offences. I took great pride in being a strong advocate and a champion for women's issues.
I'm a proud, married individual. I too am going to be celebrating an important milestone this October—20 years with my spouse—and I'm raising two teenage daughters who turned 13 not too long ago. I don't call myself a feminist, but I certainly respect women's views, and I'm a champion of women's rights.
I say that because it's important to distinguish the importance of this study that you've already embarked on. I don't know how many meetings you've had prior to this intervention, but I know that it had been started some several weeks ago.
My point, Mr. Chair, is to Ms. Fry's motion: The most pressing issue that this world is facing right now is happening in Ukraine. It's not just impacting Ukrainians. It's not just impacting the citizens who are actually there fighting the resistance. It's not just impacting the residents who have been displaced and have fled the country looking for safe passage and refuge. It's quite frankly affecting all of Europe, and it's affecting the entire world.
Quite frankly, there isn't a day that goes by in the House—and even if I refer to some of my observations of politics down south there isn't a day that goes by—that you don't either read about it or hear about it or watch it on television, and where the leaders, leaders of this country and leaders of the United States, are all blaming inflation and the rise in everything—gas prices, housing issues...it's all Putin's fault.
To say that we should be looking at standing down, adjourning or deferring—whatever nomenclature you want to use—this important study to then embark on another study.... I'm not saying that it's not important. I'm talking about timing, Mr. Chair. The only reason this is being brought up.... I'll deal with the elephant in the room. The only reason this is being brought up is because of what's happening south of the border: the leak from the Supreme Court and the backlash and the fear and the worry.
It's not happening here in Canada. We have settled law. It's been settled law in this country for several decades. There's no urgency, Mr. Chair. There is no rush to suspend this most critical, important study, quite frankly, of my lifetime and the lifetime of my wife and my children, because we are on the brink of a third world war. We are on the brink; we're within a hair's breadth of Putin's invading a NATO country. We all know what article 5 says, so this is extremely important and ought not, in my view as a guest of this committee, to be derailed by another study.
I'd like to spend some time now talking about my personal connections to the Ukrainian people. I talked about my ties in my hometown. I was a very proud MP, Mr. Chair, when a constituent of mine reached out to me for the first time, introduced himself and came up with an idea, an idea that I believe I was the first member of Parliament to advance and speak about very proudly in the House on an S.O. 31.
He asked what I thought about the idea of having a twinning agreement between my hometown and a town in Ukraine. I said that I'd not thought about it, but what a wonderful gesture, what a wonderful idea. We talked about it. Literally within two weeks, with the able and most important assistance of my legislative assistant, Vladimir, who's also known as Walter and about whom I'll talk in a little more detail, we were able to consult with the mayor in Kamianets-Podilskyi in the Ukraine, and we were able, with the mayor of my hometown of Brantford, to sign a twinning agreement.
The town of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Mr. Chair, is located in southwest Ukraine near the borders with Moldova and Romania. Like Brantford, Kamianets-Podilskyi has a population of 100,000 people and centres on manufacturing and tourism, which are two key sectors of my riding of Brantford—Brant.
Now we are taking active steps with social agencies and Ukrainian churches, again with the assistance of both mayors and my legislative assistant, Walter, to welcome thousands of Ukrainian refugees into my community. We are looking at various homes and billeting. We are looking at cultural centres. We are looking at places that ordinarily would be open only for spring, summer and fall camping. We're looking at opportunities to make the lives of Ukrainians fleeing the persecution that much better.
I'd like to provide a bit of a historical account, because I don't know if it's ever been shared with this committee, but I was able in the time that I was asked to consider my participation today to do a little research. I've always been fond of history. I majored in political science and history in university. I found an article called “The 20th-Century History Behind Russia's Invasion of Ukraine”, which I'd love to share with the committee at this time.
Before Russian forces fired rockets at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv; seized Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident; and attacked Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin shared some choice words.
In an essay published on the Kremlin's website in Russian, Ukrainian and English last July, Putin credited Soviet leaders with inventing a Ukrainian republic within the Soviet Union in 1922, forging a fictitious state unworthy of sovereignty out of historically Russian territory. After Ukraine declared its independence in 1991, the president argued, Ukrainian leaders “began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united [Russia and Ukraine], and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.”
The “historical reality” of modern-day Ukraine is more complex than Putin's version of events, encompassing “a thousand-year history of changing religions, borders and peoples,” according to the New York Times. “[M]any conquests by warring factions and Ukraine's diverse geography...created a complex fabric of multiethnic states.”
Over the centuries, the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires, Poland, and Lithuania have all wielded jurisdiction over Ukraine, which first asserted its modern independence in 1917, with the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Russia soon wrested back control of Ukraine, making it part of the newly established Soviet Union and retaining power in the region until World War II, when Germany invaded. The debate over how to remember this wartime history, as well as its implications for Ukrainian nationalism and independence, is key to understanding the current conflict.
In Putin's telling, the modern Ukrainian independence movement began not in 1917 but during World War II. Under the German occupation of Ukraine, between 1941 and 1944, some Ukrainian independence fighters aligned themselves with the Nazis, whom they viewed as saviors from Soviet oppression. Putin has drawn on this period in history to portray any Ukrainian push for sovereignty as a Nazi endeavor, says Markian Dobczansky, a historian at Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute. “It's really just a stunningly cynical attempt to fight an information war and influence people's opinions,” he adds.
Dobczansky is among a group of scholars who have publicly challenged Putin's version of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and the years of Soviet rule it's sandwiched between. Almost all of these experts begin their accounts with the fall of the Russian Empire, when tens of thousands of Ukrainians fought against the Bolshevik Red Army to establish the Ukrainian People's Republic. Ukrainians continued to fight for independence until 1922, when they were defeated by the Soviets and became the Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.).