Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Yukon.
Ukrainians are living through an historic moment and we are living that moment with them. The presidential election was a great opportunity for Ukraine to show that it had developed into a fully democratic country.
Unfortunately, the events we witnessed on the weekend have made a mockery of the election. The voting can in no way be considered democratic. The problems that occurred were not minor, nor were they technical. The international community has been led to conclude that it was a daring attempt by the Ukrainian authorities to steal the election for their candidate, Prime Minister Yanukovich.
The list of electoral violations is long. A lot of the hon. members in the House have listed them. The following are some of the things the international election monitors saw: fraudulent proxy voting; multiple voting; ballot box stuffing by administrative officials and electoral commission members; violence, threats and intimidations against voters and international election observers; voter list manipulation; and ballot box destruction and vandalism.
Those are only the most blatant examples of fraud that were reported by international observers, including our colleagues in the House, especially the member for Etobicoke Centre who saw firsthand the lack of respect for the democratic process.
These many instances of serious and significant electoral fraud I just cited are neither minor nor technical. They are serious and significant. Why am I speaking on this topic? Because I sat in the Chair as an assistant deputy speaker and as one of the assistant deputy speakers I was involved in a process in which, through our CIDA project, we were trying to equip the Ukrainian parliament with certain tools to help them along in terms of procedure and democratic practices in the House.
I visited the Ukraine parliament on at least two occasions and had discussions with some of the Ukrainian parliamentarians and staff who worked for the parliament of the Ukraine. It was a very enlightening experience. There was a mood in the Ukraine parliament to move along the democratic process. It looked to Canada as a model of the type of parliament, the type of democratic process and system that it wanted in its own country.
I can now visualize all the young people who worked with me on that Canada-Ukraine project. Some members have said that they were in touch with some of those young people who had actually come on another program in this Parliament, the parliamentary internship program. I also have had two students from the Ukraine in my office. I have had some experience with these young people and know of the hope these young people had that their country, Ukraine, was on the right road toward democracy.
I received an e-mail from one of those young students who, unfortunately, feels lost at the moment. After all the effort he put into learning about our democratic process and how his country could move along and become perhaps much like Canada, a country where democracy and elections are held in a democratic way, he felt that he had no hope for his country.
I feel sad tonight, as do a lot of my colleagues who had invested their time in terms of teaching these young students in the internship program about how we do things in the House. I feel sad today for that young man and all the young people with whom I worked over the last two and a half years. That is why I am here speaking on behalf of what the young people are looking for in terms of the future, what they want for their country, Ukraine. There was so much hope but these elections, unfortunately, cut that hope down. That is a sad thing.
I want Canadians to know that we have worked as a country, as a government and as a Parliament with the parliament of Ukraine to give all parliamentarians, as well as the administrative staff and some of the young people, the tools they needed to have a properly run democratic parliament.
Today I am sad for all of those young people and the hundreds of Canadians of Ukrainian origin who also share our anger and frustration that the investment we have made over the years, in terms of helping Ukraine along the democratic road, was stolen away from the young people, the people of Ukraine and from all of us.
I am really very disappointed. I am disappointed that these election results show that there has been fraud, so much fraud that Canada must react immediately.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has declared that the election does not meet democratic standards. The Canadian international observers have listed many offences committed during the voting and in the counting of ballots. They noted cases of violence, widespread intimidation and an improbably high turnout in certain regions.
I am troubled by this because for years this is exactly what we have been trying to do: reach an agreement with Ukraine to establish democratic standards.
What should we do? That is the purpose of our debate here tonight. What should Canada do? CIDA has provided $235 million in aid since 1991. We should not abandon this investment. We must invest in democracy and the Ukrainian parliament.
We must act and, tonight, as parliamentarians, we demand that Canada respond. And the Deputy Prime Minister said today in the House that Canada would be doing just that.
Tonight, we are going to do something for the good of the young people who came here in the hopes of having a fully democratic country. These young people are counting on us, counting on Canada. We have a democratic system that we often take for granted. These young people are counting on us; they are counting on us to do what is necessary with our international partners.
I also mentioned that we often work with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We must continue to work with the organizations that are already on the ground and who have helped Ukraine get to the point it was at before this election.
As the Minister of Justice said, we cannot countenance the fraudulent actions in this election. We must continue to work with Ukraine.
Canada has been a long-time friend of Ukraine, as I said earlier. That friendship we hold dearly. We hold it dearly because there are Canadians of Ukrainian origin who have contributed to the fact that we have as great a democracy as we have and who counted on Canada to help their country of origin move along the road of democracy.
For Canadians and for those young people I have worked with, we have to continue to push for a multilateral force, in my opinion, both in the legal part of it and perhaps in other measures. I am hoping that perhaps there will be some discussion at NATO, at the OECD and at the United Nations and that we as the community that Canada is a part of can work together with certain other bodies to assure that these elections are declared undemocratic, that the proper results of this election are in fact brought to light.
It is for the Ukrainian people, especially the young people who have been to our country and have visited our Parliament and who have been working very hard to ensure that there will be a democracy in their country, that I stand in the House today. I want to tell them that I hope they know, and I will make sure they know, that Canadian parliamentarians will help them to ensure that democracy does return to their country and we will continue to assist them.