UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT LEAVES STRONG IMPRESSION
The news from Ottawa last week was dominated by Stephen Harper’s disgraced Foreign Minister, Maxime Bernier. Obviously incompetent on every issue, Bernier was finally fired for leaving secret documents with an ex-girlfriend who was linked to biker gangs.
It’s unfortunate that such stupidity swamped all the “good news” about the State Visit to Canada of the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko.
Speaking to Parliament on May 26th, President Yushchenko noted that Canada boasts 1.2 million citizens of Ukrainian heritage. In fact, Canada is the largest “Ukrainian country” outside of Europe.
We were the first to recognize “free” Ukraine in the early 1990’s.
Canadian support was crucial in the country’s recovery from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. I was responsible for providing some of that help when I was Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources (1997 – 2002).
President Yushchenko especially acknowledged the election observers sent to Ukraine by Paul Martin’s government in 2004-05 – during the “Orange Revolution” which finally brought democracy to the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine’s current priorities include the strengthening of democracy, human rights and the justice system, maintaining an impressive annual economic growth rate at 6-percent, attracting more foreign investment, solidifying its new membership in the World Trade Organization, and seeking membership in the European Union and NATO.
Canadian Parliamentarians gave President Yushchenko several standing ovations, but the biggest cheer came when he gave a bear-hug greeting to his personal friend, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, our Liberal Member of Parliament for the Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Centre.
Just 72 hours later – because of Borys’ leadership – the House of Commons adopted a new law which recognizes the genocide inherent in the tragic famine, known as the Holodomor, which was forced upon Ukraine by Stalin in 1932-33, claiming 10 million innocent lives.
It will now be commemorated in Canada every year in November.
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