Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to give a message to Viktor Yanukovych. If he has any friends who are watching us tonight, I would ask them to put a cassette in the TV, record this and pass on this message him.
While they are doing that, I again would like to commend all the members of the House, as I think others have, who worked very quickly. Often government cannot work quickly, but in a very important human situation all the members of the House put aside any differences and have unanimously supported Canada's view on this very difficult situation.
I thank those people I implored a few months ago to free up as many observers from our caucus as possible. They worked toward that. Of course I thank the member for Etobicoke Centre, our caucus chair and the Deputy Prime Minister for working so quickly on this.
I would say to Mr. Yanukovych that I assume he would like to be a leader of a great nation and to be a great leader. Of course Ukraine is a great nation of wonderful people and anyone would be proud to be their leader. I know that if things were not as they should be, he would certainly want to distance himself from that, find out what was wrong and fix it so he would be known as a great leader of a great people.
Therefore, I have to say that there are problems he may not be aware of that the people surrounding him may not have told him about, but certainly I assume he would want to fix them.
First of all, in the recent election, intimidation went on in very many places. That included the detention of observers from my country who had volunteered to help and the confiscation of their passports. In any nation in the world this would be totally abhorrent activity, and I am sure Mr. Yanukovych would want to distance himself from such activity.
More than that, during this election that just occurred there was actually falsification of lists. The names of people who had no legal right to vote were added to those lists. I know that if Mr. Yanukovych were aware of that he would want to fix it and search out who might have done that. It was not a small number. As well, there were hundreds of names added to those lists in poll after poll. If he adds that up, he would see that thousands and thousands of names were added to lists illegally. I know that no leader would ever want to be associated with that.
Any leader would know that it would result in a totally illegal election where there would be no credibility for the leader. Any leader would certainly want to find out what was wrong and find out who was putting such a blight on the electoral process of a great people and a great nation.
But that is not all. Now evidence has come of which Mr. Yanukovych may not be aware. There was actually falsification of ballot boxes. There were ballot boxes that were not legally part of the election. They were added so that more votes could be put in. More than that, there were mobile ballot boxes that were taken without the correct objective. Election observers and people who should have been monitoring them were taken around, and who knows what happened to them? I know that Mr. Yanukovych would be just aghast to find that out. There are so many things that I have already mentioned that he must be sickened at how this has gone awry in a totally incredible illegal process that of course will never stand up and that he would never want to be associated with.
There is more than that. In the next instance, the observers, the legal people asked to come in and help, have found that--and it is almost too hard to repeat it because it is almost incredible that this could happen in the modern world--people actually put disappearing ink on ballots in areas where a particular candidate would be known to do well. It disappeared, all those ballots did not count and of course that particular candidate was terribly disadvantaged.
Then there is the printing. This is another thing that I know Mr. Yanukovych will want to fix when he dissolves this whole process to start again. It is the fact that there were absentee ballots made for people to vote with who could not vote there. On the surface, it sounds like a very logical thing to do. But the thousands and thousands of these absentee ballots that were made were under no control so that they could just be put in the boxes in great numbers. I am sure Mr. Yanukovych would be aghast to hear that it actually happened in the election in his country. He certainly would not want that reflection on himself or his people.
I am sure Mr. Yanukovych would find it hard to believe, now that it has been verified, that there were busloads of people with voting credentials going from poll to poll and voting again and again.
Then there is the deprivation of the rights of observers. They volunteered in good faith for the Ukrainian people. People came from around the world to help out. They were physically removed from the locations they were supposed to be in. Under those circumstances, obviously, there was not even a real election.
However, most of all, I think Mr. Yanukovych will be most upset to find out that this was not fraud by a few rogue individuals he is now going to be looking for. I know he is going to try to root them out, but it was not simply a few fanatical helpers of a candidate trying to do this in isolation. It has now been proven that there was central coordination of all this fraud.
If Mr. Yanukovych needs help when he is trying to find the people who have tried to disgrace him, we can help with the head of the committee for the organization and methodical work of the central electoral commission.
Let me say to Mr. Yanukovych that I know this may be very disappointing for him that this might have happened in his country, but when we add all these things together, which is an incredible, almost unbelievable list, the experts calculate that this could be over three million illegal votes.
I know that if Mr. Yanukovych wants to be a great leader what he will be doing is trying to root out those who caused and perpetuated such a catastrophe on his nation. I know he will want to bring them before the criminal justice system and let it deal with them. Then I know he will want to reconstitute an electoral process, having learned from all these mistakes and having found ways to prevent the possibility of such fraud ever occurring again.
I know that anyone who wants to be a great leader of a nation and a champion would put in that type of process with observers again, but with systems where that could not possibly happen again, now that we have learned what happened. It would be done so that a fair and democratic election commensurate with the fairness of the people of Ukraine could happen. All the candidates, including Mr. Yanukovych, if he chose to enter such an election, could be great candidates because, win or lose, they would participate in a fair process.
In closing, I want to say one thing to the people of the Ukraine. No matter what our heritage is, no matter what people's religions are, no matter what our history, we all have something in common: we love freedom.
Let me say to the people of the Ukraine, including the young students who have written to my colleague by e-mail and the young students who dream of democracy, they can rest assured that as long as they want it they will ultimately have that freedom. In their darkest days, when it is hard to overcome the tragedies and carry on, I say to them to keep up their strength knowing that the free people of the whole world are behind them and that they will overcome and will one day soon be free.