Mr. Chair, I want to thank our public safety critic. He knows all too well that the Budapest memorandum was signed in 1991 by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ukraine, and Russia, five partners, who all said that they would honour the sovereign territory of Ukraine if they gave up their nuclear warheads. It was the second-largest arsenal in the world, even ahead of the United States at that time. They gave it all up. Where did most of those nuclear warheads go? They ended up back in Russia to be dismantled, to be disposed of.
How were they paid back? Just over 20 years later, they were invaded by Russia itself. Mother Russia came back to claim what they consider to be Russian territory.
We have to remember that Ukraine existed before Russia did. We have to remember that the Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, have said no to this invasion and illegal occupation and now are being banned of their human rights. They are no longer allowed to worship in their mosques. They are no longer allowed to meet and associate together in their parliamentary assembly, the Mejlis. They are no longer allowed to produce their papers or have their radio stations or television stations. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press have been completely removed by the Russian occupier in Crimea. The Kremlin illegally annexed it, they fixed the referendum, and the world did not honour the Budapest memorandum.
What do these legal treaties and world laws mean if nobody is going to enforce them? The least that we can do, as Canada, is to continue to isolate Vladimir Putin and the regime in the Kremlin from carrying out their aspirations on the world stage, ignore them in international organizations, and work through other groups like NATO to force them back to the table and out of Ukraine.
Crimea is Ukraine, Donbass is Ukraine, and Canada will always stand with the people of Ukraine.