Foreign Affairs Committee on Aug. 4th, 2022

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Mr. Bezan, you have the floor for six minutes. Please proceed.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all three ambassadors for joining us today. It's good to see you all.

First of all, I want to thank Ukraine. Having Ambassador Kovaliv here, I'd like to say that all of Ukraine is in our thoughts and prayers. We know that you're on the front line, standing up for western democracy, standing up for human rights and fighting against Putin's war machine.

I also want to say this. As Conservatives, if we had been in government, we would never have circumvented our own sanctions regime. We would not have approved the export of the turbines to Germany. In fact, we would have dived in and worked with Germany to provide more of our own natural gas. We would have been making sure that there were Canadian oil and other energy products available. Essentially, we would have wanted to work with our friends in Germany to make sure that they keep their nuclear power plants open to provide the energy they need to power their homes and their industries, especially during this time of transition away from the dependency on Russian energy products.

Ambassador Kovaliv, you've talked about this being appeasement. Often, we talk about important moments in time as a “Chamberlain moment” or a “Churchill moment”. Do you believe that Canada and our allies, on this issue of the turbines, were appeasing in a Chamberlain moment, rather than standing up like Churchill?

[Yuliia Kovaliv]

One more time, I would like to thank this committee and Parliament for their united support of Ukraine. You've done a lot, including the motion on the genocide and the support of legislation to seize assets. Canada has been a leader in and an example for many sanctions, which Canada was the first to impose. We value it.

This is, as President Zelenskyy mentioned, a very dangerous precedent. None of us wants to be the negative precedent that others follow.

In terms of the decision, we heard the arguments today and we heard these arguments while we were discussing.... The Ukrainian government and Ukrainian ministers had some discussions with Canadian ministers and the German government on this. From the beginning, we were very blunt because we, as Ukraine, have gone through this Russian energy terrorism. I don't know if everybody knows, but Russia has switched off gas to Ukraine during the winter three times. It did it in 2006, 2009 and 2014.

When we said from the very first time that Russia was bluffing and there would be no renewal of gas supply—I don't want to say it bluntly—we were saying that we are where we are and even more so, because when the turbine arrived in Germany, Gazprom further decreased the gas flow. This is what we understand from both the history of dealing with Russia's energy terrorism, but also from dealing with the direct and very barbaric war in Ukraine.

Putin understands only power. Putin understands strength. In this particular situation, we see that Putin and his gas monopoly, Gazprom, are using the power of supply. All of our European allies, together with Ukraine, are ready to support or use the power of the consumer and not undermine this. That is why we proposed not only very pragmatic actions not to just cut the gas flow to Ukraine, but also alternatives that are on the table. By the way, they are delivering gas today to many European countries.

Thank you.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I appreciate that, Your Excellency. I have very limited time here.

I want to ask two very short yes-or-no questions.

One is to the ambassador from Ukraine. Does Ukraine need more military weapons, like sniper rifles and armoured ambulances?

I also have a question for Ambassador Sparwasser. Do you need more military support, especially in light of the sleight of hand of moving these turbines and putting more gas in Putin's war machine?

Also to our German ambassador friend, is there a moral obligation here by Germany—and the EU, for that matter—to make those sacrifices you talked about, so that we can stop the genocide and the war crimes that are being committed against Ukraine?

Please answer yes or no.

[Sabine Sparwasser]

I think we feel a strong moral obligation to support Ukraine in its battle against Russian aggression. Germany changed its policy 180° two days after the attack. Germany has by now delivered a lot of weapons. I can give you access to the full list, if you want. It is also in the process of delivering some very heavy multiple launch rocket systems, howitzers and Gepard tanks, which are anti-aircraft tanks. We're sending very serious heavy weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself. We're also supporting Ukraine as one of its biggest donors financially and in every other way we can.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Mr. Bezan, I have been fairly lenient with time in this particular meeting, but we are well over six minutes.

I'm going to move to Mr. Sorbara, who has the floor for six minutes.

[Yuliia Kovaliv]

Can I answer the question?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

I'm sorry, who's asking?

[Yuliia Kovaliv]

Can I answer the question as well?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Mr. Sorbara, how would you feel about the ambassador's answering this question under your time and then you can pick up?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I would, definitely, if the ambassador wishes to take up some of my time, provide her the time at this moment to answer that question.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Thank you very much.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Please go ahead, Ambassador. It's great to see you today.

[Yuliia Kovaliv]

It's great to see you. Thank you.

My short answer would be yes, we do value the support of all our allies, Germany, Canada, the U.S., all of the European Union and other countries. Yes, we do need more military support.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Chair, I'll be in now.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Mr. Clerk, I just need to clarify if Mr. Sorbara's round is five or six minutes.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Pagé]

It's five minutes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

It's five, okay. My apologies.

Mr. Sorbara, let's go with five minutes from now. You go ahead.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon.

First I have to say this because I would be remiss if I didn't. I have three beautiful daughters at home. They are growing. I'm blessed to have them. I see three ambassadors who are female today. Kudos to that. I do want to point that out because, as much as we're talking about many issues in the world, women's rights and gender equality are things that are very, very important to our government and important to me as a father of three girls. I do wish to point that out.

I just want to say welcome to Ambassador Gabrič.

It's nice to see you again. I'm the chair of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association. We've had many great conversations. The recent trip to the Council of Europe was a very productive one for me. MP Bergeron was on the trip as well. I know we had a lot of great discussions with the delegation from Ukraine. We spent a lot of time with them. It was good. They were very, very fruitful discussions.

I'll go on to the matters at hand, because they are very serious. One thing I've learned in politics is that it's easy to get into Monday morning quarterbacking, looking back and laying blame or saying, “You made a mistake”, because it's in the past. One can only move forward and make decisions going forward.

In governing, you have to make tough decisions and make tough choices. Obviously we made a decision to ship back the turbines to Germany, to mainland Europe, to be used for the pipeline. I fundamentally believe it was the right decision. I stated that to the ministers in our government. It was the right decision, and I think our allies have backed that.

There is a conversation going on about a strategic transition of Europe's energy flows. Energy security is so, so important for Europe. Yes, there's a dependence. This dependence is being reduced. It's so important to keep onside the European populace, the European population, the everyday European who is facing very high inflation rates and very, very high energy rates and to keep our allies united. I believe fundamentally that Putin—or whatever term you want to reference that person with—is only about dividing us, whether it's through disinformation or using food or energy as a weapon.

I do first want to turn to the German ambassador.

I read your comments. I want you to, if you could, reiterate the transition plans for reducing Germany's dependence on Russia as an energy source, please.

[Sabine Sparwasser]

Germany is trying to get out of Russian gas as fast as possible. We have reduced our dependence from 55% to 26% right now. We're making enormous efforts to save energy. We're making enormous efforts to diversify by getting more energy supplies from many of our partners and filling our reservoirs in view of a potentially very difficult winter, and we're speeding up the energy transition with every sort of drive we have. Germany has passed a number of laws so that we can build renewable energy much faster. It has been declared in the national interest and security interest to build up renewable energy fast, and we're also moving quickly to increase LNG capacity. We are looking towards trying to find long-term partners and we are also looking towards Canada for LNG as a transitional energy, but mostly also for green hydrogen as the energy of the future, and we're going to invest a lot of drive in that.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

Mr. Sorbara, are you still there?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Apologies, I got rusty on turning off the muting.

Just to clarify, Chair—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Marty Morantz]

You have 40 seconds.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

—the Ukrainian ambassador left the meeting? I do not see her on the screen.