Special to The Ukrainian Weekly
OTTAWA – From sanctions to military and financial support, Canada’s position regarding Ukrainian sovereignty amid Russian aggression is best summarized in a post on the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Twitter account: “Canada will never recognize the illegal annexation of Crimea #CrimeaIsUkraine.”
And one of Ukraine’s staunchest Canadian defenders is Jason Kenney, Canada’s 47-year-old minister of national defense and minister for multiculturalism, who makes his fourth trip to Ukraine in June to greet about 200 Canadian Armed Forces personnel who will provide training for combat, improvised explosive device detection and detonation, first aid and medical and flight safety as well as for Ukrainian military police.
Mr. Kenney, who has also held the Employment and Social Development, and Citizenship and Immigration cabinet portfolios in Canada’s Conservative government, is considered a potential successor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whom he previously served as parliamentary secretary.
Canadian correspondent Christopher Guly recently spoke to Mr. Kenney. Following is his transcript of the interview.
When were you last in Ukraine? What did you observe?
March of 2013. This was before Euro-Maidan.
What I saw and heard was a great deal of frustration with the [Viktor] Yanukovych administration. I felt it myself in meeting with his ministers and senior officials. I felt like I had gone back in a time machine to the Soviet period. They could never seem to give a direct answer to any question. I was asking for the simplest things.
I was there partly asking Ukraine to participate in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to help do important work on the graves of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews – and I couldn’t even get them to say yes to that. One just felt a sense of a government that was corrupt to the core and indifferent to what the international community thought.
Had you been to Ukraine when it was under Soviet rule?
No, my first trip was in November of 2008 and I had just become minister of immigration, and I went to represent Canada at the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Holodomor Famine-Genocide and the opening of the Holodomor monument in Kyiv.
I was very involved in getting Canada to recognize the genocidal nature of the Holodomor, and so I was very touched to be there to see that.
When you went to Ukraine in 2013, you were citizenship and immigration minister.
I’ve been multiculturalism minister for nine years so I’ve always had a very close connection to the Ukrainian community, which I always say is kind of the first among equals in terms of Canada’s ethnic communities. It’s the community that defined multiculturalism.
The guy who actually introduced the term into Parliament was [the late] Paul Yuzyk, son of Ukrainian immigrants who [obtained] a Ph.D. in [history].
[Former Canadian Prime Minister John] Diefenbaker appointed him to the Senate [in 1963] and I’ve created the Paul Yuzyk Award for Multiculturalism to recognize his vision.Is it unprecedented that a Canadian minister changes portfolios but retains the multiculturalism file?
(Laughs) I’m pretty sure I’m the first and last minister of defense and multiculturalism.
Was that at your request?
No, not per se. But it’s work I’ve become very attached to and have a long-standing and deep relationship with.
I can pick up the phone and call key leaders in virtually every ethno-cultural community, and I’m on a first name basis with them so I think the prime minister thought I’ve become indispensable in that role. That’s never a good thing to be. (Laughs)
What’s your ethnic background?
Mainly Irish, which is why I love underdogs. And that’s why I have a special heart for the Ukrainians, who are underdogs of history as well.
Ukrainian Americans are interested in Canada’s close relationship with Ukraine and how it is that you and the prime minister are such strong and vocal allies of Ukraine.
The United States is 10 times our size, yet we have sent [Ukraine] more in terms of non-kinetic military equipment; we’re sending as many trainers.
It’s fair to say that we’ve been the most forward-leaning Western democracy, diplomatically and politically – and then there’s the strength of and response of the Ukrainian community in Canada. Even those who are fifth-generation Canadians of Ukrainian origin are incredibly proud of their roots. And the reason for that is during the tsarist Russification of eastern Ukraine and then Soviet Russification through the seven decades of Soviet occupation, Ukrainians in Canada – most of whom were from western Ukraine, the nationalist part – felt a special obligation to maintain the Ukrainian language and culture in a way that people could not back in their home country. They’ve always been very tenacious about that, and this has obviously informed our political culture and our consciousness of Ukraine.
But I’ll be blunt with you. Guys like Stephen Harper and I got into politics as young people partly because during the Cold War we felt high moral stakes were involved.
Unlike the Canadian left, we Canadian conservatives never adopted a posture of moral equivalence [with the Soviet Union] during the Cold War. So I think we look at [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression through that lens.
What do you make of Ukraine’s going back and forth in seeking NATO membership?
I think it’s reflective of an understandable and legitimate domestic political debate. We don’t dictate to Ukraine what they should do. We would be very happy if Ukraine were to decide to pursue NATO membership.
I know different governments and public opinion have shifted back and forth and I can understand why. Many Ukrainians always felt a special attachment to Russia, which is understandable, and are nervous about the huge implications of NATO membership.
But our position is this: If a country like Ukraine decides to join NATO, we should have an open-door policy and we would heartily embrace that alliance.
It must be frustrating watching Putin grab Crimea and move on to other parts of eastern Ukraine while NATO is left at a standstill.
We can’t do anything in Ukraine, but we can do things around Ukraine in Eastern Europe, which is why we [the Canadian Armed Forces] have Operation Reassurance that is designed to send a message of determination and deterrence to Vladimir Putin.
We have 200 Canadian Army troops on exercises in Romania, and have also been situated in Poland and the Baltic states. We’ve had Canadian CF-18s flying air-policing missions over the Baltics and had Canadian frigates, like HMCS Fredericton, on patrols in the Black Sea, Mediterranean and Baltic seas.
[In June], we’re going to be sending about 1,000 Canadian troops to NATO joint training exercises throughout Europe.All of this stuff is designed to send a message to Mr. Putin that NATO is not going to tolerate a replication of his back-door invasion of Ukraine on NATO territory, such as in the Baltic states where there are Russian minorities.
What could NATO do if Putin continued to press on into Ukraine?
Because Ukraine is not a NATO ally we don’t have any legal basis to interfere, nor does the Ukrainian government have any basis to seek NATO assistance.
However, various countries are providing different kinds of assistance directly, such as an enormous amount of [non-lethal] equipment we flew over [to Ukraine].
I just met with the Chief of [the General] Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Viktor Muzhenko, who was just effusive in his praise of Canada.
He told me because of the winter gear we provided – 30,000 coats, 70,000 pairs of Gore-Tex boots – they were able to marshal a third deployment in the critical winter months on the eastern front.
That stuff has been very helpful, and the training will be as well.
Has Ukraine asked for arms?
President [Petro] Poroshenko was here in September and I attended the expanded bi-lat [bilateral meeting] with him. He did not ask for arms.
What he asked for were radar-satellite images, and within a week of me becoming minister of defense in February, we began to furnish Ukraine with regular timely packages of high-resolution images of locations they’ve identified along the eastern border with Russia.
President Poroshenko has made a generic ask of friendly countries for kinetic military equipment. But frankly we don’t have warehouses of operable surplus equipment in our military to send over there. The non-kinetic equipment we’ve sent has been purchased on the market through a special Department of Foreign Affairs fund.
Our position is that all options with respect to actual arms are on the table. But Canada will not act alone.
Obviously, we will require at least one other ally to decide to participate in providing Ukrainians with arms – with kinetic equipment. There is no consensus among any of our allies in that respect, and we think it would be very imprudent for Canada to act in isolation in that regard.
Would the U.S. be the natural ally?
Um, I think historically, that’s fair to say.
Realistically now?
The position of many of our allies is to wait and hope the [2015] Minsk II agreement [between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany addressing the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbas region] works.
Our view is one of a high degree of skepticism. Putin and the thugs he is supporting in eastern Ukraine have already clearly violated the Minsk II agreement.
How do you see the situation in Ukraine unfolding?
We’re all concerned that spring will bring a new outbreak of Russian-backed violence in eastern Ukraine.
We certainly hope not. But our message to Vladimir Putin is don’t miscalculate. Diplomatic agreements plus a message of deterrence will stop this kind of aggression.