Evidence of meeting #63 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was russian.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Welcome, everybody, to the defence committee this afternoon for our continuing discussion on the crisis in Ukraine.
I'd like to welcome our two witnesses today: Paul Grod, Ukrainian Canadian Congress national president, and Chris Westdal, former Canadian ambassador to Ukraine and Russia.
Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing today.
Mr. Grod, if you're prepared and ready, I'll give you the floor for your initial comments.
3:30 p.m.
Paul Grod National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Thank you.
Mr. Chair, it's an honour for me as the national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress to appear today before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. I thank the committee for allowing me the opportunity to offer testimony today on this topic, which is very important to our community.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress brings under one umbrella all the national, provincial, and local Ukrainian Canadian community organizations with seven provincial councils: the Atlantic region, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C. There are more than 20 local branches across the country and 29 national member organizations, which bring together several hundred community organizations from coast to coast.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has been leading, coordinating, and representing the interests of one of Canada's largest ethnocultural communities, numbering approximately 1.3 million people, for over 75 years.
The UCC is a member and works closely with the Ukrainian World Congress as well as ethnocultural communities across Canada. Through the Canada-Ukraine Stakeholder Advisory Council, the UCC provides consultations to the Government of Canada regarding Canada-Ukraine relations. Representatives of the UCC regularly meet with Canadian government officials, politicians, stakeholders, and policy-makers.
As this committee undertakes an extremely important study on Ukraine, the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine have a direct effect on Canada's and our allies' security and on the international rules-based order. In the last decade, Russia has sought through force to return Russian hegemony to states formerly part of the Soviet Union. This culminated in Russia's annexation of Crimea in February 2014 and shortly thereafter of the eastern Ukraine oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk. Today, Crimea is under Russian occupation, and the occupying authorities have instituted there a regime of terror against the Crimean Tatar people, ethnic Ukrainians, and anyone who opposes Russia's occupation of Crimea.
Now in its fourth year, Russia's war in Ukraine's east has cost Ukraine more than 10,000 lives; 23,000 people have been wounded or injured; 1.5 million have been internally displaced. Attacks by Russia and its proxy forces on Ukrainian positions are a daily occurrence.
This is not a frozen conflict; it is very much a hot war. Furthermore, it is critical to understand that it is not a civil war. There was never a separatist movement in modern-day Ukraine until one was engineered, financed, and executed by Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants.
In a very short time, Ukraine has reformed its military and security force from one virtually non-existent to an effective fighting force. In fact, the Russian and proxy forces present in the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts are larger than most militaries of European states. The Ukrainian military has successfully stopped their advance, but at a very high cost. In order to bring peace to Ukraine, a greater and more strategic effort from Canada and western allies is needed. Canada needs to focus on two broad objectives: number one, strengthening Ukraine's ability to defend itself; and number two, deterring and opposing further Russian aggression.
Since 2015, Ukraine has been making a request to the United Nations to deploy a peacekeeping mission to the occupied territories in the Donbass region. This request was reiterated recently by President Poroshenko when he met President Trump in Washington and Prime Minister Trudeau in Toronto.
For such a mission to be effective and meaningful, it must be deployed to the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. It must involve the withdrawal of all Russian troops and mercenaries and their tanks and other high-tech weaponry from Ukrainian territory. This UN peacekeeping force must be deployed to the Russia-Ukraine border in order to preclude the continuing infiltration of Russian military, weapons, and equipment into Ukrainian territory.
It goes without saying that Russia as an aggressor state cannot have its personnel on this mission. In order to increase the pressure on Russia to accept an effective and robust UN peacekeeping mission, Canada and NATO should do the following: first, provide Ukraine with defensive military equipment, particularly anti-tank and anti-artillery and radar systems, in order to increase the cost to Russia of any further aggression; and second, continue to ratchet up sanctions on Russia until they agree to such a peacekeeping plan, particularly economic sectoral sanctions and individual sanctions against Russian officials responsible for Russia's aggression and for violations of internationally recognized human rights.
Canada is uniquely placed to be a geopolitical leader for such an approach and also to lead an eventual UN peacekeeping mission. We have a long and proud history of participation in peacekeeping operations and have the international credibility to rally support for such a plan.
On November 14 and 15 of this year, Canada will host the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial. Over 70 countries will be participating, and this will be an excellent venue for Canada to announce its intent to take on the lead of a UN mission that will finally bring peace to eastern Ukraine.
Canada has just adopted the Magnitsky Act for which the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian community have long advocated. This act provides the government with important tools to sanction international human rights abusers. Canada should move swiftly to implement sanctions against Russian officials and individuals responsible for aggression against Ukraine and for the violation of human rights of Ukrainian citizens. There are over 40 Ukrainian citizens currently illegally imprisoned by Russia.
Canada's military training mission in Ukraine, operation Unifier, together with missions of allied countries, have made a huge difference in increasing the capacity of Ukraine's military, for which we are very grateful. These efforts need to continue and be expanded.
I was very proud to be a Canadian while in Ukraine this past August 24 to watch the Independence Day parade from the steps of Independence Square in Kiev as Canada's armed forces marched alongside Ukrainian armed forces and the armed forces of eight other NATO countries. This, dear parliamentarians, sent a very strong message to the Kremlin that Canada and NATO stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine.
Canada's involvement on the Defence Reform Advisory Board of Ukraine is having real results in reforming Ukraine's ministry of defence and armed forces as Ukraine implements its goal of NATO interoperability by 2020. On behalf of our community, I would like to acknowledge the efforts of Canada's representative to the Defence Reform Advisory Board, Jill Sinclair, for the excellent work on this file.
Several weeks ago during the Invictus Games in Toronto, I had the opportunity to speak with both Prime Minister Trudeau and Ukraine's President Poroshenko about Ukraine's request that Canada take a leadership role in spearheading a UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, much like Canada's Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson led the United Nations emergency force to resolve the Suez Canal crisis for which, by the way, he was awarded a Nobel Peace prize.
Canada today has an opportunity to lead the international community in bringing peace to Ukraine and stopping the daily bloodshed. By spearheading a UN peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, Canada has the opportunity to take its rightful place and make a significant difference in returning the world to a rules-based international order.
For over three years, Russia has waged war on Ukraine and occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian people have made a historical choice to join the Euro-Atlantic community of nations while defending themselves from foreign aggression. The Ukrainian people and government have made enormous strides in reforming their country.
Canada, one of Ukraine's closest friends, has an opportunity to be a geopolitical leader and rally international support for peace. It will not be easy, but we should seize this opportunity to bring peace to eastern Europe and restore a rules-based international order.
Thank you for allowing me to appear before this committee. I will gladly answer any questions you have.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you for your testimony.
I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Westdal.
3:35 p.m.
Chris Westdal Former Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's truly an honour for me to be here.
I will talk about the global setting, the crisis in Ukraine and its origins, about the existential imperative that we in the west keep more peace with Russia, how Canada might help do so, and about what I think you should recommend.
Our world is in turmoil. Global power is shifting. The west is in palpable relative decline. The Americans are stumbling. The Europeans are in crisis. China has risen and is rising further. Russia is back on its feet. The Middle East is in flames. Jihadism is raging. Persian power is spreading. In Asia a fanatic is rattling nuclear weapons. It is a multipolar world now, and some of the poles are sharply at odds.
Crises come at us thick and fast. Everyone's list is different, but they all include Ukraine. The crisis there has lit the fuse of this new cold war we're waging, more dangerous than the last one, and the stakes in the subject you're discussing are sky high. They are existential.
When media remember Ukraine these days, there is constant talk of who's to blame. In our popular narrative, it's clearly Russia's fault. In Russia's, it's clearly ours. I think there is plenty of blame to go around. Russia is blamed for aggression in Georgia, in Ukraine, in the Baltics, and in Syria. Its President is a demon, a killer, a spoiler, a thief, a war criminal, a fixer of U.S. elections. Choose your epithet, they're all in regular use. Putin is out to restore the Soviet Union, to conquer the Balts again, to make life miserable for Ukraine, and generally to thwart the west at every turn.
That narrative is faulty. I don't think Putin is a demon. In fact, these days he strikes me as one of the more rational adults in the room, and though, as has been said, nothing is more offensive than Russia on the defensive, I don't think Moscow is an aggressive marauder. I don't think it wants war and a broken Ukraine on its western flank. I do think it won't abide a security threat there though, and that it will pay and impose very high costs, as it's doing, to avoid one.
More generally, Russia demands more respect than it's been getting, that Putin is prepared to be our partner, in his words, but never our puppet, and that he's damned if the United States is going to go on running as much of the world as it has been doing, and running it badly. Just think of the U.S. foreign policy fiascos Putin has seen in his 17 years in power, above all in the Middle East, and imagine how the charge that he's the one who's aggressive strikes him. All things are relative. There is no meaning without context.
Let me spend more time though on some of the blame for this mess we're in, which we don't hear so much about. We wrote off Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed. We decided we could ignore its interests. For a decade Boris Yeltsin played along. Vladimir Putin won't. For one thing, he will contain NATO. He made that clear in Georgia in 2008 and he's making it clear now in Ukraine. NATO, Russians know, is not a knitting club. It is a congenitally Russophobic nuclear armed military alliance, the mightiest in the history of the world, and it's been growing by leaps and bounds. Driving NATO up Russia's nose was a colossal counterproductively provocative mistake. That deed has been done though, and we have to live with it. Expanding NATO further, however, to include Georgia and Ukraine as Canada has advocated, would invite catastrophe.
When historians assess the origins of this new cold war, I expect NATO expansion will be high on the list. Independent Ukraine's political, economic, and foreign policy performance hasn't helped much either.
Politically, Kiev lost a fateful measure of the loyalty of its large ethnic Russian minority. One in five Ukrainians had independence, about the same proportion as francophones in Canada. Kiev also failed to wrest political control from oligarchs who run the country.
Economically, though, it is rich in natural resources and in human capital, with no shortage whatever of brains, and though it has received billions in aid through a quarter century now, Ukraine has fallen behind its neighbours, east and west, condemning millions of its people to poverty.
In foreign policy, with Ukraine the rope in a tug-of-war, Kiev's mistakes have been devastating. It failed to keep the peace with its giant neighbour. Three years ago, with hard-line nationalists in charge who trashed an EU-brokered agreement we'd all welcomed officially, the Maidan picked a fight Kiev can't win with the Kremlin.
Kiev can't make the west care more, and it can't make the Kremlin care less. Like them or not, theory aside, major powers' spheres of influence are real. We Canadians know that. We live in one. In the real world, Kiev has about as much freedom to undermine Moscow's security as Ottawa has to undermine Washington's, and, of course, its effective practical sovereignty is compromised. So is the effective practical sovereignty of most of the nations on earth. Welcome to the club.
Kiev was mistaken too in taking European promises of integration, of EU membership even, far too seriously. The prospect of EU membership was always a dream. Now with the EU beset, it's pure fantasy.
Kiev erred as well in letting westerners mind so much of its own business. We've seen the Americans choose a prime minister. We've seen an American proxy finance minister. We've seen foreigners as ministers of reform and anti-corruption, and we've seen, and we're now seeing, the spectacle of Mikheil Saakashvili, fresh from picking his own fight with Russia and losing a good chunk of his country, show up in Ukraine as a regional governor, then as an exile, and now on the streets as a would-be president.
It's an old story. For a thousand years someone else has always been in charge. The buck has seldom stopped in Kiev. It should stop there now. It is clear foreigners don't know how to solve Ukraine's problems. In their independent country, Ukrainians are going to have to solve more of them, or not, themselves.
They would be having an easier time of it had they inherited a smaller, more ethnically homogeneous state, but they didn't, and they've not done well keeping the place together. There is admirable popular democratic will, but the country's political institutions confound it time and again. There have been mass movements and uprisings. There are angry protesters encamped again on the Maidan as we speak. There have been democratic elections, massively monitored, declared free and fair, but they have yet to produce any semblance of peace, order, and good government. As its evangelists should humbly take note, democracy is not an import.
Through the quarter century of Ukraine's independence, Canada has been determined to play a prominent role, driven above all by passionate diaspora sentiment. Quite out of character and far from keeping with our modest military means, we became the west's leading hawk. This aggressive posture with its highly vocal hostility to Russia is sustained to this day.
What I find striking in this record is that we've stood our values on their heads in Ukraine. We go out of our way, for example, to get along with our giant neighbour. For Ukrainians though, who also live beside a giant, we counsel confrontation. The Russian bear should be poked in the nose at every opportunity.
Consider as well that while at home we practise pluralism, inclusive accommodation, federalism, bilingualism, and significant regional autonomy, we pander in Ukraine to lethally exclusive nationalism. Yulia Tymoshenko, recall, was recorded advocating that the solution to Russian ethnicity in Ukraine was a nuclear bomb.
The latest example that is bound to exacerbate inter-ethnic animosity is the new education policy banning Russian language instruction after grade 4. Ethnic Russian Ukrainians, however patriotic, and Russians cannot help but take offence. Wouldn't you?
No country in the world has a more profound interest in good bilateral and western relations with Russia than does Ukraine, yet no country in the world has done less than its best, loudest friend Canada to encourage essential reconciliation.
Consider our Magnitsky sanctions. All of you voted for them. Can any of you tell me, please, what shred of due process they entail? How are those lists of the condemned determined? Who decides how long the list is? Who's guilty? Who's not? Is this done by foreign policy advisers? Is it done by journalists? Is it done by well-paid lobbyists? Who knows?
At a time of new, tense, cold war and global upheaval, and particularly in the glaring ahistorical absence of any Canadian effort whatsoever to ease tension and reduce risk, Canada's grandstanding contribution of a late, ill-timed, imitative, redundantly duplicative, and entirely due process-free set of new Russia sanctions makes no sense whatsoever. Is this all we have to offer? Is this our best shot? To everything there is a season, including moral outrage.
However we got here, though, and whoever is to blame, we are where we are, on the verge of greater disaster, and given the stakes, we really do have to keep more peace with Russia.
To respond to this imperative, my view is that we need to four-square further NATO growth and make room and arrangements for Ukraine to trade well with both Europe and Russia, while posing a security threat to neither. Also, we need to allow for Ukraine to have the space, peace and quiet it so desperately needs to reunite, to recover, to reform, and to succeed.
Far from sacrificing Ukraine as critics will claim, neutrality and détente would provide for its salvation.
Chair, I have another two pages. It will take me another two or three minutes. I'll stop now if you want or I'll continue.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Okay. We are over the time, so to give our members time to ask questions, I appreciate your stopping and we'll go straight to questions. Thank you for your testimony.
3:50 p.m.
Former Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, As an Individual
Well, I have—
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
We'll have some time to circle back to make sure that everyone has a—
3:50 p.m.
Former Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, As an Individual
I didn't get the chance to give you my recommendations.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
I'm sure that may come in the line of questioning.
For everybody at the table, and I guess the new people, this signal typically means it's time to sum up. Whether you're posing a question or giving an answer, we need to make sure everyone gets the right amount of time. It makes my job a whole lot easier, so if you see this, please, you have 30 seconds to wrap it up.
Having said that, I will go to the first person on the official questions for seven minutes. Mr. Fisher, you have the floor.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your testimony and for being here today.
Mr. Grod, we've heard that Russia is using media to spread propaganda through Ukraine. An article in The Economist, referring to the Donbass region, said, “absurdly despite the daily shelling, most of the locals blame Ukraine rather than Russia for their misery.”
When we were in Europe, we heard and we witnessed great support for the EU, at least in Kiev and at least where we were. To what extent do the residents of Donbass region support the pro-Russian units?
If I hear numbers like 65% to 70% of Ukraines support moving more towards Europe rather than towards Russia, yet we hear that in that region...could you maybe articulate more exactly where the support levels are? Is Donbass totally...?
We may never get to a true peaceful negotiation if we have these sectors that feel they are more aligned with Russia than Ukraine.
3:50 p.m.
National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
This is a very important question, because the whole question about the information war is very acute. We have not only active military aggression happening in Ukraine but also economic aggression happening against Ukraine by the Russian Federation. Perhaps even more dramatic and more worrying is the information war that's being waged by the Russian Federation both in Ukraine and frankly across the world. There have been many studies, including in the U.S., around the extent of this information war. That whole region along the borderline or the contact zone is under heavy influence of the Russian propaganda war. It is troubling and it is problematic.
The disinformation war is really focused on Ukraine being a failed state. My co-presenter here, my colleague, painted Ukraine as a failed state and, therefore, we should just give up on them and let them try to figure their own way out. But the reality is that eastern Ukraine and the areas around the conflict zone are, in fact, turning and seeing that.... When the war first broke out, the extent of support for Kiev was significantly lower than it is today.
I've had the privilege or the opportunity to visit the front lines, where I met brave primarily men who were largely from the east. When I was speaking with them, they would show me that their families were either on the front line or behind the occupied territories, and they are there defending their families. These are Russian-speaking, some ethnically Russian. With this whole discussion around ethnic Russian versus Russian-speaking,...at the end of the day, what Vladimir Putin has done for Ukraine is to make it a strong, unified country.
There will be challenges with reintegrating the occupied territories, absolutely. That's why it would be premature to force Ukraine to have immediate elections in that region. First of all, you have between 1.5 million and two million people who have been displaced, and it takes some time to reintegrate. That's why it's important for there to be a UN peacekeeping mission to move all the Russian troops and artillery and hundreds of tanks out of that region, and to allow time for people to resettle, to create peace and stability, and then to hold democratic elections in that region.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Is the Ukrainian government taking any steps, or do they have any chance of rebuilding any type of trust? Is there anything that they're doing, specifically speaking to the Donbass region, to re-engage those folks and kind of bring them back towards Ukraine, or are they seeing it as a lost cause in that particular region?
3:55 p.m.
National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Well, they have no way of accessing that region, because those are occupied territories. There are arguably 40,000 troops there in the occupied territories, controlling those territories. There is no access, whether by Ukrainian NGOs or Ukrainian government officials, to actually provide any support to the people in those regions.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
But they would have access to media or access to Internet to know that the Ukrainian government is working towards change.
3:55 p.m.
National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Access to Internet, yes; access to media, no. Access to Ukrainian media is almost non-existent in the occupied territories, and hence, the disinformation campaign is very intense in that region.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
There is still some trade going on. Russia was the largest trading partner of Ukraine. It's certainly dribs and drabs now, but it's still happening. How do we get to taking Russia out of the mix and their peacekeeping proposals, and taking Ukraine out with their peacekeeping? How do we get there? How do we get an actual—whatever you want to call it—Minsk III? How do you get to an actual, peaceful resolution here? In your opinion, does that happen?
3:55 p.m.
National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
It's simple but very difficult. The simple way is to force Russia's hand to remove their military, their equipment, and their financing of the—quote, unquote—“separatists”, because at the end of the day, as I mentioned at the very beginning, there was never a separatist movement. This was completely engineered, financed, operated, and organized by the Russian Federation, by Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants. The reality is that the people who have led those movements are Russian citizens, Russian military and intelligence officers. Once those people are removed, then you can bring peace and stability to that region.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Do you have a quick question that you want to go with?
October 23rd, 2017 / 3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Leona Alleslev Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
I would like to understand, from your perspective, what it's going to take to break through the situation we're in right now. It's almost a stalemate. You've advocated for more sanctions and more defensive military weapons, yet at the same time you want us to look at UN peacekeeping. Are those two congruent or counterproductive?
3:55 p.m.
National President, Ukrainian Canadian Congress
No, they're very congruent, in order to force Russia's hand to accept a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine, to accept a peacekeeping mission that doesn't freeze the conflict. Vladimir Putin several weeks ago proposed a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine on the contact line, on the conflict zone, which would essentially freeze the conflict and do nothing, when all we're asking for is implementation of the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements require them to stop and remove their forces and allow Ukraine to take control of its border between Russia and Ukraine.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
I thank both witnesses for being here this afternoon as we go through this study about Ukraine.
Mr. Westdal, I'm looking for a bit of background on you. I see you were an ambassador. You served in Ukraine and you served in Russia, along with other areas of the world.
By the way, sir, thank you for your service. We appreciate that for sure.
Your current resumé says you're a member of the Canada Eurasia Russia Business Association. What is that association, and how is it funded?
4 p.m.
Former Canadian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, As an Individual
Canada Eurasia Russia Business Association, or CERBA, is a business promotion association funded by its members. I'm a member of the national board and the Ottawa board. It promotes trade and investment between Canada and Russia, between Canada and Ukraine, between Canada and Kazakstan, between Canada and Armenia, and between Canada and Eurasia, hence the name.