1993: THE YEAR IN REVIEW: In Canada: expanded contacts with Ukraine (12/26/93)

1993: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

In Canada: expanded contacts with Ukraine

In Canada, 1993 was the best of times and the worst of times.

Ukraine's first ambassador to Canada, Levko Lukianenko, carried his real estate woes into the new year. Toronto businessman Erast Huculak, who donated the embassy building to the Ukrainian government last fall, was linked to a deal with the former deputy head of the Ukrainian mission, Oleksiy Rodionov. The rumor involved the pair having owned the $615,000 building, then selling and re-purchasing it for the embassy. Real estate agent Tony Rhodes provided details to dispel the charges and, in turn, accused the Ukrainian Canadian Congress of bungling a leasing arrangement for Ambassador Lukianenko's residence.

The UCC, which had raised money in support of the Ukrainian embassy, eventually bought a $668,000 house to serve as the ambassador's residence, but $450,000 of that came from a private estate.

In March, Ambassador Lukianenko visited Edmonton for three days, where he met with Premier Ralph Klein. The Alberta government agreed to help Ukraine develop its food-processing industry, oil exploration and extraction, and telecommunications. Promises were also made to open a Ukrainian Consulate in Edmonton, yet similar missions in Toronto and Montreal had yet to be opened.

Across the Atlantic, the Canadian Embassy in Kyyiv faced as difficult a time in opening its $3.5 million offices, once occupied by the East Germans. Because of renovations delays, Canadian Ambassador Francois Mathys was forced to officially open the Embassy on Canada Day, July 1, while on a tourist cruise boat on the Dnipro River.

In September, Ambassador Lukianenko told The Weekly, in an exclusive interview, that he had submitted his resignation to President Leonid Kravchuk after only 18 months in office. The former presidential candidate was angered over the Ukrainian government's agreement to transfer 1,800 nuclear warheads to Russia and exchange its half of the Black Sea fleet as partial payment for its $2.5 billion debt (later annulled following President Boris Yeltsin's dissolution of the Russian Parliament and Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma's own resignation). Ambassador Lukianenko planned to help ready the Ukrainian Republican Party, of which he is a former leader, for next March's parliamentary elections.

Second-in-command Andrij Vesselovsky became acting head of the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa until a new ambassador was named on December 17. He is Viktor Batiouk, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations.

But delays weren't exclusive to Ukrainian-Canadian diplomatic relations. The UCC's redress committee, already challenged by the breakaway Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association's (UCCLA) own redress council, made no further inroads in having a five-year-old claim for compensation resolved.

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had promised to resolve the request for the World War I internment of between 3,300 and 5,000 Ukrainian Canadians before he left office. In May, UCC redress committee chairperson Ihor Bardyn released a confidential report to The Weekly. The study, prepared by Price Waterhouse in January 1992 for an undisclosed sum, reported that Ukrainian-Canadian internees suffered economic losses anywhere from $21.6 million to $32.5 million (1991 dollars). That included the confiscation of property and the loss of between $1.9 million and $2.8 million (in 1917 dollars) of employment. Among the UCC's demands: $10 million in compensation for monies confiscated and another $35 million for lost wages.

But that trump card failed to move Mr. Mulroney or his successor, Kim Campbell, to action. Nor did a visit to Parliament Hill by Mary Haskett, 84, honorary chairperson of the UCCLA's redress council and the only known survivor of the 1914-1920 internment camps.

In May, former Multiculturalism Minister Gerry Weiner met with representatives from five ethnic groups, all seeking compensation for historic discrimination. They hoped the federal government would match its 1988 $300 million package to the Japanese Canadian community for World War II internment, which was later revealed to be incomplete. Instead, Mr. Weiner offered them an "omnibus apology" without financial compensation. The Canadian government would also erect a "National Builders Hall of Record" as a tribute to multiculturalism in the country.

Unsatisfied, the UCC, along with fellow National Redress Alliance members, the Chinese Canadian National Council and the National Congress of Italian Canadians, planned to petition the United Nations' Human Rights Commission to intervene.

By October, Mr. Weiner proposed a formal apology to the Ukrainian Canadian community in the House of Commons, the placement of commemorative plaques in national parks where internment camps were located, and the creation of an interpretive center in Banff National Park, site of the Castle Mountain Internment Camp. Mr. Bardyn's committee said no thanks to the proposed ethnocultural Hall of Record.

At year's end, the future of the UCC redress claim became the responsibility of newly elected Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien.

But where the Canadian government refused to cough up cash for historic compensation, it seemed more than willing to help the Ukrainian government get on its feet.

In February, Southam News reported that the Conservative government planned to shift its $2.7 billion overseas aid program away from some of the 136 recipient countries to newly formed East European countries, including Ukraine. After all, Canada was the first Western country to recognize Ukraine's independence in 1991. It has also been one of the few to be generous to Ukraine.

Canada's three-year, $30 million technical assistance program continued, with a $772,000 project to the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation (UCPBF) almost complete. The UCPBF program sent Canadian consultants, like Dr. Bohdan Krawchenko, to set up such programs as the Institute of Public Administration and Local Government (IPALG) in Ukraine. It also involved short-term training for middle- and senior-level Ukrainian civil servants.

The first group of deputy ministers from Ukraine - 80 in all are expected - attended workshops and met with their Canadian counterparts in Ottawa in December.

More than 2,500 Ukrainian students attended IPALG seminars in 1993. The institute, funded by the Canadian government until 1996, will also admit 100 Ukrainians each year into its one-year master in public administration certificate program. The IPALG announced it would open a satellite campus in Dnipropetrovske in the new year.

The $3.7 million "Partners in Progress" initiative kicked into high gear in 1993, offering the Ukrainian government assistance in government administration, health, agriculture and human resource development. Through the program, Edmonton's Lubomyr Markevych opened a Canadian Cooperation Office in Kyyiv to handle delivery of Canada's technical assistance. Also, work began on assembling the collection for the "Treasures of Ukraine" exhibit, scheduled to travel to Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver in 1994.

The UCPBF also hosted a four-day conference looking at trade opportunities with Ukraine, during its biennial meeting in Winnipeg in early July.

The signing of a trade deal between Ukraine and the Province of Manitoba was forestalled when Viktor Pynzenyk, then Ukraine's deputy prime minister for economic reform, requested more time to study the terms. He also called for more Canadian assistance, telling delegates that among the 1,200 active joint ventures in Ukraine, only 29 were Canadian based.

In other developments at the conference, Dr. Louis Melosky, a Winnipeg orthodontist, was elected UCPBF president, succeeding Toronto lawyer Eugene Zalucky. The federation also announced that, in addition to holding its next biennial conference in Montreal, plans were under way to hold a special meeting in Kyyiv in 1994.

Yet while many Canadians had traveled, or at least plan to travel to Ukraine this year to offer their expertise, fewer Ukrainians came to Canada.

Although the federal department of Citizenship and Immigration claimed Ukrainian immigration to Canada increased over the past year, the Canadian Ukrainian Immigrant Aid Society disagreed. The society hoped for 10,000 Ukrainians passing through Canada's mission in Kyyiv annually. In 1993, only 98 Ukrainians arrived in Canada and the Canadian Embassy only processed formal applications and issued 121 immigrant visas between January 1, 1992, and August 31, 1993.

Canadian Friends of Rukh, meeting on April 10 in Toronto, adopted a name change and altered the organization's statutes to broaden its work - a walkout by its Toronto branch notwithstanding. The group's new name, Canadian Association for the Development of Ukraine, reflects its status as an organization that will work not only with Rukh, but with every group in Ukraine that supports democratic and free-market reform. Victor Pedenko was elected president of the CADU. Previously, CFR was headed by Mr. Huculak.

In Alberta, Liberal Leader Laurence Decore led his party to 32 seats in the 83-seat provincial legislature. Although the former mayor of Edmonton wiped the New Democratic Party off the political map, Mr. Decore had to settle for official opposition status to Premier Klein's re-elected Progressive Conservative government.

Meanwhile in Ontario, suspended Provincial Court Judge Walter Hryciuk found himself on the other side of the bench, when he faced a public inquiry into allegations of his own misconduct. Ontario's Attorney General Marion Boyd ordered the hearing after two female assistant crown attorneys charged the 58-year-old judge with sexual misconduct. One, Kelly Smith, accused Judge Hryciuk of forcibly kissing her. The other, Susan Lawson, claimed the judge made sexually suggestive comments to her.

In late November, after hearing from more than 35 witnesses, Justice Jean MacFarland recommended Judge Hryciuk's removal from the bench. His lawyer has since called for a judicial review of that decision and a new inquiry headed by a new commissioner.

On a brighter note, two Ukrainian Canadians were awarded the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor. Dr. Jaroslav Rudnyckyj, former prime minister of the Ukrainian national government-in-exile and founding head of the Slavic studies department at the University of Manitoba, was inducted as an officer (the second-highest in the three-tiered system) in April. He was joined in the fall by Metropolitan Wasyly Fedak, primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn made the presentations at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

And in Ottawa, Canada's former ambassador to Portugal, Raynell Andreychuk, was named a senator by Mr. Mulroney in March. The Saskatoon-born former provincial court judge now represents her province in Canada's Upper House for the Tories.

Beyond politics and diplomacy, Toronto's CFMT-TV was given the green light by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission to transmit its multilingual programming signal to the Ottawa market. Next September, that means a weekly offering of "Svitohliad" for TV viewers in the nation's capital.

| Home Page |