Mr. Chair, I had the privilege of participating in the foreign affairs delegation that travelled to Ukraine in 2012 to look into ongoing issues with the erosion of the rule of law and democracy. While we were there, we met with many panels of people. One of the panels was very interesting and goes toward the minister's portfolio.
We met with the American Chamber of Commerce, the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the European Business Association. Those business advisers said to us at that time that unless we had deep pockets, we should be very careful of investing in Ukraine. Since that time, there has been, essentially, a revolution in Ukraine. The people are grateful. They feel that they now have a better chance of having control over their government, but they remain very concerned about continuing corruption and the lack of a flow of benefits to the people of Ukraine as opposed to their flow to the oligarchs
In a meeting just this week that Canada participated in with the donors, the Europeans and Americans again expressed concern that the reforms on the rule of law and anti-corruption are not moving as rapidly as they had hoped.
In my experience in work with Canadian aid in both Indonesia and Bangladesh, Canada provided experts on an ongoing basis and did not have them just parachute in for a week. Is the minister's department giving consideration to actually offering up some financial and anti-corruption experts to help Ukraine over the long term develop these mechanisms to protect both the people and investors?