Evidence of meeting #38 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was region.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Be very brief, because we need to move on to our next panel.
Go ahead, Mr. Caouette.
Full professor of Political Science and Asian Studies, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
India is like a continent in and of itself, so one thing we could do is work with regional governments, as opposed to the national government. This would allow us to have an approach that is more sophisticated, because there's quite a variety. Oftentimes, we talk of India as a whole, but it is a very complex society. It's very different from north to south.
We need to reinforce our expertise on India. I think that's also key. It was a two-pillar...with India and China. Now relations have been re-established, but that doesn't mean the regime has necessarily changed.
Beyond reinforcing the foreign service—I totally agree with my colleague that this is important—we should have an approach that takes NGOs and the role of civil society into account. I would also say that the young chambers of commerce throughout Canada.... We have the young Japanese chamber of commerce and the young Vietnamese chamber of commerce. I think it's very important that we work with our diaspora and the new generation of Canadians of Asian descent. They can be very effective ambassadors for Canada, and—
Full professor of Political Science and Asian Studies, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
Besides universities, I think the cultural industry is one of Canada's areas of expertise. We could strengthen that sector—cultural relations with other regions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you very much.
I appreciate the testimony from both witnesses today. I'm sure it will be incorporated into our study.
Thank you very much for your interventions today, members of the committee.
Without further ado, we will suspend for a few minutes to allow our next panel of witnesses to appear.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Coming out of suspension, welcome to the continuation of meeting 38 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.
Under Standing Order 108(2), we are here to study the security situation in the Balkans.
We have Dr. Mujanović, advisory council member of the Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center, Salve Regina University; Dr. Maria Popova, associate professor of political science and holder of the Hiram Mills chair, McGill University, by video conference; and Jo-Anne Bishop, a representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Thank you all for appearing.
We'll begin with an opening statement from Dr. Mujanović.
You have five minutes for your opening statement.
Dr. Jasmin Mujanović Advisory Council Member, Nationhood Lab, Pell Center for International Relations, Salve Regina University, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
Honourable members, the overall security dynamics in the western Balkans are moving in the wrong direction and have been for more than a decade. This concerns Canada, because His Majesty's government has a vested interest in the stability of Europe and in demonstrating Canada's burden-sharing and energy capacities to its European allies.
The chief threats to regional security are a combination of factors that have remained largely unaltered since the 1990s—revanchist ambitions in Belgrade and Zagreb, which undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of vulnerable neighbouring democracies, and an overall international posture of indifference to western Balkan affairs.
In the 1990s, divergent views within the Atlantic community delayed action to prevent the first systematic crimes against humanity and genocide in Europe since the Holocaust, most infamously during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Today it is not merely fractures within the democratic west that undermine the Euro-Atlantic agenda in the region; it is also the strident and expanding influence of China and Russia too.
During his recent visit to Beijing, Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vučić, whose government has engaged in large-scale election fraud and actively suppressed peaceful anti-government protests for nearly two years, received from Xi Jinping the Friendship Medal of the People's Republic of China, an award reserved for the CCP's closest allies. This comes after large-scale weapons transfers to Serbia from China, including sophisticated missile and drone systems, and as Chinese-manufactured facial recognition software has been deployed on the streets of the Serbian capital with successive tours of Chinese police patrols.
Serbia's acquisition of modern Chinese military equipment, along with similar systems from Russia, has not sat dormant either. In September 2023, a group of 80-plus Serbian paramilitaries with direct links to the most senior levels of the Belgrade government attempted to seize strategic sites in Kosovo's north with approximately five million euros' worth of heavy-caliber, Serbian-origin arms. The operation was clearly modelled on similar actions by Belgrade in Croatia and Bosnia during the 1990s. Local law enforcement intercepted them, and a day-long firefight erupted, which left one Kosovo police officer and three Serbian militants dead.
Simultaneously, Belgrade, along with the Kremlin, remains the chief international backer of the secessionist regime in Bosnia as a Republika Srpska entity. Milorad Dodik, the longtime nationalist strongman who presides over the R.S. regime despite having been formally removed from office by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, threatens the territorial integrity of the Bosnian state and the Dayton Peace Agreement on a near daily basis. In May, he visited Moscow twice to meet with senior Russian officials to solicit support for this dangerous agenda.
Despite more than two decades of attacks on the single most significant diplomatic pillar of the post-Yugoslav era in the region, the Dayton Peace Agreement, the U.S. decided to lift virtually its entire sanctions regime against Mr. Dodik and his retinue in October 2025, with little coherent public justification. Regional observers, however, claimed that Dodik secured this major American policy shift, which has also apparently involved the U.S. effort to push out Christian Schmidt as Bosnia's high representative, by spending millions of dollars retaining the services of far right lobbyists and other hard right influencers in Washington.
Mr. Dodik also has important European friends. The former Orbán government was arguably his chief EU benefactor, explicitly blocking Brussels from imposing sanctions against him and his inner circle. Although Budapest is now expected to shift its Bosnia policy, there has been no movement on the EU sanctions file, largely because Dodik also enjoys the protection of Croatia.
Zagreb backs him because of his decades-long partnership with the HDZ BiH, the Bosnian-based Croat nationalist sister party of Croatia's governing HDZ, and because both he and the HDZ BiH are central to preventing the reform of Bosnia's constitution in line with the binding rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and the opinions of the Venice Commission. Thus, although Croatia claims to support Bosnia's entry into the EU and NATO, it opposes nearly every reform needed to realize those objectives.
In conclusion, as Canada looks to deepen its relations with the EU, the western Balkans are perhaps the most obvious region in Europe for Ottawa to demonstrate the meaning of what Prime Minister Carney has called “variable geometry”—the formation of ad hoc coalitions to defend peace and order and aid in the construction of good government.
While Kosovo and Bosnia may benefit most from a Canada that seeks to prove that pluralism works, its net benefits would be felt across the region, including in states like Serbia, which has struggled to throw off the yoke of despotism, and Montenegro, which hopes to overcome entrenched political skepticism at home and in several European capitals to become the 28th member of the EU before the decade's close.
Thank you. I invite your questions.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
I would like to remind the witnesses to speak at a pace that allows the interpreters to breathe. I understand the desire to say everything in five minutes, but it's important to think of the House employees, who are trying to do the best job possible.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe. I appreciate the comment.
We'll now go to Dr. Popova.
Maria Popova Hiram Mills Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
Thank you for convening this session and for inviting me to appear here. Because the other two witnesses are specialists on the western Balkans, I will focus on the other Balkan countries that are members of NATO. I want to talk today about the security and political stability challenges on NATO's southeastern flank.
There are three primary challenges to security and democratic stability among the Balkan NATO members. The first is kinetic spillover from Russia's war against Ukraine. The second is persistent Russian hybrid warfare. The third is domestic political instability, which is fuelled by a hypersensitive public that distrusts institutions. I want to discuss all three in a bit more detail.
First is the kinetic threat and strategic testing that Russia is doing. The security threat from Russia is really acute in the Balkans. Regular Russian drone incursions into Romanian airspace have escalated in the last few months. Most recently, a Russian drone struck a residential area in the Romanian city of Galati. This is not mere Russian carelessness. These are deliberate tests of NATO resolve. They're designed to trigger or to deepen divisions among the allies on how to respond.
In addition, there are floating naval mines in the Black Sea that consistently jeopardize Bulgarian and Turkish Black Sea shipping lanes, which are also used by Russia's shadow fleet.
The danger of NATO not responding to this Russian escalation is that Russia may move on to targeting logistics networks that support Ukraine's war effort in the Balkans. A decisive, unified NATO deterrent is crucial here.
The good news here is that the Balkan NATO members have all increased their defence spending. They're committed NATO allies. The private defence sector in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey is actively producing and also striking joint ventures with the burgeoning and improving Ukrainian defence sector. This is a source of strength for the NATO alliance.
The second threat is persistent hybrid interference and warfare from Russia. Russian hybrid warfare—in the form of cyber-attacks, disinformation and financial backing for pro-Russian parties—has low structural costs because it avoids traditional tit-for-tat military responses. Russia is going to keep doing this. Countering it requires vigilance and proactive policies from these countries.
The institutional response to this in the Balkans is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, Romania's judiciary reacted in a very proactive way when it became clear that a candidate in the presidential election in 2024 benefited enormously from targeted Russian disinformation. That candidate was taken down from the runoff. In this way, Romania avoided having a far-right, pro-Russian president.
On the other hand, though, this spring, Bulgaria became a bit more vulnerable. The winner of the April parliamentary elections was a brand new party called—somewhat oxymoronically, because these are not its policies—Progressive Bulgaria, which has a Russia-accommodationist foreign and energy policy. The new government has already started creating opportunities for Russian soft power expansion into Bulgaria. Not yet, but eventually, the Bulgarian government may pursue Orbán style obstructionism at the EU level.
Now, the third threat—
Conservative
Hiram Mills Chair and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
Sure.
The third issue is the hypermobilization around issues of corruption. There are very often major and destabilizing protests in the Balkans over corruption, even though sometimes it seems that more trivial issues trigger them. This is something for Canada to keep in mind. There is a lot of variation in the region in terms of corruption. Not all of the countries in the region are endemically corrupt, and we need to avoid the catch-all stereotype of fragile new democracies and be attuned to the variations and diversity here.
I'm happy to talk more about this in questions and answers. I think I slowed down a bit too much.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you very much for the opening statement.
Madam Bishop, you have the floor for five minutes for your opening statement.
Jo-Anne Bishop Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Women
Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to join this session.
On behalf of UN Women, I'm speaking as a country representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Allow me to begin on a personal note. I started my career in Bosnia and Herzegovina through a Canadian-funded program for young professionals. The experience of seeing both the human cost of conflict and the leadership of women in rebuilding communities continues to shape how I understand security and stability today.
More than three decades after the breakup of Yugoslavia, peace in the western Balkans has held, but it's not yet consolidated. Across the region, unresolved political, social and justice issues continue to weaken democratic resilience and long-term stability. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30 years after the Dayton Peace Agreement, this is reflected in the lasting legacies of war. Displacement, trauma, contested narratives and conflict-related sexual violence continue to shape trust in institutions and intercommunity relations. Stability is not only about preventing conflict. It depends on institutional accountability, protection from violence, economic inclusion, civic space and meaningful participation in public life. Without these, trust erodes and peace remains fragile.
This is why sustained international engagement matters. Canada has been a key partner. Through the UN peacebuilding fund and dedicated women, peace and security investments, Canada is supporting women's leadership, community peacebuilding and responses to emerging risks, such as gendered hate speech.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, transitional justice remains a critical gap. Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence continue to face stigma and barriers to services and reparations. In a recent meeting I had with survivors, they shared a clear message for the international community: “Do not forget us.” From a security perspective, violence against women is not a secondary issue. During the war, it was used as a weapon. Today, it persists as domestic violence, economic exclusion, online abuse and political intimidation. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect structural inequalities, unequal power relations and gaps in accountability. When such violence persists, it undermines trust in institutions and weakens social cohesion. This is why addressing violence against women must be understood as a core component of security.
This is especially visible in political life. Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina hold only 19.7% of parliamentary seats, while 60% of women in politics report experiencing violence, particularly online violence. This deters participation, narrows democratic space and weakens institutional legitimacy, especially ahead of the upcoming general elections in October.
At the same time, women in civil society, and especially survivors, are central to sustaining peace and security. The women of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not wait to be included. They organized, advocated and bore witness, helping to lay the foundations for the global women, peace and security agenda. Today, they continue to rebuild trust and maintain dialogue across divides, yet they remain underfunded and unrepresented in decision-making. Targeted peacebuilding investments help close this gap. Supporting these actors strengthens social cohesion and acts as a frontline mechanism for conflict prevention.
Across the western Balkans, the pattern is similar: unfinished reconciliation, contested narratives, unresolved political questions and low trust in institutions, combined with the continued exclusion of women from political and security decision-making. The Belgrade-Pristina dialogue remains central to regional stability, and women's advisory platforms—supported by the EU and UN Women—will help ensure that women's expertise is systematically included after years of advocacy.
Looking ahead, the next phase of women, peace and security engagement must go beyond commitments and invest in conditions for meaningful participation, including predictable financing, protected civic space, survivor-centred justice, intergenerational dialogue and stronger links between policy commitments and budgets.
For Canada, the implication is clear: Continued support for women, peace and security in the western Balkans is not only principled but a strategic investment in conflict prevention, reconciliation and democratic resilience.
I thank you and look forward to your questions.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Michael Chong
Thank you very much, Madam Bishop.
We'll now have 30 or so minutes of questions and comments from members, beginning with Madam Rood.
Conservative
Lianne Rood Conservative Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, witnesses, for being here today.
I'll start with you, Dr. Mujanović.
The U.S. lifted sanctions on some Bosnian Serb leaders last year, while the U.K. kept theirs. Canada still has no sanctions on anyone undermining the Dayton agreement. In your view, are sanctions an effective tool to stop secessionist threats and Russian-backed destabilization in Bosnia, or have they become meaningless without full partner co-operation?
Advisory Council Member, Nationhood Lab, Pell Center for International Relations, Salve Regina University, As an Individual
I maintain that sanctions are an extremely important tool that the international community can use to prevent the worst kind of behaviour. We know that from the very same people who were under sanctions. Mr. Dodik, by his own admission, spent upwards of $40 million to $50 million trying to get sanctions lifted by the United States. Unfortunately, he ultimately succeeded in that effort. However, it's absolutely an issue that is going to remain on the radar in Washington, and even the current administration has been very clear about the fact that it would be willing to reimpose those sanctions if it believes that is necessary.
I would think that greater coordination between Canada and, in particular, its European allies with respect to sanctions policy would be something that would definitely improve the overall security environment across the western Balkans, because it's obviously not just Mr. Dodik who warrants looking at in terms of sanctions policy.
Conservative
Lianne Rood Conservative Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you very much.
Ethnic tensions, weak institutions, corruption and organized crime are still tearing at the Balkans, and Russia and China are actively exploiting it. What are the biggest security risks right now, and how can Canada, working with our NATO and EU allies, actually push back against this malign foreign interference instead of just talking about it?
Advisory Council Member, Nationhood Lab, Pell Center for International Relations, Salve Regina University, As an Individual
Well, first and foremost, the structural issue is that this region has not been at the forefront of western foreign policy for a very long time. That is something that has been recognized by our adversaries. They have come in with a lot of cheap, easy cash. They have bought up enormous amounts of influence. They have also boxed us out of key projects in which countries like Canada, for instance, have a very obvious interest, like the energy sector across southeastern Europe. This is something in which Canada has fallen majorly behind countries like China and Russia.
I think what needs to happen moving forward is that, first and foremost, Canada needs to re-establish its diplomatic footprint in the region. Most of the countries in the western Balkans do not have Canadian embassies on the ground. That includes Bosnia. That includes Kosovo. That includes Albania. That includes Montenegro. It's very hard for Canada to engage in a substantive fashion when it doesn't have sustained diplomatic representation on the ground.
Once you have that, then you can actually begin identifying in a more systematic fashion what Canada's own priorities are. As I've said, energy is the most obvious one for Canada, because it's what benefits Canadians the most. However, it's also an area where we can definitely work with our European and, in particular, our British allies to improve the interconnectedness and interoperability of the region as a whole, including the NATO allies in the area and the non-NATO allies—but hopefully soon NATO allies—who, for instance, have a very robust munitions industry in the region. That is something Canada can help build up. That's something Canada can benefit from as Canada looks to improve its industrial military base here. There's a lot of synergy there.
Again, the first step needs to be actually having the diplomatic footprint on the ground.
Conservative
Lianne Rood Conservative Middlesex—London, ON
Thank you very much.
I'm going to cede the rest of my time to Mr. Gill.
Conservative
Harb Gill Conservative Windsor West, ON
Thank you.
Dr. Mujanović, despite years of dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, there are still serious issues between them. How do we get past those issues to lasting normalization? Are we any closer to that than we've been over the past five years?
Advisory Council Member, Nationhood Lab, Pell Center for International Relations, Salve Regina University, As an Individual
We're not, unfortunately, and that has largely to do with the recalcitrant attitudes in Belgrade. I spoke about the Banjska incident, so I won't repeat myself there.
What I will say in terms of moving the policy framework forward is that we've had an excellent suggestion from a representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, Keith Self of Texas, who has basically suggested that the U.S.—and I think it applies also to Canada—needs to start signalling to the five European non-recognizers of Kosovo's sovereignty that this is going to be a bilateral issue between them and the United States—or, in this case, Canada and them—in so much as they do not move forward on the recognition of Kosovo. There is no coherent reason that Spain, Slovakia—
—and others do not recognize Kosovo's sovereignty. The reason that matters is that it has artificially emboldened Serbia to completely freeze this dialogue, despite the enormous diplomatic and financial capital that Canada and other countries have put into normalization.