Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, for his speech and for his work in his previous portfolio as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and for his incredible knowledge of the situation in Ukraine.
We have been watching the situation slowly deteriorate for the last number of years. It started with Yanukovych coming to power. We saw some of the changes that have been made to election laws and we know that there has been a slow move to undermine the democratic will of the people. I guess the one thing that started to bring that to fruition was the drastic measures that President Yanukovych and his regime were prepared to take in imprisoning Yulia Tymoshenko, the legitimate opposition leader, the runner up in the presidential elections of 2010. She was wrongfully politically imprisoned through a showcase trial
Could the parliamentary secretary talk to that? The foreign affairs committee in the past studied the issue of eroding democratic rights and how the telling tale was when Yanukovych believed that if he could get away with that, “Just watch me now”. That is why we find ourselves in the situation we are in today.