Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North.
This past July, as the chair of the Canada-Ukraine Friendship Group, and as a Ukrainian Canadian, I had the honour of bearing witness to the historic signing of the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement in the presidential ceremonial hall in Kiev.
I would like to thank our Prime Minister for including me in that delegation, and more important, for making this state visit and signing a priority for our new government. In fact, it was the Prime Minister's first one-on-one state visit after his visit to the United States, and this will most likely be the first free trade agreement to be ratified by our government.
Watching my fellow Ukrainian Canadian, the Minister of International Trade, sign the treaty was especially poignant, as we had first met in Kiev in 1991-92, as young and idealistic Canadians who were intent on making a difference in the ancestral homeland of our parents and grandparents, the minister as a journalist, and myself as a Canadian organizer of Rukh, Ukraine's democratic front.
Twenty-five years later, the minister worked hard to make this free trade agreement a reality, Twenty-five years later, we accompanied Canada's Prime Minister for the signing of this historic agreement.
Canada-Ukraine trade is quite modest, only $289 million annually, which begs the question as to why this treaty was such a priority for our government.
Canada and Ukraine have a “special” relationship. The word “special”, not just an adjective, but a term defined in an agreement in 1994, the “Joint Declaration on Special Partnership between Canada and Ukraine”, which was reaffirmed in 2001, and again in 2008. As well, Ukraine was one of 25 countries of focus for the Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA.
Although Canadians and our symbol of the maple leaf are warmly received in almost every country of the world, there is no country where Canadians are more warmly, in fact affectionately, welcomed than in Ukraine.
Many of us literally stood shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine during the independence movement of 1988 to 1991 and the democratic revolutions: the orange revolution of 2004 and the revolution of dignity of 2014. I cannot relate to this House and the Canadian people how often during these historic events, Ukrainians, upon hearing that I was from Canada, would embrace me and say, “Thank you, Canada. Please say thank you to the people of Canada.”
However, our human ties run much deeper. Ukraine has given its most precious of gifts: its people. Some 1.3 million Canadians trace their ancestral roots to Ukraine. Next year Canada marks our 150th anniversary. This year Ukrainian Canadians mark the 125th anniversary of the arrival of the first Ukrainian pioneers in Canada's prairies.
These pioneers transformed the bush of the prairies into the golden wheat fields of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. As one travels the vastness of the prairies, the golden paysage is regularly broken by grain elevators and the domes of Ukrainian churches. In fact, there is not a city in Canada where golden church domes do not testify to the presence of Ukrainian Canadians. They testify to the perseverance, industry, and spirituality of our people.
The ribbons of steel of the Canadian Pacific Railway bound our vast Confederation together. It was largely Ukrainian Canadians who filled that prairie vastness. Their presence countered the movement of American settlers north, who were posing sovereignty threats to their northern neighbour. Canada may well have had a very different geography if not for the government's policy of free land to the “people in sheepskin coats”.
However, Ukrainian Canadians did not only transform our landscape, they gave us a deeper understanding of who we are as a nation. The term “multiculturalism” was first used by Senator Paul Yuzyk in his maiden speech in 1963, and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress lobbied the federal government throughout the 1960s on this issue, a government of the time whose official policy was biculturalism. It was due to these determined efforts that former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau officially announced the federal policy of multiculturalism in 1971, thus transforming our Canada.
Today, in a world of resurgent xenophobia and nativism, Canada stands as an aspirational city on a hill among liberal democracies. Our multiculturalism, our strength in diversity, a shining example to a world of increasing chauvinism and divisions.
The contributions by Ukrainian Canadians to Canada, both in numbers and in length of time, qualifies them as one of this great country's founding peoples. It is why when Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov referred to us a “rabid diaspora” in January of this year, while ranting against Canada's steadfast policy of standing with Ukraine, that his denunciation was responded to by Canada's foreign minister's statement of January 27, in this House.
The minister stated:
I am so pleased...to express...the steadfast support of Canada for Ukraine, how much we deeply disagree with the invasion and interference of the Russian government in Ukraine, and also how much we will not tolerate from a Russian minister any insults against the community of Ukraine in Canada. We owe so much to Ukrainian Canadians and we will always support them.
Today, Russia poses the gravest geopolitical threat to liberal democracy and the west, and Ukraine and its people are literally on the front line. When Putin ordered his armies to militarily invade and annex Ukrainian territory, he broke a fundamental principle of international rule of law: the sanctity of borders. We have not seen European borders changed through military force since the 1930s. Ten thousand Ukrainian soldiers, mostly volunteers and civilians, have been killed by invading Russian soldiers and their proxies. Why did Putin invade? It was because the people of Ukraine chose liberty and democracy. The revolution of dignity was a revolt against a new enslavement by a kleptocratic president puppet of a dictatorial Kremlin. It was the first time in the history of the European Union that people, student demonstrators, were shot by snipers, killed while carrying the European Union flag, a symbol of the western democratic values that we so cherish.
However, the Kremlin has not only declared war militarily, and there is not just an ongoing propaganda war, there is a Kremlin economic war against Ukraine. Russia has been Ukraine's largest trading partner, equivalent in importance to Canada's economic relationship with the United States. At the same time that Russia militarily invaded, Putin shut down trade with Ukraine. It is why the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement is of such importance. It is a clear statement of support by Canada for Ukraine at a time of Kremlin military aggression and economic war. It is not just a reaffirmation of our government's policy with respect to free trade, it is a geopolitical statement of support.
Having earlier noted the current modest levels of trade, we should not dismiss the opportunities that the agreement affords the business communities of both countries, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Ukraine, with its free trade association with the European Union, can be the entry point for Canadian low-cost capital investment and low manufacturing costs on the European continent, a de facto gateway into the European market. Canada can become a gateway for nascent small and medium-sized Ukrainian businesses to expand and invest in Canada as an entry point into the North American market.
I conclude by thanking Canada on behalf of all Ukrainian Canadians. This has been “freedom's shores” and the land of opportunity for waves of Ukrainian immigrants for over 125 years. This is the land in which our ancestors, with their perseverance, industry, and spirituality, built new lives, and in building their lives helped to build and transform our great country of Canada. They built a future in their new homeland, however, they never forgot their ancestral roots, who they were, and where they came from. The Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement is a hand of friendship and solidarity extended by Canada to a country, Ukraine, which gave its most precious resource, its human resources, its people, to us. Long may our special relationship endure.
Slava Canadi, Slava Ukraini.