Mr. Chair, I am honoured to rise this evening to participate in this debate on the situation in Ukraine, which is incredibly troubling and urgent as Ukrainians live through this crisis. The world is clearly engaged and watching what is happening in Ukraine and I am very thankful that we are having this debate tonight.
I want to first say, as firmly as I can, working closely with my colleague from Ottawa Centre who is the NDP official opposition critic on international issues, that New Democrats stand firmly with the people of Ukraine in their hour of need. We are with them, we are here in solidarity and we support them in their struggle.
I want to pick up on what others have said here tonight. I believe all parties in the House are of one mind and one voice when it comes to support for the people of Ukraine in the situation they are in this evening. We are very concerned about the current crisis, the use of force against protesters, the denial of free speech and the increasingly eastward drift of Ukraine, turning away from the west and increasingly, we believe, turning away from democratic engagement.
I am very fortunate, as the member of Parliament for Parkdale—High Park, that I represent a very large Ukrainian Canadian diaspora and I am very proud that this community has stayed together so tightly and has such a strong culture. People have preserved their language, their art, their community and their engagement with what is happening in Ukraine, as well as contributing for generations to the building of our country, Canada.
I am very honoured that I have had the opportunity to work with the Ukrainian Canadian community and have come to understand the difficult, troubled history that Ukrainians have faced in their country, everything from dictatorship and the suppression of rights to the ultimate horror of the Holodomor in 1932-33, the famine genocide. It is absolutely unbelievable what the Ukrainian community has had to suffer and I am very proud that it is our country, Canada, that was the first to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide and has worked so closely with the Ukrainian community.
Because of the experience I have had in Parkdale—High Park, I have used that opportunity to engage with Ukrainian people. I first went to Ukraine as an election observer in 2004 during the Orange Revolution. Yes, I was in the Maidan square and it was this time of year. It was very cold, but the energy, emotion and passion of Ukrainians as they jammed into that square was absolutely palpable.
Of course, we were neutral election observers. We were there to observe, but I was sent to Zaporizhia, which was an all-night train ride into the central eastern part of Ukraine. We arrived exactly at 6 a.m. on December 25. It was an incredible experience. The reason we were there was that the presidential elections were deemed fraudulent and were being rerun. There had been a huge initiative undertaken to train all of those who were participating as staff in the election and the people who volunteered. I saw first-hand how passionately Ukrainians wanted the democratic process to work. I believe in that case it did work, because the results were overturned. They elected a different president and there was so much hope in the aftermath of those elections.
I had the opportunity to return to Ukraine twice after that to be part of subsequent elections, most recently in 2012 for the parliamentary election. There are some re-runoffs of those elections taking place in the near future.
I have seen first-hand the passion of the Ukrainian people, who want what they have described to me as a normal country, a normal society and a normal democracy. Normal means that opposition leaders do not get jailed right before an election. They do not get hauled off to trial on trumped up charges and then thrown in jail so they cannot participate in elections. Normal means the media does not get completely controlled in the months running up to an election. It means that people have the opportunity to freely and peacefully demonstrate and engage in their society.
I want to thank the many colleagues in the House who have been part of these observer missions and who have worked on the Canada-Ukraine parliamentary friendship committee. This is so important. I also want to thank those involved in the internship program. Through this program, I have seen first-hand, in my office here in Ottawa, smart, educated, talented young people from Ukraine, full of hope, who want to learn, who want to build their country.
I have so much hope for the future of Ukraine, yet here we are in these dark times right now debating the situation, all because the Ukraine government turned its back on its negotiations and its long-standing opportunity to form a trade partnership with the EU after years of negotiations. President Yanukovych turned his back on this and instead, when protestors start filling the streets in Kiev, he cracked down on them. He sent in the armed police who threw people in jail and beat people. That is not the way a democracy ought to function. Young people know better and that is why they are standing up against this brutality.
We are all here tonight with Ukraine. We have to ensure that whatever actions we or the international community take, there is engagement. We need not do anything that further isolates Ukraine.
I want to commend the Minister of Foreign Affairs for his recent trip to Ukraine and meeting with the protestors and engaging with the government. I believe we cannot just criticize Ukraine. We have to engage with it, but exert pressure as we engage also with civil society. With all of the work we have done, sending more election observers than any other country, we have the opportunity and we have the obligation to engage with Ukraine and advocate for it on the international stage.
We do have to call on the president of Ukraine to respect the rights of the citizens of Ukraine, to respect democratic assembly, to respect free speech, to respect the right of people to have fair and free elections and to respect their desire when the majority of Ukrainians want to have engagement with the west. We want to urge the government to allow that to happen.
We support the engagement of Ukraine with the European Union. We think that is a positive development. We also need to put pressure on Russia because we believe its undue meddling in Ukraine's affairs is really behind what is happening. We believe this is in violation of treaties that Russia has committed to in terms of submitting Ukraine to economic pressure. It needs to cease and desist from doing that.
There are many other measures that we support. We support the Ukrainian Canadian Congress's demands for a crackdown on money laundering and corrupt business practices. We support the desire of Ukrainians who come to Canada to have greater access to visas and an accelerated process.
I see my time is just about up, but just let me say:
[Member spoke in Ukrainian]