OTTAWA – Hundreds of delegates from dozens of countries gathered in Toronto in early July for the third annual Ukraine Reform Conference, and to hear from Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during his first official overseas visit. Among the attendees were not only Canadian government officials, but also Ukrainian Canadian community leaders who had specific concerns about the neophyte politician’s policies.
Paul Grod, the Canadian-based president of the Ukrainian World Congress, said President Zelenskyy assured his audience at a meeting with the Ukrainian community that he will defend Ukrainian as Ukraine’s sole state language.
Ukrainian Canadian Congress President Alexandra Chyczij said the president cited tackling corruption in Ukraine as a priority and underscored that he would seek to end the war in eastern Ukraine, but without sacrificing the country’s territorial integrity.
Alexandra Chyczij, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, addresses the business breakfast at the Economic Club of Canada that was held during the Ukraine Reform Conference.
Notably absent from the events of the Ukraine Reform Conference were members of Canada’s Official Opposition Conservative caucus in the House of Commons, including the leader, Andrew Scheer.
Manitoba Member of Parliament James Bezan, who serves as the Conservative shadow minister or critic for national defense, told The Ukrainian Weekly that he and his Tory caucus colleagues received invitations to meet with Mr. Zelenskyy just days before the president was set to arrive in Toronto on July 1, Canada Day, when Mr. Bezan and other MPs were in their ridings attending community events marking Canada’s 152nd birthday. What’s more, the face-to-face with President Zelenskyy was to be held only on the margins of the conference – and even then “that was not guaranteed,” said Mr. Bezan, who is of Ukrainian descent.
“I think it was done accidentally on purpose to make it tough for us in the opposition to be in attendance,” he said, laying the blame on Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office.
On July 2 – the day when President Zelenskyy met with Prime Minister Trudeau and addressed the conference – Mr. Bezan and Erin O’Toole, the Conservative shadow minister for foreign affairs, issued a statement that called on the Trudeau government to make “the defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity… a priority for Canada on the world stage.”
Mr. Trudeau did pledge strong support for Ukraine at the reform conference, as well as at a news conference and dinner with Mr. Zelenskyy. But the opposition Conservatives had hoped to see more action behind the words.
As they have called for since Petro Poroshenko was Ukraine’s president, the Tory MPs want Canada to supply the Ukrainian military with lethal-defensive equipment and give Ukraine’s Armed Forces access to satellite imagery previously provided by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
The Conservatives would also like the Canadian government to advocate for the release of 24 Ukrainian seamen captured by the Russians last November in the Kerch Strait and to increase humanitarian assistance to support the 800,000 people displaced by the war in eastern Ukraine. “And a Conservative government under Andrew Scheer will advocate for, and lead, a peacekeeping mission along the Ukraine-Russia border,” said Messrs. Bezan and O’Toole in their statement.
Funding for Ukraine
During President Zelenskyy’s visit to Canada on July 1-3, the Canadian government announced $45 million (about $35 million U.S.) in new funding for Ukraine, including:
- a three-year, mobile-service delivery initiative, valued at $5-million ($3.8 million U.S.), to provide access to such public services as legal aid and pensions to Ukrainians living in the eastern conflict zone;
- $6.5 million ($5 million U.S.) over three years to the Canada-Ukraine Police Development Project to both strengthen the National Police of Ukraine Patrol Police Academy’s training program and support the expansion of policing into rural areas of Ukraine; and
- a three-year commitment, worth $6 million ($4.6 million U.S.), to help the Ukrainian government implement “strategic defense reform initiatives in support of [its] goal of Euro-Atlantic integration” through “enhancing the institutional capacity” of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
A Global Affairs Canada backgrounder noted that specific initiatives would be jointly developed following Ukraine’s July 21 parliamentary elections and the appointment of a new government.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police will also send up to 45 officers to provide training and support for Ukraine’s National Police until 2021.
There was no mention of supplying Ukraine with arms for its fight against Russian-backed militants in the Donbas region.
However, during his joint news conference with Prime Minister Trudeau, President Zelenskyy said he had reached an agreement on “the supply of armed vehicles to Ukraine” – a claim denied by a Canadian government official. For his part, Mr. Trudeau said that Canadian companies had invested in an ammunition factory in Ukraine, without offering any further detail.
In December 2017, Canada added Ukraine to the Automatic Firearms Country Control List that enables Canadian companies and individuals to apply for a permit to export certain restricted firearms, weapons and devices to Ukraine. Last summer, a Canadian arms company signed a deal with the Ukrainian military to provide it with sniper rifles in a deal worth about $756 million U.S. at the time.
Although President Zelenskyy didn’t publicly ask for more weapons, Mr. Bezan said he believes Ukraine needs the arms-assistance requested by the Poroshenko administration, which he said would “take whatever lethal equipment we’d be prepared to provide them with,” beyond specific appeals, such as rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles and anti-mortar systems.
“If you talk with the Ukrainian Embassy [in Ottawa], those asks are still on the table,” said Mr. Bezan. “Zelenskyy hasn’t said anything about this publicly, but I’d be shocked if he took it off the table.”
The Embassy did not respond to The Ukrainian Weekly’s requests for an interview with Ambassador Andriy Shevchenko.
“What we’ve seen from the Trudeau government is at best a continuation of what was started under the Conservatives,” said Mr. Bezan, who represents the Manitoba riding of Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman in the House of Commons. “There hasn’t been anything new that has been provided to Ukraine – just extensions of existing missions, financial assistance and completions of things that were started under the Conservative government, like the free-trade agreement as well as the Canada-Ukraine Defense Cooperation Arrangement.”
Mr. Bezan added that the Youth Mobility Arrangement that was formally renewed during President Zelenskyy’s visit was first established nine years ago by the Harper government during Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency.
The optics of holding the Ukraine Reform Conference in Canada’s largest city, Toronto, rather than in its capital, Ottawa, also concerned Mr. Bezan.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian Canadian, represents the Toronto riding of University-Rosedale in the House of Commons. “I’ll never question Chrystia’s commitment to Ukraine, but to me it’s a little bit too opportunistic to do it in her backyard during an election cycle,” said Mr. Bezan, referring to the October 21 Canadian general election.
The Weekly was unsuccessful in its requests for an interview with Ms. Freeland.
Ukrainian community’s concerns
But while some aspects of President Zelenskyy’s visit to Canada raised concerns, others allayed worries.
Just prior to the president’s arrival in Toronto, his chief of staff, Andriy Bohdan – in an interview with RBC Ukraine – had said that Russian could be granted regional-language status in the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions following their return to Ukrainian control. But President Zelenskyy dismissed that idea in a July 2 meeting with Ukrainian Canadian community leaders during the Ukraine Reform Conference.
“The president said he was the guarantor of the Constitution of Ukraine and that the Ukrainian language is enshrined as the one official language of Ukraine,” said the president of the Ukrainian World Congress, Mr. Grod, who was at that gathering.
“His attitude was that this is an evolutionary issue, and it’s not a question of if Ukrainian would be the predominant language, it’s a question of when. He’s not going to be ramming it down people’s throats because there are patriotic Ukrainians who are risking their lives on the frontlines who don’t speak Ukrainian or it’s not their first language,” Mr. Grod added.
The president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ms. Chyczij, who led the hour-long meeting with Mr. Zelenskyy, said Mr. Zelenskyy reassured the diaspora about his commitment to tackling corruption in Ukraine.
“He made a point of reminding us that he is trained as a lawyer and that he understand very well what the rule of law means,” said Ms. Chyczij, who is a lawyer and serves as executive director of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association.
She also noted that regarding Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine, President Zelenskyy reassured Ukrainian Canadian community leaders that “he would not seek peace at the expense of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
But Mr. Bezan said he still has questions about the president’s plan for peace. “He talks about ending the war in Donbas, and I’d like to know how he plans on doing that. How does that come into reality when you have [Vladimir] Putin who still denies Russia is in Ukraine?”
He said that, while President Zelenskyy is saying “the right things about staying strong against Russia and cracking down on corruption, he has some people around him that are tied to the Yanukovych regime,” particularly his chief of staff, Mr. Bohdan.
For Mr. Bezan, Mr. Zelenskyy remains an “unknown” who ran his presidential campaign “largely based upon social media and his celebrity status as a comedian and as an actor.”
“I understand why the people of Ukraine rallied behind him; they wanted something different than the same old in bringing in politicians too closely tied to the oligarchs and elites, and were frustrated with the time it takes to bring about the reforms that have been requested,” Mr. Bezan said. “But at the same time, Zelenskyy came to power with a very light policy agenda.”
And one recent policy that emerged from his administration is sounding alarm bells.
On July 11, President Zelenskyy proposed extending Ukraine’s lustration law to ban anyone from ever holding public office in the country who held a government post between February 23, 2014, and May 19, 2019, which would include former President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and national deputies who served in the Verkhovna Rada during that time.
“It is very troublesome because it smells of politically motivated justice, and that is the last thing we want to see for Ukraine,” said Mr. Grod, a lawyer and CEO of Toronto-based Rodan Energy Solutions Inc., who previously served as president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. “This could be construed as something from the Yanukovych days, where the trying of [former prime minister] Yulia Tymoshenko and other political adversaries was the thing to do.”
“I think since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Ukraine is seeking to be a highly democratic country – and the last presidential election was a great indication of that,” Mr. Grod noted.
In a July 17 statement, the Ukrainian World Congress highlighted that Ukraine’s current lustration law “was aimed at preventing those who held office under the government of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych from continuing to do so.”
“The criminal, authoritarian and kleptocratic regime of Viktor Yanukovych… was responsible for defrauding the Ukrainian state, human rights abuses and crimes against the people of Ukraine, including mass shootings of peaceful protesters which resulted in the murder of 100 Ukrainian citizens that are today revered as the ‘Heavenly Hundred.’”
“Any individual who committed a crime should most certainly be brought to justice through due process and should not be able to hide behind political immunity,” stated Mr. Grod in the release. “However, besmirching the reputation and targeting the entire post-Maidan government with criminal prosecution and placing bans on participating in executive and legislative governance is not right and will be viewed internationally as politically motivated justice as was pursued by the previous Yanukovych government.”
What lies ahead is no less concerning, as Mr. Grod shared with The Weekly.
Mr. Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party is poised to win a plurality, or even a majority, of the seats in Ukraine’s Parliament in the July 21 election. “He will then be able to pass whatever laws he wants,” offered Mr. Grod, who added that if broadening the lustration law is any indication, “that’s very troubling.”