Mr. Speaker, what was going through my mind earlier when my colleague, the member for Mississauga East—Cooksville, spoke was that this was a man who actually knows what he is talking about. He lived under a repressive communist regime in Poland, similar to the regime that people lived under in Ukraine during the Soviet times. He knows what it means to throw off the shackles of the old Soviet regime. There were always people in Ukraine and have been for decades, and I would say perhaps for centuries, trying to divide the Ukrainian people, but I reject this notion. The Ukrainian people are a distinct people. There is a distinct culture there. They have made great contributions throughout the centuries to the region and they deserve to stay together as one cohesive unit, not suffer the repression they have suffered in the past, and go forward, hopefully in a unified integrated way with Europe, with the opportunities that the people of Poland have had since their independence.
In the House of Commons on January 27th, 2014. See this statement in context.