Evidence of meeting #110 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ukraine.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Thank you.
Ms. Mathyssen comes in at six minutes and one second.
We're going to do a quick second round. Please stay within it so that we can move on to our second panel. They will be five-minute rounds.
I will start with Mr. Kmiec, followed by Mrs. Romanado.
Mr. Kmiec, you have five minutes.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
This is for both the witnesses.
Would you say it's accurate that the reason this is making front page news and is still being talked about today is that the office of the Speaker and the Prime Minister's Office screwed up by not vetting people and by allowing a process that is not followed, that is not the usual practice, and had someone recognized in that manner during a state visit by a close ally of Canada?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Vladimir Putin is raising it over and over again. We see certain media raising it, as Jars has said.
We think that the whole way that the Speaker proceeded on this needs to be reviewed as you are reviewing it. Unfortunately, we're being pulled, along with other communities, into something that is harmful to all of us.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'm sorry, Mr. Michalchyshyn.
Would you say that the Speaker was at fault and that it is his fault that the story is still public?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
He's written us a letter to apologize for it, so I believe, from what he's written to us, that he's taking responsibility for it.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
What about the Office of the Prime Minister? Have they written to apologize to you?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
No, I have not received that kind of letter from them.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Okay.
Has there been any effort made by either the current Speaker's office or the Prime Minister's Office in the last few weeks or months to reach out to you, or do you know if they have reached out to the Polish Congress and to Jewish communities across Canada, to do that act of reconciliation to fix this and fix the reputation of Canada, and also fix the reputation of Ukrainians across Canada, the reputation of the Polish Congress and the reputation of Jewish people? We've all been drawn into the propaganda war being waged by the Russian Federation.
Would you say that the blame lies with the Speaker's office and also with the Prime Minister's Office?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
There are a lot of questions in there.
I want to go back to something that Jars was speaking about, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, which is another community function, another community group, that's working on it.
I think that with the politicization of Ukraine, we really want unanimity. We want the Speaker's letter to stand in terms of what his actions were and weren't, and I think that our community is looking to move forward in partnership with other communities to build a narrative of dialogue, as we always have.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
Mr. Michalchyshyn, is it fair to say, then, that the Prime Minister's Office has not reached out to you and has not communicated with you, and that the Speaker's office has not communicated with you since the incident—apart from the apology of the Speaker's office—to try to perhaps do an act of reconciliation in Canada, like the Polish government and the Ukrainian government at the very highest levels have done, including church leaders on both sides, to reconcile with the past, to forgive and ask for forgiveness, and then to use that as a good news story going forward?
This would be a non-story if the Prime Minister's Office had done its job and if the Speaker had done his job. Is that fair?
11:50 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
There are a lot of questions in there that you've asked me.
I think that what has happened, as we said after the incident, is that our community faced a barrage of accusations and questions in the media. We saw politicians from various sides, but particularly from one perspective, calling this man and our community names, which has upset us a great deal.
We're here to share with you our opinion, to share with you our experience and to say that we are working with communities. I can't speak on behalf of the government and what their strategy is or isn't, but through the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and through the centre for Ukrainian studies that Mr. Balan works for, we are doing what we can to work through these issues.
What we're here to say is that this narrative keeps coming up, and it is upsetting to us that politicians and media have bought into it, have not questioned it and have sort of gone—
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Kmiec Conservative Calgary Shepard, AB
I'm sorry, Mr. Michalchyshyn. You'll forgive me for interrupting. Next time we meet, you can interrupt me more often.
Chair, I'm going to take that as a no—that the Prime Minister's Office has not reached out and that the new Speaker's office has not reached out to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to attempt to reconcile with what happened.
Those two offices both bear final responsibility for putting your community in Canada in the crosshairs of a Russian propaganda machine, which is waging war on the diaspora community in Canada as part of the war that they're waging against the people of Ukraine.
11:55 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
I have outlined who has reached out to us. We've had a letter from the Speaker apologizing for his role.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Thank you.
That was five minutes and 20 seconds.
Mrs. Romanado, you have five minutes, through the chair.
March 21st, 2024 / 11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today. While I haven't had a chance to meet you in person, it's a pleasure to meet you in committee.
You may or may not know that my oldest son deployed to Ukraine in 2018 as part of Operation Unifier. He helped train Ukrainian forces to defend themselves. It's a real pleasure to be with you today.
With respect to questions on procedure internally, obviously the people best placed to answer those questions are the internal people you've also been meeting with as part of this study.
I wanted to connect with you with respect to your comments about knee-jerk reactions.
I'll walk you through how things happen in the House. As my colleague, Mr. Kmiec, mentioned, this was not a regular sitting of the House. This was a special event for which a dignitary was here. Based on previous testimony from the Clerk, we heard that normally in these kinds of instances, a member of the visitors gallery would not be recognized by the Speaker. This was something that normally is not done, and obviously is something that we're going to look at going forward in terms of protocol.
When that does happen in a regular sitting, the Speaker will recognize someone in the gallery and invite members to stand. We assume that the Speaker has done the proper vetting and the person or people being recognized are worthy. We're talking about moments or seconds. We stand, we recognize whoever's being recognized by the Speaker and we applaud.
Then, going through the weekend, we heard the reports coming and the media headlines. Even coming to the meeting today I saw some of the media headlines referencing Mr. Hunka in a different term.
I wanted to get feedback from you. How has this hurt the Ukrainian community?
I want to give you an opportunity to help because we all want to learn from this. There's also an opportunity to learn about the history of Ukraine's fight during World War II. I wanted to give you a little bit of an opportunity to share that with Canadians watching today, if you'd like to share anything with us.
11:55 a.m.
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Jars, do you want to start?
11:55 a.m.
Director, Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
Obviously, there's a long-standing Russian imperial narrative and a Soviet narrative about Ukraine and Ukrainians that we're struggling against. Our institute, for instance, studies the history of Ukraine, which is a battlefield from beginning to end. We're small in number and we have limited resources, but we do what we can.
One thing we would certainly welcome is the federal government wanting to provide some financing to bring together the Ukrainian, Jewish and Polish communities that were affected, in order to undertake some kind of reconciliation process. That would be very welcome within the community. Right now, as Ihor mentioned, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter is doing their job as best they can with their resources.
We are tasked with studying the entirety of Ukrainian history. Ukraine also has to deal with rewriting its own history or telling its own story, because these narratives have been written over Ukrainians for centuries, and they're struggling with gradually challenging and correcting this colonial legacy. It's a slow and complicated process. We should remember that World War II is just one part of it.
If the federal government wanted to provide a push in this direction, I think it would be welcomed by all the communities, not just the Ukrainian community.
Noon
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
That's an excellent recommendation. Thank you for that.
Mr. Michalchyshyn, do you have anything you would like to add with respect to how we can learn from this mistake? Also, is there any message you would like to share with Canadians?
Noon
Chief Executive Officer and Exective Director, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
To back up what Jars was saying, the communities have used the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter and other academic mechanisms to try to work together. Certainly, we have a good working relationship with those communities. There's only so much communities can do at a certain level. As I said, in terms of our desire to work together for April—genocide remembrance month—we've had much co-operation in the past with all sorts of partners involved in that. We look forward to continuing to work with them.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bardish Chagger
Thank you.
You're coming in at five minutes and 15 seconds.
Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor.
Noon
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Since I don't have much time, I have just one question.
Mr. Balan, we've heard the desire to rehabilitate Ukrainian history, and we've also heard that there's misinformation. I'm not a historian, but I'd like to understand a little more about the myth surrounding the “Galicia” division, which has been so persistent for 70 years. I'd like to hear your opinion.
Noon
Director, Kule Ukrainian Canadian Studies Centre, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta
Could I answer that quickly?
I have a box somewhere in my office—it's kind of messy, as you can see—of Soviet propaganda leaflets put out in the fifties, sixties, seventies and into the eighties. They're booklets cheaply printed and mass-produced on a whole variety of issues, but World War II is a big one. Many of them have sensational titles like “Nazi Werewolves of the SS” or whatever. All propaganda contains a mixture of facts, half-truths and out-and-out fabrications and lies. It's hard to sort anything out from them. Money has been invested in this process for decades by the Soviet government and now by the Russian government. It's something we have to deal with.
Again, it's not easy, because the nuances are complicated and the history is complicated. There is also moral ambiguity. Some Ukrainians point out that the allies signed an agreement with the Soviets to fight against the Germans. This was after they knew that Stalin was a mass murderer—after the Soviets and Nazis started the Second World War—but it was in our interest to do that. You can question the morality of it, or whatever, but it was done. Why is that okay and other things aren't?
These are issues that need to be looked at in a serious way. I think we can move ahead in partnership with the communities that were affected—the Polish and Jewish communities, and other eastern European communities. There's the Roma community that also suffered terribly. I'm optimistic that, even through this process, things will turn the corner.