Mr. Chair, indeed, it is an honour and a privilege to be in this chamber where we have freedom of speech, where we can speak out on numerous issues and know that there are no repercussions for what we say, where we have a true opportunity to air our grievances.
It is fitting that, tonight, we are having a debate about the situation in Ukraine. To all our Ukrainian friends who are watching us tonight, I say, dobry vechir.
While we are here discussing the current crisis in Kiev, Lviv and other communities across Ukraine, we know that Canadians are watching. My email account today has been inundated with Canadian Ukrainians and with civil society organizations feeding me their statements, their concerns, their press releases and background briefing notes on the situation in Ukraine. The media in Canada is watching this story closely. At the same time, many of my friends in Ukraine have also been contacting me, ensuring that I see the live feeds coming in from Independence Square in Kiev on what is happening in the Maidan and wanting to ensure that Canada is fully aware of the strong hand of government, of the police brutality that is taking place at this moment in Ukraine.
I know that the Ukrainian government is watching, following this debate to see what Canadian politicians are saying, monitoring what is happening in our media, what is happening through organizations such as Canadian Friends of Ukraine, the League of Canadian Ukrainians, and of course, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. We just read into the record a letter that was sent from our friend, Paul Grod.
As someone who is proud of my Ukrainian heritage, I have been active in carrying many different issues forward on behalf of Ukrainian Canadians here in the House of Commons, which includes my private member's bill on the Holodomor, which includes numerous election monitoring trips to the Ukraine, which included being in the Ukraine with the Prime Minister when he was the first prime minister and the first world leader to ever say, in Ukraine, that the Holodomor was a genocide. It was something that I was incredibly proud to see happen and something that the current leadership cannot even say within Ukraine itself.
When I first got elected 10 years ago, we witnessed the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. There was so much hope brought with that. They overturned a debunked election. The person they had thrown out is now the president, Viktor Yanukovych. Their hopes rode on Viktor Yushchenko and they made him president. They thought he would bring about change. It never materialized, unfortunately.
Then we have seen the selective justice process where former political leaders are imprisoned. People are frustrated with that. It is not that they are saying that everything that Yulia Tymoshenko did was right, but they are saying that she never got a fair trial.
It just raises the question of whether or not there is true judicial independence within the Ukraine.
One of the reasons that so many of us in the House, in this chamber, have been to the Ukraine on multiple occasions is to watch elections, to observe how they are carried out, to communicate with people in an electoral system about reform. What we continue to see is gerrymandering, to the benefit of the current party in power.
All of us are concerned about the quashing of civil liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of press, judicial independence, respect for the rule of law. We have had numerous complaints coming from the academics that their courses, their teachings are continually monitored and interfered with by the department of education in the Ukraine.
We have to move the yardstick and that is not happening. We have been reaching out to Ukraine. Ukraine has tried to become more integrated in the world economy. It joined the World Trade Organization. One of the first things it did, although it was legal, was to apply tariffs to over 370 commodities, products and services across this country. We are trying to negotiate a free trade agreement with Ukraine, and that is not negotiating in good faith, in my opinion.
We know that did not sit well and stuck in the craw of the European Union, which was in the process of closing a deal with Ukraine that was to be signed off on at the end of November in Vilnius, Lithuania, so that there would be a true economic co-operative agreement, free trade and more integration within the European Union for the Ukrainian people. President Yanukovych walking away from that deal has created this huge public outcry.
What we have witnessed over the last 10 years, from election interference and no respect for the rule of law to continued Soviet-style governance systems, has now accumulated with what we see happening with the Euromaidan. We have to continue to engage Ukraine. We cannot allow this to continue to happen. At the same time, we have to see some good faith from Ukraine and we have not seen any good faith in a long time. The closest thing we have seen was when it released Yuriy Lutsenko, who was one of the political leaders and lawyer for Yulia Tymoshenko. That is the only step of good faith that we have seen from this administration.
When I did my last election monitoring in Ukraine for the parliamentary elections last year, I was part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the OSCE, parliamentary delegation. There were a number of us who were part of that parliamentary delegation. We were on the ground doing election monitoring. I definitely saw improvements in the way the elections were being carried out, but starting this weekend there are a number of by-elections in Ukraine because so many results were thrown out for interference, fraud and other corruption charges on a number of different oblasts.
They are redoing those elections and there will again be another Canadian delegation going there, run by CANADEM. They will again be monitoring the situation, but it is going to be under a much more difficult scenario because of the peaceful protests that are taking place. Unfortunately, those protesters are being shoved aside, their tent city ripped down, and Maidan being destroyed.
Just last week, the OSCE had a meeting. Its 20th ministerial council was held in Kiev and our Minister of Foreign Affairs, who has had such a strong, principled stand on how we engage with Ukraine, was there. I was very proud when I saw him and Paul Grod, who is the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, walking through Independence Square with the Canadian maple leaf strapped on their backs, showing the people of Ukraine that Canada stands in solidarity with them, that we will stay engaged and we will make sure that their aspirations will be realized.
I want to make sure we look at what the purpose of the OSCE is. This is an organization that we want Ukraine to use as its basis for moving forward, from a security standpoint, from an economic co-operation standpoint and a democracy standpoint. The OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier, on the eve of ministerial council in Kiev last week, said:
Peaceful dialogue is at the core of the OSCE’s work and finding common ground through political means is our raison d’être....
Respect of fundamental rights, such as freedom of assembly, the right to free expression and giving journalists the liberty to do their work is essential to ensuring cohesive and secure societies.
All we want is for the current administration in Ukraine to allow society in Ukraine to mature, to be free, to be democratic and respect the rule of law.