Ukraine’s CUPP Interns Return to Parliament

(Ottawa, CUPP) On September 17, 2012, three hundred and five Members of Parliament, went back to work in the first Session of Canada’s 41^st Parliament since Confederation. Thirty-three student interns from the Canada Ukraine Parliamentary Program (CUPP), which is in its 22^nd year of operation in the House of Commons, accompanied the MPs.

The interns came to Canada from universities in Berlin, Vaasa Finland, Tbilisi Georgia, Algarve Portugal, Irkutsk Russia as well as Simferopol, Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Dnipropetrovs’k, Mykolaiv, and Odesa.

In 1990/1991 Toronto lawyer Ihor Bardyn founded the Program, to celebrate the centenary of Ukrainian group immigration to Canada and the renewal of Ukraine’s Independence.

On their arrival in Toronto, Mr. Bardyn greeted the interns and urged them “to use their time in Parliament wisely, in their daily contacts with MPs, government officials and ordinary Canadians, and to experience Canadian civil society; observe the relations between the elected MPs and their constituents and the transparency of the Canadian political system; ask questions and compare and record your observations and findings; and vote on October 28”.

Thirty-seven MPs are participating in the 22^nd annual CUPP, among them Ministers Jason Kenney and Bal Gobal, as well as former Ministers Judy Sgro, Scott Brison, and Dr. Carolyn Bennett. Also meeting the interns and sharing their experience will be Senators Raynell Andreychuk and David Tkachuk. The interns will publish two issues of the CUPP Newsletter and return to Kyiv on November 22.

In Kyiv, the interns will participate in the CUPP sponsored, Kyiv MODEL UKRAINE Conference, which is co-sponsored with National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA), under the topic of “Different Roads to the Rule of Law”. Among the conference speakers are: Serhiy Kvit, President of NaUKMA; Allan Rock, President of the University of Ottawa; Neil Boyd, Simon Fraser University; John Lucas, Oxford University; Hanne Severinsen of the Danish Helsinki Group; Bohdan Vitvitsky, USDJ; Taras Kuzio, Johns Hopkins University; Sofiya Fedyna, University of Lviv; and Mykhailo Kirsenko, NaUKMA. Speaking as well are CUPP Alumni: Yaroslav Kovalchuk, University of Algarve; Olha Dmytrenko, European Court of Human Rights; Pavlo Shopin, University of Luhansk; Liliia Ibadova, Yaroslav the Wise Law Academy, Kharkiv; Alona Shkrum, Cambridge University; Maryna Rabinovych, University of Odesa; Stanislava Tsarkova, NaUKMA; and Olexiy Soshenko, Yaroslav the Wise Law Academy, Kharkiv, Attorney at Clifford Chance in Kyiv.

The previous three MODEL UKRAINE conferences were held at George Washington University, University of Ottawa and University of Oxford .

For more information, visit www.katedra.org