National Defence committee  If the mission is simply on the line of contact, then it will essentially freeze that conflict. We don't want either a hot conflict or a frozen conflict, because essentially those people are going to be put under the same level of human rights abuses as they're experiencing today and experiencing in Crimea.

National Defence committee  Well, they've agreed to that essentially under the Minsk agreements. We just want them to implement that and allow for the Ukrainians or, quite frankly, the UN peacekeepers to allow the control of that border again.

National Defence committee  I don't think NATO is doing enough to battle the information war. I think you were caught flat-footed because that really was not in NATO's mandate, and as a result, they're playing catch-up in a major way. I wanted to say the important thing to remember is that we're a middle power.

National Defence committee  We've had time to chat quite a bit about the defensive measures, so I won't spend too much time on that topic. I think really what we need to focus on is reforming the country. It is making some great progress. I think we are on the cusp of really solidifying and institutionalizing these democratic initiatives we've been working on, whether for judicial reform and how to get rid of corrupt judges, whether by supporting the anti-corruption bureau, or whether by supporting decentralization and putting in further elements that will reduce or prevent some of the corrupt practices that unfortunately were inherited from the Soviet Union.

National Defence committee  Number one, we should be watching troop movements. The most recent Russian troop movements, with their latest military exercise called Zapad this past summer, were very troubling. The escalating number of Russian troops in Belarus on the Ukrainian border and the border with the Baltics was very troubling.

National Defence committee  I absolutely agree with that statement. He takes advantage of there being weaknesses. The time right after the president of Ukraine, Yanukovych, fled and the parliament was looking for a democratic resolution to the prevailing vacuum, was the particular time when Vladimir Putin struck, both in Crimea and in the Donbass.

National Defence committee  I think one key element is to understand that Russia wants to see Ukraine as a failed state and is doing everything internationally and internally to undermine Ukraine's viability to make it a failed state and to turn the west against Ukraine. We see this through economic pressure.

National Defence committee  You asked how, in terms of the conflict, we measure success there. Number one, very simply, is that you measure how many artillery shells are flying across from the occupied territories into Ukraine. You measure the number on a daily basis. The OSCE does so, and they issue a daily report.

National Defence committee  That's why we need to return to rules-based international order, and that's why there have to be consequences for Russia's flouting of the rules-based international order. We've talked about various ways to do that. Those include excluding them and isolating them from various international institutions.

National Defence committee  In terms of gender politics, when you look at the composition of today's Ukrainian government, you see many senior women in places of influence, whether it's the first deputy prime minister of Ukraine, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who will be reporting tomorrow to this committee and who is responsible for Euro-Atlantic integration, or the minister of health, a prominent woman—who, by the way, is Ukrainian-American—who is involved in helping reform the health care system and who is married to a Ukrainian-Canadian, Marko Suprun.

National Defence committee  Thank you. I think the simple discussion is that the Ukrainian people want to live in a society that shares values similar to Canada's. That's why the “Maidan of human dignity”, as they call it, was successful: because the people were going to stand there until they were able to have a society that they could live freely in.

National Defence committee  In 2015, Ukraine put on the table a proposal for a UN peacekeeping mission, and it has always been on the table since 2015. I believe, frankly, that because there was a threat of the U.S. providing Ukraine with defensive military equipment, which the White House is very seriously contemplating right now, it's only very recently that Russia has tried to come up with their own version of a peacekeeping mission.

National Defence committee  We've seen what the reaction of resets by previous U.S. presidents has brought, and it hasn't brought a more co-operative Russia. Unfortunately, we've seen through the past that Russia only understands when there is equal strength on the other side and not necessarily this strategy of trying to engage.

National Defence committee  I think that would, frankly, further instigate the tension. I believe that, again, a UN peacekeeping force would have to be endorsed by the Security Council, and of course Russia has a veto on the Security Council. I think that if there's a threat of further NATO support for Ukraine, then that could be the potential stick that will force Russia's hand to accept that peacekeeping mission.

National Defence committee  Essentially they're meant to support various reforms in Ukraine. Examples of that, again, are training of judges or training of the new police force in Ukraine.