Canada and Ukraine have been allies for years. We must honour that friendship
National Post, 05 March 2022
Canadians ought to be proud to have a deputy PM who is not welcome in Putin’s Russia
Earlier this week I argued that a new energy strategy for Canada was timely to ramp up, not diminish, oil and gas production to help meet the security needs of our European allies. On the global carbon emissions front, if Canadian fossil fuels replaced other similar fuels from Russia and similarly unsavoury regimes it would be a wash, with a human rights bonus to boot.
More than that though, Russia’s war against Ukraine offers Canada a particular opportunity to demonstrate its historic closeness to Ukraine. Culturally that was evident in Winnipeg on Tuesday, when a Ukrainian men’s choir in national dress sang the Ukrainian national anthem before the Jets game: “We will not allow others to rule in our motherland!”
Canada has the largest Ukrainian population anywhere in the diaspora, save for Russia. But Russia cannot be really thought of as a “diaspora” for Ukrainians; the countries are Slavic cousins, making the Russian war an act of fratricide.
To date, the Trudeau government’s actions to support Ukraine have been admirable. That is no doubt due largely to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who as a young woman in the late 1980s was in Ukraine to organize in favour of independence from the Soviet empire.
Ostensibly there to study the Ukrainian language, Freeland did not have to go to classes as she was already fluent. She used her time instead to strengthen the underground movement for Ukraine’s liberation. Her activities earned her the watchful eye of the KGB — codename “Frida.” Her file was released last year; no word on whether then-KGB colonel Vladimir Putin reviewed the materials. The president banned her from Russia in 2014; Canadians ought to be proud to have a deputy PM who is not welcome in Putin’s Russia.
Justin Trudeau deserves his own share of credit. Early on he decided not to reverse Stephen Harper’s ultra-friendly Ukraine policy; the latter visited Ukraine three times, including on his last foreign trip as prime minister. Trudeau visited Ukraine in his first year in office, signing a trade agreement and enhancing military support for the region, in particular committing Canadian troops to the NATO deployment in Latvia.
All this built upon what has never been forgotten in Ukraine, that Canada and Poland were the first countries to recognize Ukraine’s independence when declared in December 1991. Survey data report that ordinary Ukrainians usually list Canada and Poland as Ukraine’s strongest allies.
That positions Canada well today to offer global moral and rhetorical leadership, as well as the necessary strategic and security steps. Trudeau is headed to Europe this weekend. I would prefer to see Freeland on the Polish border, encouraging Ukrainians in their own language.
While the Biden administration has handled matters admirably to date, Ukrainians remember well that former U.S. president Barack Obama never visited their country.
They remember how hapless the Obama administration was in Eastern Europe, with secretary of state Hillary Clinton seeking a foolhardy “reset” with Putin’s Russia. In 2009, Obama and Clinton withdrew the United States from its missile defence agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic. Either due to staggering incompetence or an obsequious desire to abase themselves before Putin, the Americans cruelly announced the abandonment on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland in September 1939. Never has a bad policy been so grotesquely announced.
Ukrainians remember, too, the worst foreign policy speech delivered in the history of the American presidency. That shameful designation — not without competition — belongs to George H.W. Bush, who addressed the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv on Aug. 1, 1991, after spending a few days with Mikhail Gorbachev in Russia. Bush agreed to act as Gorbachev’s messenger boy in Ukraine.
Continue reading at the National Post.