Canadian-Ukrainian relations received a huge boost at the start of 2017 when Chrystia Freeland – the Ukrainian Canadian star in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet – was named foreign affairs minister and became the third woman in Canadian history to hold the high-profile portfolio.
The 49-year-old, Alberta-born former journalist previously served as Canada’s international trade minister, and finalized both the historic Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement and the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. As foreign affairs minister, Ms. Freeland retained a portion of the responsibilities from her previous job.
Mr. Trudeau tasked her with overseeing the trade portion of the Canada-U.S. file, which became increasingly important through the year during negotiations for a redraft of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Not as lucky in Prime Minister Trudeau’s mini-Cabinet shuffle was MaryAnn Mihychuk, a Ukrainian Canadian Liberal member of Parliament for a Winnipeg riding who was dropped as minister of employment, workforce development and labor.
At a late January event celebrating the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and Ukraine, the Embassy of Canada in Ukraine along with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) and the international charitable foundation Caritas Ukraine transferred 10 Canadian ambulances to medical institutions in different regions of Ukraine.
The Ambulances for Ukraine project, initiated by the Saskatchewan government’s Saskatchewan-Ukraine Relations Advisory Committee and now led by the UCC Ukraine Appeal in partnership with Paramedic Chiefs of Canada, is intended to provide high-tech medical ambulances to hospitals and emergency services from Luhansk Oblast to Chernivtsi. In September 2015, four equipped ambulances from Canada were donated to military hospitals in Kharkiv, Dnipro and Vinnytsia.
Before the Canadian government announced an extension to Operation UNIFIER, an opposition member of Parliament told The Ukrainian Weekly in February that the military mission in western Ukraine would be extended and that Canadian soldiers training their Ukrainian counterparts were planning well until 2018. Former Conservative Cabinet Minister Peter Kent, who served at the time as the Official Opposition foreign affairs critic, said that the commander of the Canadian operation in Ukraine told him during a fact-finding visit to Ukraine in January that there were no plans to conclude the mission despite a March 31 deadline.
Mr. Kent, who was in Ukraine as a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, said that while the 200 Canadian Army soldiers stationed in Ukraine had no orders to stand down, the Ukrainian government was “uncertain about Canada’s resolve” in assisting Ukraine as its government troops resumed intense fighting with Russian-backed rebels in the eastern part of the country in late January.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada also sought more support from Canada, including providing Ukraine with long-requested weapons.
Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters in late January that he was examining options in terms of how Canada could improve its support for Ukraine. But Ambassador Andriy Shevchenko said that, by providing Ukraine with arms, Canada could help send a “strong signal” of deterrence to Russia. He also said that UNIFIER has led to a direct benefit for Canada.
Ukrainian Canadian Congress
Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan and Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak sign the Canada-Ukraine Defense Cooperation Agreement on April 3.
When Mr. Shevchenko accompanied Prime Minister Trudeau on a July 2016 visit to the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv in western Ukraine, where 150 Canadian soldiers are stationed, some of them told the ambassador that they had learned from Ukrainian soldiers about the reality of trench warfare, which the Canadians “might have only read about in books or seen in movies in the context of World War II,” according to Mr. Shevchenko.
Also in February, UCC representatives met with senior Canadian government officials from the departments of Global Affairs, which Minister Freeland heads, and National Defense, headed by Minister Sajjan, to discuss the further development of Canada-Ukraine relations. The meeting included the signing of terms of reference for the Canada Ukraine Stakeholder Advisory Council, a forum for consultations and cooperation between the Canadian government, represented by Global Affairs Canada, and the Ukrainian Canadian community, represented by the UCC, which recognizes “the special partnership between Canada and Ukraine.”
The UCC also announced the launch of a project to mark Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017.
“Celebrating the Strength of Canada’s Diversity: Youth Engaging Youth,” which received financial support from the Canadian government, was intended to organize 10 youth-led events each in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, involving as many as 2,500 young people and attracting up to 50,000 Canadians across the country.
In March, The Ukrainian Weekly reported on a 25-member Canadian medical team led by Dr. Oleh Antonyshyn – a Ukrainian Canadian craniofacial surgeon and professor of plastic surgery at the University of Toronto – who returned to Ukraine in 2017 for their fifth mission to treat Ukrainian soldiers injured in fighting against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas. A total of 42 patients underwent reconstructive procedures from the Canadian team working alongside their Ukrainian counterparts at the Defense Ministry’s Main Military Hospital. The medical missions have received funding from the Canadian government and the Ukrainian diaspora, including donations from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk.
On March 6, Ministers Freeland and Sajjan announced that Operation UNIFIER would indeed be extended, until March 31, 2019. More than 5,160 Ukrainian soldiers have received training from their Canadian counterparts since the mission began in September 2015 through December 1, 2017. The Canadian Armed Forces operation would transition “over time to support strategic institutional reform of Ukraine’s defense establishment,” the Canadian government said in a news release.
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Ukrainian Canadian Congress President Paul Grod (left) with Arif Virani (center), parliamentary secretary to the minister of Canadian heritage responsible for multiculturalism, and Alexandra Chyczij, UCC first vice-president. On February 13 the UCC announced the launch of “Celebrating the Strength of Canada’s Diversity: Youth Engaging Youth” as part of its Canada 150 Project.
Kirill Kalinin, press secretary of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa, called the Canadian government’s decision to extend UNIFIER “counterproductive,” but UCC President Paul Grod welcomed it as a demonstration of “Canada’s unequivocal commitment to assisting Ukraine as [it] defends its sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence from brutal Russian aggression.”
The Russian Embassy in Ottawa was implicated in a campaign to discredit Minister Freeland. A member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa told The Ukrainian Weekly in March that one of his regular Embassy contacts was “pushing the narrative” that Ms. Freeland’s late Ukrainian maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was not just the chief editor of the Krakow-based, Ukrainian-language Krakivski Visti (Krakow News), but that he was also “working with the Nazis,” who controlled the newspaper.
Justin Ling, who was then VICE News Canada’s parliamentary correspondent, said he chose not to run with a story since it was “neither publicly relevant nor publicly important, and added that it was “a story being shopped by the Russians.”
Still, stories about Mr. Chomiak’s alleged Nazi connections popped up on the Internet. Minister Freeland chose not to directly address the allegations, telling reporters at the news conference announcing the extension of Canada’s military mission to Ukraine that it was no “secret… that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize democracies in the West” and that it “shouldn’t come as a surprise if these same efforts are used against Canada.”
When asked whether the Russian Embassy had contacted Canadian journalists regarding Ms. Freeland’s grandfather, Mr. Kalinin said in an e-mail: “We do not comment on our private contacts with representatives of the media.”
Russia was sent “a clear message” that Ukraine has “many friends,” including Canada, Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said in Ottawa on April 3 when he and Minister Sajjan signed a bilateral defense cooperation agreement.
The Conservative shadow minister for national defense and Ukrainian Canadian member of Parliament for the Manitoba federal riding of Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman, James Bezan, said in an interview that the agreement, which he said was finalized when his party was in power, would enable Ukrainian soldiers to train with their Canadian counterparts on joint exercises in Canada and facilitate officer exchanges between both countries as part of “an ongoing cooperation needed to bring the Ukrainian military up to NATO standards.” Minister Poltorak said that Ukraine would meet that goal by 2020.
On April 9, the UCC issued a statement commemorating the centennial of the Battle of Vimy Ridge during World War I in which several thousand fought with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. About 3,600 Canadian soldiers died and over 7,000 were wounded in the battle before they captured Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917.
The Canadian Corps fought the German army near Lens, France, in August 1917. Cpl. Filip Konowal, a Ukrainian Canadian, was one of six Canadians awarded the British Empire’s prestigious Victoria Cross for his valor at the Battle of Hill 70. A Konowal Walk, which is part of a memorial to the battle, was officially unveiled on August 22 in France.
Cpl. Konowal was also remembered as the only Ukrainian to ever receive the Victoria Cross when a billboard honoring him was erected in Kyiv through an initiative from both the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) and its Ukrainian partner, Free People (Vilni Lyudy).
In May, Minister Freeland announced that the Liberal government would support a bill sponsored by Ukrainian Canadian Conservative Sen. Raynell Andreychuk that targets global human rights abuses and foreign corruption.
Bill S-226, the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) that Sen. Andreychuk introduced in the upper chamber in May 2016, would freeze assets and impose travel bans on foreign nationals responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
The private member’s bill is named after the Moscow lawyer who uncovered the largest tax-refund fraud in Russian history that unwittingly involved Hermitage Capital Management, a foreign-investment company run by Chicago-born hedge-fund manager Bill Browder.
The Canadian version won’t just target Russia, but will have a “global application,” said MP Bezan, who sponsored Sen. Andreychuk’s bill in the House. “If Russia has nothing to hide, it shouldn’t fear this.” Mr. Bezan added that, “corrupt Russian oligarchs profiteering from their positions of influence at a cost to the Russian public will be held to account too.”
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Canadian government’s support for Sen. Andreychuk’s bill “a means to make unsubstantiated human rights claims” and an “openly hostile move” against Russia. “Should the Canadian Parliament approve this punitive legal act, it would seriously damage relations between our countries, which are not experiencing the best of times already,” said the statement released from Moscow.
On May 4-7, about 50 post-secondary student delegates of the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union (known by its Ukrainian acronym as SUSK) met in Ottawa for their annual national congress. The theme of the four-day meeting was “True North SUSK and Free,” and students were encouraged to spearhead the future of youth leadership and involvement in Canada-Ukraine issues.
Later in the month, on May 18, Ukrainian Canadian activists joined politicians from all parties, along with Ambassador Shevchenko and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Parliament Hill to mark International Vyshyvanka (Ukrainian Embroidery) Day. Over 50 MPs wore vyshyvanky in the House of Commons during the Question Period.
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On May 18, Ukrainian Canadian activists gathered with leaders from all political parties from across the country on Parliament Hill to mark International Vyshyvanka (Ukrainian Embroidery) Day. Also joining the group seen above were Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko and former Primer Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Over 50 members of Parliament donned vyshyvanky in the House of Commons.
The Spirit Lake Internment Interpretive Center in Quebec entered its seventh year in 2017 – 100 years after the internment camp located at the site closed. In 2016, the center joined a special Quebec government cultural-educational school program in which the province reimburses schools 50 percent of their expenses for bus tours visiting a recommended Quebec museum.
Spirit Lake, which provides guided school tours, is the largest internment museum in Canada, and tells the story of the camp, which operated from 1915 to 1917 and was the second largest of 24 internment sites in the country. Most of the 1,200 internees at Spirit Lake were Ukrainians, many of whom were taken from the Montreal area.
An internment exhibit, a legacy project of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, was unveiled at the newly renovated Canadian History Hall at the Canadian Museum of History across the river from Ottawa in Gatineau, Quebec.
The UCCLA executive met in Canada’s National Capital Region for their annual conclave and agreed to continue pushing the Canadian government to properly commemorate and address the situation of the rundown and overgrown internee cemetery on private land in La Ferme (Spirit Lake), Quebec, where 16 men and some children are believed to be buried in unmarked graves.
Meanwhile, the question of Canada providing arms for Ukraine came up at a Ukrainian Canadian town-hall meeting in Ottawa on June 21, but Defense Minister Sajjan said that Canada’s goal in providing military assistance to Ukraine is to “de-escalate the conflict” and not “create any more suffering” for Ukrainians.
“We want Russia to leave Ukraine alone,” he told the gathering at the meeting organized by the Ottawa branch of the UCC and held in the basement of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Shrine. Mr. Sajjan said that “going down the path” of helping to arm Ukraine could lead to a “full-scale war” with Russia.
At July 1 Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill, Lt. Col. Joshua Kutryk, a Ukrainian Canadian, was welcomed by Prime Minister Trudeau as one of two new Canadian astronauts. The 35-year-old, Alberta-born and -raised test pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force traces his Ukrainian roots to his great-grandfather, who immigrated to Canada from western Ukraine in 1910. Lt. Col. Kutryk holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and master’s degrees in space studies, flight-test engineering and defense studies. He is currently training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In late July, the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa held a media preview before the official launch of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) on August 1. Ambassador Shevchenko hailed the bilateral pact as benefiting both Canada, “the symbol of the free world,” and Ukraine, “a new frontier of the free world.”
CUFTA allows Canada to enter a Ukrainian market of some 45 million consumers with a 99.7-percent literacy rate in Europe’s largest country by area (at 233,062 square miles) of which over 70 percent of the land is agricultural and produces one-third of the world’s black-earth soil.
With fewer tariff-related restrictions, Ukraine now has access to the Canadian market of over 36 million consumers, and potentially a lot more through the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico, which U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration wants to overhaul. Ukraine does not have a free trade deal with the U.S. but a Ukrainian company could bring part of a product to Canada, add something to it in Canada and export the final product to the U.S. under the current version of NAFTA.
Later in August, the UCC’s Toronto branch held its 26th annual Ukrainian Independence Day celebration on August 19. A record-setting crowd of over 12,000 people attended the largest such celebration in the diaspora. Federal Conservative and Official Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer was among the politicians in attendance.
Also in the summer, the Holodomor National Awareness Tour’s mobile classroom traveled from southwestern Ontario to the Maritime provinces in the east and Vancouver Island in the west and back to Ontario to increase awareness of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933.
Presidential Administration of Ukraine
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the gala reception organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress on September 22 for Ukraine’s athletes competing in the Invictus Games.
Following a September 22 meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the margins of the Invictus Games in Toronto, Prime Minister Trudeau told reporters at their joint news conference that a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Ukraine could ensure that “people are able to live their lives in peace and security in a way that upholds the principles of international law that, quite frankly, Russia violated with its illegitimate actions.” But he did not commit Canadian troops to such an operation, which President Poroshenko has requested for the Donbas region since 2015.
However, UCC President Grod told The Ukrainian Weekly that the congress not only wants Canadian peacekeepers in Ukraine, it hopes that Canada would direct the U.N. mission there. “Canada has the experience and the history of peacekeeping and is best positioned to do this,” said Mr. Grod, who raised the issue in a discussion with Prime Minister Trudeau and President Poroshenko after their meeting.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president was over the moon with Team Ukraine’s second-place finish with 14 medals from its inaugural participation at the Invictus Games. But the athletes, who competed in athletics, power lifting, swimming, archery, cycling and indoor rowing, reached the top of the podium in terms of the support and admiration they received from within and outside the Ukrainian Canadian community.
The lead cheerleader was the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC), which established a committee to host the 28 Ukrainian athletes (15 participants and 13 back-ups), organized opening and closing receptions, and helped raise $100,000 (about $80,000 U.S.) to provide needed assistance to active and former members of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and National Police through the Ukraine Wounded Warriors Fund.
Both President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Trudeau attended the UCC’s September 22 gala reception on the eve of the third edition of the games, which were held in Torotno. Maryna Poroshenko, Ukraine’s first lady, was there too, along with Ukrainian and Canadian Cabinet members: Stepan Kubiv (first vice prime minister, and economic development and trade minister), Pavlo Klimkin (foreign affairs) and Arsen Avakov (internal affairs) of Ukraine, and Mr. Sajjan (national defense) and Seamus O’Regan (veterans affairs) of Canada. About 800 people paid $200 ($160 U.S.) a ticket to attend the sold-out event.
Later in September, the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program welcomed 15 Ukrainian university students for the 27th installment of its internship program with the Canadian Parliament. On October 31, the students held a prayer vigil for peace in Ukraine and around the world at Canada’s Peacekeeping Monument on Parliament Hill, and a reception later that evening, which was attended by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and Canadian parliamentarians.
Volodymyr Groysman/Facebook
During their meeting in Ottawa on October 31, Prime Ministers Volodymyr Groysman of Ukraine and Justin Trudeau of Canada.
Also in October, MP Bezan told The Ukrainian Weekly that Canada could push Russia to support Ukraine’s proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping mission along the Ukrainian-Russian border but should start sending arms to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas region.
“Russia holds veto power in the U.N. Security Council, so the Ukrainian proposal has little chance of succeeding,” said Mr. Bezan, who had recently traveled to Ukraine with a delegation from the House Standing Committee on National Defense, of which he is a member. He explained that if Canada signs onto the Russian proposal, which would be restricted to only protecting monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) near the battlefield and involve Russian peacekeepers, which Ukraine has rejected, “we are guaranteeing a frozen conflict and guaranteeing that Ukraine would be forced to give up its sovereignty over the Donbas.”
Mr. Bezan also scored a victory on October 4 when Canada’s long-awaited Magnitsky bill, which he sponsored in the House of Commons, received unanimous support from MPs as it headed for the Senate, where it was expected to receive the same endorsement and become law, six years after the idea behind it was first introduced in the House by Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal Canadian justice minister of Ukrainian and Russian heritage, and long-time human rights lawyer who represented Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky.
In October 2011, Mr. Cotler, then Liberal critic for rights and freedoms and international justice in the Commons, introduced a private member’s bill that would have declared anyone in admissible to Canada who was responsible for both the torture and death of Mr. Magnitsky in 2009 and the conspiracy to defraud the Russian government of taxes paid by Hermitage Capital, which Mr. Magnitsky discovered.
The bill went nowhere, so in 2015 Mr. Cotler tried again, via a motion, to get Canada to impose sanctions against not only those involved in the Magnitsky case, but against any human-rights violators in countries either “unable” or “unwilling” to conduct their own investigations into such violations. MPs and senators adopted the non-binding motion, which Mr. Cotler followed up with another private member’s bill that again died when Parliament rose for the summer and a fall election resulted in Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals wresting power from Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Although Mr. Cotler did not run for re-election, his Magnitsky bill found life in the Senate, where in 2016 Conservative Sen. Andreychuk, a Ukrainian Canadian, introduced the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) that would freeze the assets of and impose travel bans on foreign nationals responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.
Sen. Andreychuk’s Bill S-226 passed the Senate in April, and was sent to the House via her fellow Conservative, Mr. Bezan. In June, the House Foreign Affairs Committee tweaked the bill, which was supported by the Trudeau government, to strengthen sections related to criminal offences for sanctions violations and due process for persons subject to sanctions measures.
The Kremlin’s reaction to the pending Canadian legislation was fast and furious.
At an October 4 briefing to reporters in Moscow, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned that “nothing good will come” from Canada’s Magnitsky bill that she said is “simply copied from the odious American Magnitsky Act” and which would not “go unanswered” and likely result in the expansion of the list of Canadian officials banned from entering Russia. Mr. Cotler, Sen. Andreychuk, Mr. Bezan, Minister Freeland, UCC President Grod and Mr. Scheer (when he was House speaker) are already on that list created in retaliation for Canadian sanctions imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“Guised as a pro-human rights and anti-corruption measure, [Bill S-226] is a deplorably confrontational act blatantly interfering into Russia’s domestic affairs,” Russia’s Embassy said in a statement. “This hostile move, as well as any new anti-Russian sanctions, will be met with resolve and reciprocal countermeasures.”
On Canada’s west coast in Vancouver, the UCC held its annual general meeting, along with a board meeting, on October 13-15. Over 40 delegates from member organizations, provincial councils and local branches attended the three-day gathering highlighted by an address by Defense Minister Sajjan – who represents a Vancouver riding for the governing Liberals in the House of Commons – at the UCC National Leadership Dinner on October 14.
And as expected, Canada’s Magnitsky law came into effect on October 18 after the Senate unanimously passed Bill S-226 – and the man closely connected to the law’s namesake who campaigned for the legislation, found himself further targeted by Russia.
Mr. Browder, the Chicago-born, London-based financier who hired Magnitsky as the lawyer and accountant for his Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management hedge fund in 2005, had his visa revoked (and later reinstated) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after the Russian government placed his name on Interpol’s wanted list. It was the fifth time the Kremlin had tried to use Interpol as a way to arrest Mr. Browder, who was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court after being tried and convicted in absentia for tax evasion in 2013.
In a phone interview from London, Mr. Browder told The Ukrainian Weekly that he considered Moscow’s latest move against him to be “a badge of honor” and “a direct response” to Canada’s new Magnitsky law. “What this law does is that it creates a certain amount of credibility and momentum for Magnitsky sanctions worldwide that didn’t exist before Canada joined into the fray,” said Mr. Browder, who testified before the Senate and House foreign affairs committee in support of the law and who successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to adopt the bipartisan Magnitsky Act that President Barack Obama signed into law in 2012 that has resulted in sanctions against 44 people.
The United Kingdom and Estonia are the only other countries with Magnitsky-style legislation.
On October 23, the UCC submitted a brief on Russia’s three-year war against Ukraine in the eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk to the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defense that accompanied testimony by Mr. Grod. The briefing note cited daily attacks on Ukrainian positions by Russian-proxy forces, resulting in the deaths of at least 316 Ukrainian soldiers between May 1, 2016 and October 18, 2017, and at least 1,922 soldiers wounded in combat in combat on the eastern front. “This is not a frozen conflict,” said the UCC. “It is a hot war.”
The UCC called on the Canadian government to take several steps to deter further Russian aggression, such as adding Ukraine to the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (which happened on December 13) and leading a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ukraine; providing Ukraine with long-requested lethal aid and continued support for its military and security forces; and toughening sanctions on Russia and its officials, including the removal of Russia from the SWIFT international payments system. The House committee adopted all of the recommendations, except the last one, in its report issued in December.
Prime Minister Groysman made his first-ever visit to Canada in late October. Speaking in Ukrainian through a translator, the prime minister told a rare joint sitting of members of the House of Commons standing committees on international trade, foreign affairs and international development, and national defense on October 31 that one of his government’s priorities is to lift a ban on agricultural land sales that has been in place since Ukraine declared its independence 16 years ago.
Foreigners will be excluded from buying Ukrainian farmland, which will only be available to purchase from Ukrainians to “boost the development” of the country’s farms, Mr. Groysman said in response to a question from Mr. Bezan, who serves as vice-chair of the House Defense Committee.
In addition to an October 31 sit-down with Prime Minister Trudeau in Ottawa, the Ukrainian prime minister also attended a reception organized by the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program across the street from Parliament Hill and visited Toronto, where he addressed the Ukrainian-Canadian Business Forum the day before. He spoke of partnership opportunities in Ukraine “from land to space” that range from gas extraction to aircraft manufacturing.
“We have 3,500 enterprises, which today are state-owned but are in the process of privatization so they can find new owners, new technologies and new horizons for development,” said Mr. Groysman, who in Toronto joined Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne, in announcing Ukraine International Airlines’ new direct flight between Kyiv and Toronto – a first for Canada – set to launch this summer.
The prime minister also traveled to Montreal following his meeting with Mr. Trudeau to seek investment from Canadian aerospace companies in Ukraine’s airplane industry.
Shortly after Mr. Groysman left Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau’s government announced on November 3 the first set of sanctions under the country’s newly enacted Magnitsky law against 52 officials from Russia, Venezuela and South Sudan. Thirty of the individuals listed are Russians “linked to acts of significant corruption surrounding the $230 million (U.S.) tax fraud uncovered by Magnitsky in 2008 and to the subsequent gross violations of his legal and human rights during his investigation and pretrial detention, including psychological and physical abuse that ultimately led to his death in a Russian detention center in November 2009,” according to Global Affairs Canada, the department headed by Minister Freeland.
Meanwhile, her Cabinet colleague, Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, participated in the site-dedication ceremony on November 2 in Ottawa for Canada’s Memorial to the Victims of Communism, titled “Canada, Land of Refuge.” Construction will begin in 2018, and the memorial is scheduled for completion by early next year. The UCC contributed $25,000 (about $20,000 U.S.) from a special Tribute to Liberty fund earmarked in 2008 toward the building of such a memorial.
A week later, Canada’s Official Opposition Conservative Party joined the UCC in calling for a Canadian-led U.N. peacekeeping mission in eastern Ukraine. “The defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity should be a priority for Canada’s government on the international stage,” said Mr. Scheer on November 9 when he announced that a Conservative-led Canadian government would call for such a mission that “would allow Ukraine to restore control over its eastern border with Russia” and ensure the Russian military stays out of Ukraine. Canadians head to the polls next year in October to vote in a general election for their next government.
Roman Waschuk, Canada’s ambassador to Ukraine and a first-generation Ukrainian Canadian, told The Ukrainian Weekly in a November 29 interview that Ukrainians expect too much when it comes to eradicating corruption and moving Ukraine toward its stated goals of integrating with the West.
Regarding Ukraine’s military, he said many “things at the tactical level have advanced a lot” and hoped that Canadian soldiers and police officers providing training on the ground remain “long enough… so that they could get to know people and identify who are the change agents and work with them.”
In a report released on November 22, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development called on Prime Minister Trudeau’s Liberal government to maintain its major initiatives regarding Ukraine and add new ones in the areas of cybersecurity and visas.
The report, based on fact-finding missions committee members made to Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Kazakhstan in January along with witness testimony, said the Canadian government should maintain “its sanctions against Russian and post-annexation Crimean officials, those responsible for the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, as well as those involved in the abduction and illegal show trials of Ukrainian citizens in Russia and Crimean Tatars and others within Crimea.”
Ottawa “should also engage with the Russian government on the need to respect international law and Ukraine’s sovereignty” and “continue to support multilateral efforts” through such international bodies as the U.N. and NATO “to help bring about a resolution to Russia’s military invasion and illegal annexation of Crimean territory,” as well as provide “logistical and military support for the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine” by continuing Operation UNIFIER, the House committee recommended in the report unanimously adopted by the 14 government and opposition members of Parliament who serve on the committee.
In its report, titled “Strengthening Canadian Engagement in Eastern Europe and Central Asia,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee called on the Canadian government to help “improve collective defense mechanisms against cyberattacks, as well as proactively monitor disinformation campaigns and develop countermeasures to minimize damage inflicted by information warfare,” but provided no detail as to how to reach these objectives.
The committee heard from witnesses “about how Russian state-run information agencies use various media platforms to foment discontent and anti-government sentiment within ethnic-Russian populations” in neighboring countries to Russia, and that “such discontent could serve as a prelude to Russian intervention if these groups made the case that their rights or interests were being denied,” said the report.
The House committee also recommended that the Canadian government should “improve the efficiency of the visa-application process” without compromising Canadian security for nationals of countries in the region covered by the report.
The committee was told there was an “uneven quality of the necessary supporting documents from Ukrainian applicants that have led to increased scrutiny of such documentations and applications more generally.”
On November 24, the UCC released a statement to commemorate Holodomor Memorial Day and remembered the Famine Genocide of 1932-1933 as “one of history’s greatest crimes” in which the Soviet Union’s “totalitarian Communist regime turned food into a weapon… against a nation of grain growers who sought to live free on their own land.”
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At the solemn commemoration of the Holodomor on Parliament Hill on November 20, members of Parliament and Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada are seen with Holodomor survivors Dr. Julia Woychyshyn and Halyna Zelem.
The UCC, the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Friendship Group and the Ukrainian Embassy also held a solemn commemoration to mark the 84th anniversary of the Holodomor on November 20 on Parliament Hill. Famine-Genocide survivors Julia Woychyshyn and Halyna Zelem lit the ceremonial candle at the start of the ceremony.
At the same time, the UCCLA, in partnership with Ukraine’s Free People movement, unveiled four bilingual billboards in Kyiv, reminding passers-by about who perished in the Holodomor and who was responsible.