Mr. Borys Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Canada’s 1.2 million strong Ukrainian Canadian diaspora community is in angst due to recent attempts to muzzle Ukraine’s media and trumped up criminal charges against opposition leaders.

 

    Incredibly, secret service agents have even attempted to intimidate university rectors. On May 18 Father Borys Gudziak, the Rector of the renowned Ukrainian Catholic University received a call on his cell phone from a security service agent. Twenty minutes later this agent was in the Rector’s office. What followed was an hour of attempts to co-op and intimidate the Rector into spying on student activists and to rat out the names of student protest organizers.

 

    Not since the days of the Soviet Union has the Ukrainian Catholic Church, its institutions, priests and students been menaced in this way.

 

    Canada has a special relationship with Ukraine and has stood shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine’s people on their journey towards statehood and democracy. Today we do so again with Ukraine’s students, journalists and all those who have dedicated themselves to a free and independent Ukraine.

 

 

 

 

The 1.2 million Ukrainian Canadians saw the fulfillment of the dreams of their parents and grandparents, the fulfillment of an ancestral dream, with the birth of the Ukrainian state.

 

The Ukrainian Canadian diaspora was proud that after the Referendum for Independence on December 1, 1991, when 92 percent of Ukraine’s people voted for independence, Canada and Poland were the first two countries to formally acknowledge this new state.

 

We were equally proud when, during the Orange Revolution, Canada’s government called upon former President Kuchma to respect democracy and dangerously meddlesome Russian President Putin to keep their hands off Ukraine. Canada sent 500 official election observers to guarantee that the will of the Ukrainian people, that democracy, was respected. People in the streets of Kyiv would stop those of us wearing Canada flag pins, embrace us and repeatedly say “thank you Canada,” “thank you for helping to save our democracy and statehood.”

 

However, today the regime of newly elected President Yanukovych, the first president of Ukraine elected by less than 50 percent of the people who voted, has taken a series of actions which have sent a chill throughout Ukraine, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Ukrainian diaspora, including Canada’s 1.2 million strong Ukrainian Canadian community.

 

In the last several weeks we’ve heard of state-sanctioned attempts to muzzle Ukraine’s media; we’ve heard of a campaign of trumped up criminal corruption charges against opposition leaders. The parliament has descended into chaos. Last year in Crimea spies of the FSB (Russia’s successor agency to the KGB) were expelled for financing so-called Russian cultural groups (which were allegedly engaged in organizing paramilitary training and in the propagation of separatist ideologies); today FSB spies have been invited back in with the sanction of the President’s office and Putin’s smiling approval.

 

And most recently, secret service agents have engaged in attempts to intimidate and co-op university rectors. On May 18 at 9:27 a.m. Rev. Prof. Borys Gudziak, Ph.D., the Rector of Ukraine’s renowned Ukrainian Catholic University received a call on his cell phone from a security service agent. Twenty minutes later this security service agent was in the Rector’s office. What followed was an hour of attempts to co-op and intimidate the Rector into spying on student activists and to obtain the names of student protest organizers.

 

Not since the days of the Soviet Union has the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its institutions, its priests, its seminarians, and its theology students been menaced in this way.

 

Canada has a special relationship with Ukraine and has stood shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine during their journey towards statehood and democracy.

 

We will not stand by and watch as that democracy and statehood is methodically disassembled by the current regime. Once again we stand shoulder to shoulder with the students of Ukraine’s Catholic University, with all of Ukraine’s students, professors, rectors, journalists and those who have dedicated themselves to a free and independent Ukraine.

 

Attached please find the statement on the situation in Ukraine that I delivered on the floor of Canada’s House of Commons this morning at 11:00 EST.

 

The Memorandum Regarding the Visit to UCU of a representative of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) (former KGB) (responsible for contacts with Churches in Lviv) may be obtained at: http://www.ucu.edu.ua/eng/current/chronicles/article;4693/.