MacKay Responds to the UCPBF and Assures Canada’s Support for Ukraine

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay, has reassured the Ukrainian-Canadians of Canada’s commitment to fostering close ties with Ukraine and supporting Ukraine in its current challenges.

“Ukraine continues to be a special partner to Canada,” MacKay wrote in a March 27 letter, addressed to the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation. 

“Canada and Ukraine enjoy close relations,” continued MacKay, “based on a historic foundation of over 100 years of Ukrainian migration to Canada. Canada and Canadians attach great importance to revitalizing our two countries’ bilateral relations, especially since the dramatic evens of last year’s Orange Revolution. We are proud to send an unprecedented number of election observers to the December 2004 presidential elections, and have once again deployed Canadians to the international election observation mission,” wrote MacKay.

“Canada continues to support Ukraine as the country continues to face and surmount the challenges of democracy, implement political and economic reforms, and strive towards greater European-Atlantic integration,” added MacKay.

MacKay’s letter was written in response to a letter sent to Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance, in which the UCPBF expressed concern over comments made by Flaherty at the Group of Eight summit in Moscow in February. 

At the G8 summit, Flaherty was asked by reporters about his reaction to the dispute over deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine and Western Europe.  Flaherty replied: “They’ve (Russia) hosted a very good meeting here and we appreciate it. I am not going to talk about Russian internal affairs, that’s for sure.”

The UPCBF, in a letter to Flaherty, noted that the issue of natural gas does not pertain to Russia’s “internal affairs” but rather is a matter of “external affairs” because Ukraine is an independent country.  The federation also pointed out that “natural gas is a weapon currently being used by Russia in its external affairs, one of many weapons used by Russia to destabilize Ukraine’s independence and to punish it for developing a foreign policy that does not concur with Russia’s.” 

In closing, the UPBF urged the Government of Canada to recommit its policy to actively support and protect Ukraine’s independence at every possible opportunity and to make this support one of the pillars of Canada’s foreign policy.