Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us here to speak today. I'd like to say a few words about the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce so you know where we're coming from. The chamber is a privately led initiative whose purpose is to facilitate trade and investment relations betw

Foreign Affairs committee  I would say that negotiating with all the parties to the problem is always a good solution. I'm just not sure if Russia is ready to negotiate, because, as you said, Russia is not going away. I'm glad that people like the Russian ambassador to Canada yesterday on TV said, “This

Foreign Affairs committee  Definitely, Ukraine has huge potential in energy. Ukraine has, as I said, the third largest reserves of shale gas in Europe. Ukraine has huge potential of regular natural gas in the Black Sea and Azov Sea. The problem always was, and I hope it goes away now, that they've talked a

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe I could add to that. I still feel that what you said, someone speaking Ukrainian and Russian, is very important in the force that's going there. I would still concentrate more on the eastern and southern parts, so all the very much pro-Russian or whatever forces. I would st

Foreign Affairs committee  I am seriously concerned, because suddenly the military exercise in the region came from nowhere. That's very strange. I just don't like that whole plan, which is almost like a copy of the plan in Georgia, where they are not giving them passports for them to leave; they're giving

Foreign Affairs committee  Unfortunately, I would say that, yes, western aid right now is critical. I think this government is going to be very serious about it and they're going to really follow the rules when you give them these funds, but without it, it's impossible to survive. I was born in Poland. I

Foreign Affairs committee  Maybe quickly on the gas, definitely there are rumours—I have no proof—that Gazprom was financing all these environmentalists to cause some problems. I noticed that in eastern Ukraine when Shell was signing the deal with the Ukrainian government, there were very few complaints ab

International Trade committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Standing Committee on International Trade, for this opportunity. It is always an honour to be in our nation's capital. While we rely on various levels of government support, that of the federal government in recent years has been insur

International Trade committee  —I'm sorry, friends—and the Philippines for outsourcing IT support and solutions.

International Trade committee  I'll take two minutes. Barclays Bank houses its entire IT department in Kiev, Ukraine. Your national brand name, Canadian Tire, uses IT support from Ukraine extensively. In fact, internationally recognized applications such as WhatsApp, PayPal, and Petcube were all developed in

International Trade committee  Even during the negotiations on the free trade agreement, as an example, there are certain things that ministers can say to ministers, because they're diplomats, and there are certain things that they cannot say. We, as the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce, can always pose ques

International Trade committee  Absolutely. Obviously, in different areas in business, there are different ways to set them up and then have successful business. In the energy sector, for example, between Ukraine and Canada.... It's a very important sector for Ukraine, because, as the Prime Minister said a fe

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. Quickly on SMEs and that CUTIS project I mentioned, which is actually supported by the federal government, it's strictly restricted to SMEs. This is support of SMEs in Ukraine and also SMEs that are run and managed by women. Gender equality, as I ment

International Trade committee  Yes. I think that absolutely Ukraine is basically rebuilding everything, from transportation to infrastructure to buildings and everything. Obviously, Canada is a huge engineering and service and manufacturing power in the world, so in that area, absolutely, there's huge potentia

International Trade committee  As I mentioned before, Ukraine is basically changing everything: transportation, infrastructure, renewable energy, and even in agro-industry, which is a huge and important sector for Ukraine. They do well in the world in agro, but they also need new technology, new equipment. Can