Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 7th, 2018

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

I think as you've outlined, absolutely; they are being targeted systematically, and all the components of their identity and their history are being targeted in an attempt to change the demographics, the history of the peninsula, and the political environment to the very core.

I think the interesting part of the Crimean situation is what we know through online reports and international human rights monitoring. It's very clear every day, as you said, that the list grows. It's over 70 right now, and we've provided a briefing note for the committee that has the pictures and the faces. Because there are so many political prisoners, part of what we want to ensure is that these individuals have names and faces. Some of them are arrested for waving flags, some for taking pictures, and these are very—

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Just because—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Borys, no, that is going to be it. We're running a little over.

Now we're going to go to MP Hardcastle, please.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony today.

Help us understand a little more about Canada's response and what you envision it should be.

Have the existing sanctions furthered resolution at all, in your opinion?

[Orest Zakydalsky]

The effect of the existing sanctions from Canada, the United States, and the European Union, which were coordinated when this war started, has been to stop the Russian aggression from being worse than it is now. That's in the sense that these are things Russia has done, and we've put on sanctions to signal to Russia that the world is paying attention, finds this unacceptable, and will take measures to counter it.

What the sanctions haven't done, unfortunately—and part of the reason why we think they should be strengthened—is to get the Russians to change their policy. They've got them to not go as far as they perhaps would have, had there been absolutely no reaction.

I think Canada and certainly the rest of the international community wants the Russian army out of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. To achieve that, I think a lot more pressure has to be put on the Russian government.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What kind of diplomatic engagement do you think would be useful?

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

We believe Canada should continue to coordinate with our European and American allies to identify every possibility for diplomatic discussions, whether it's specifically the situation of the political prisoners....

We believe sanctions are part of the broader cause and effect that Russian officials need to have, that there's no more impunity in travel and business dealings. That model goes not only for the official but for their family members and their children, meaning that if you participate in this kind of behaviour, you can't send your children abroad and you can't holiday abroad. You are no longer welcome, because you have transgressed those international norms.

I think Canada has a valuable role to play with our western allies, with our G7 allies, at that partners' table. I think Canada is doing a great job on Operation Unifier through military training and assistance, and I think will continue to speak with the Ukrainian military and other allies about what other assistance Ukraine requires in the hard conflict that is not going to be resolved by diplomacy.

There is a contact line, and there is shelling that goes on, and Ukraine and other partners are there on the ground facing a military conflict as well. As much as we talk about the sanctions, there is—as other MPs have mentioned—that hard military aspect of containing the conflict, so to speak, so it does not go further into Ukraine.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Do I have another minute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

You certainly do.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

You don't think at this point that there's any use for any diplomatic engagement? Right now, should we be focused on individual sanctions?

Are there any groups or organizations that trade e-commerce somewhere? You must know areas of relationships. At some point, for there to be a resolution, there is going to have to be some kind of peace-building exercise, even if that's long term. I just want a clearer picture. Do you think there are some cursory attempts right now with a group or two that you can see would be worthy of some kind of diplomatic exercise, or is it just “no”, we're not at that point now with these actors?

[Orest Zakydalsky]

There have been diplomatic talks for four years, and they haven't gotten anywhere. The OSCE has what's called the trilateral contact group, which includes Russia, Ukraine, and the OSCE. There is also what are called the Normandy talks, which is Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia.

The OSCE process produced the Minsk accords. The first point of the Minsk accords is a ceasefire, which was signed three years ago, and I don't think there have been more than a dozen days in three years when there has been no fighting.

These diplomatic efforts have to be undertaken from a position of strength by the west, and the way to get to that is to increase pressure on the Russians in order to force them to make a deal. It is pretty obvious that right now they're not feeling enough pressure to make a deal, because it's been four years of fighting. Diplomacy that isn't backed up with credible strength is ineffective, as we can see from these past four years.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Do you see that it would be a useful to approach this by breaking it off into separate issues, whether it's Crimea or minorities like the Tatar political prisoners in the Ukraine, or do you think it's best to approach it as one big picture, since it's evolving as different issues are splintering off? How are you getting your heads around it now?

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

As you identified, there are many smaller pieces of the conflict, but there is also the big conflict. Four years ago, there may not have been 70 political prisoners, because the situation was different. Four years ago, Ukraine was dealing with the immediate invasion and annexation issues, so there weren't long-term human rights observations being made and the military was in a very different state of affairs.

Through our intervention with Operation Unifier and through our role in leadership in Ukraine with international development, there is every opportunity for Canada to play a leadership role, especially in this G7 year. We believe Canada has a great opportunity to bring our other allies along, as we said, further to the increasing of consequences and risks for Russia's behaviour. As we said, if Canada alone increases its sanctions without the allies, it's not significantly meaningful, and if our allies do it without Canada, it's also not significantly meaningful. There has to be a really strong coherence of reactive behaviour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

I'm going to ask you to cut off the answer there, just so we can move on to the next member.

We're going to go to MP Khalid, please.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you as well to the witnesses for your very compelling testimony.

Chair, I'm going to be splitting my time with Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

I do have one specific question. We talk about sanctions a lot in this subcommittee, as they have impacts on the ground. When hundreds of thousands of people are facing food insecurity in conflict areas, what is the impact of these sanctions on those people? Is there a negative or positive impact?

Second, women and children, and women especially, often become the first targets in any conflict, as we've seen in this subcommittee. What has been the impact on women on the ground? What role can Canada play, given our very feminist international development policy? We talk about the political solutions for the long term, but what specifically can Canada do in the short term to help the hundreds of thousands of people on the ground right now with respect to humanitarian aid?

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

I can tell you that Canada plays a leading role in Ukraine in terms of supporting immediate services for internally displaced people, or IDPs, to provide them with the essentials of housing, food, and shelter. We're very pleased to see that. Unfortunately, these internally displaced people don't know how long they're going to be internally displaced. That's where we've seen the increased need for services in terms of employment, education, and resettlement. There still is very much hope that there is a resolution to this conflict, that these people can go back to their traditional homes and lives.

The sanctions we are talking about and recommending are ones that would be imposed on the people who participate in the torture, imprisonment, and, we feel, illegal judicial processes that the Russian state is proceeding with in terms of the activists.

As you've noted, the families of the 70 who have been jailed are at risk. They're seen as liabilities and security threats to the Russian state. They are fleeing and they are not able to continue their lives. We feel the consequences of imposing stronger sanctions on Russian officials and their families will be the lack of impunity: they and their children will no longer be able to travel freely and enjoy the lifestyle that they may have been accustomed to.

We feel that's a strong signal from Canada and our allies as to the way in which international rules-based order should be proceeding. We've been very happy to see that Ukraine internally has spent a lot of time, with the backing of Canada and western allies, dealing with the influx of internally displaced people, primarily women and children. They've been struggling to figure out how to provide services, but with our support they have been doing a better job. It's going on four and five years, so this is becoming institutionalized. That's part of the issue—that it's becoming institutionalized and that there is no end in sight. That's why we feel that making this a norm is not the best option in this moment.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Iqra.

Flight MH17 was touched upon. Everyone is aware that the vast majority of those civilian passengers were Dutch and Australian, but I'd just like to note that there was a Canadian. I'm asking for a quick yes or no on this. Holland and Australia have begun international legal proceedings. Given that a Canadian perished, do you believe Canada should join in those proceedings?

[Orest Zakydalsky]

Yes.

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

Absolutely.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

The Kerch bridge was mentioned in the context of creating a land connection from the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula. An important point is that we have to consider sanctions of different sorts. There are Magnitsky sanctions, but also sanctions that target companies—the companies that were involved in the engineering and the construction—and many of these companies are closely associated with Putin himself. Perhaps that's something that should be considered.

There is another aspect to it. Everyone sees the land bridge, but would you not agree that Russia, through the construction of this bridge, has also territorially expanded? It's not on land, though; it's the Sea of Azov. As the bridge was completed, they moved five of their biggest Caspian warships through the Volga-Don lock system into the Sea of Azov. They have a limited coastline in the Sea of Azov, but in fact they have taken territorial control of the Sea of Azov at this point in time. It is a territorial expansion once again that Russia is engaged in.

Would you agree with that premise?

[Orest Zakydalsky]

I would say that is absolutely true. I would also add that the bridge was constructed with the side benefit to Russia of interfering in Ukrainian commerce. The height of the bridge is something like 30 metres, which stops Ukrainian freight from reaching Mariupol, which is a big port. You can't send big ships under it. That wasn't done by accident either.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you. That's also a very important point.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Sorry, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj. We're over time. We're going to move to MP Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I have two quick questions, and my colleague will take over whatever time is left.

Let's put it straight. This bridge is really to fortify the supply lines of the Russian military. There's no pedestrian traffic or anything there, so this is strictly a military-purposed bridge.

I asked you originally about targeting sanctions, particularly with the Magnitsky law, which is adequate to basically do what we need to do. I want to verify what you said. Although you've supplied information and had the conversations, you have had no feedback from the Prime Minister's office or Global Affairs in regard to any willingness to take any action up to date. Is that correct?

[Ihor Michalchyshyn]

I would say they are well aware of our concerns. The way they research and prepare sanctions doesn't necessarily allow them to share that information with us, but since the day we mentioned, we have not seen new sanctions implemented. We certainly have done everything we can to supply resources in terms of information and actions, as our allies have done, but we are a bit frustrated that we're not seeing Canada keep up with our allies in this sphere.