In Ukraine, Christmas will look very different this year. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians will spend Christmas Eve in frozen trenches. If Russian artillery abates long enough, they might enjoy a meal alongside the rats that take shelter in their dugouts. Their spouses, parents, grandparents and children will be in basements and bomb shelters, singing carols to keep spirits up as air raid sirens blare. Ukrainians in occupied territories will continue to be tortured, raped and killed by the Russian military. The Russians will continue to kidnap Ukrainian children from their parents, only to force these children to suffer in concentration camps for the purpose of “denazifying” them. This is genocide, and you know it.
And here in Canada, displaced Ukrainians and the wider Ukrainian Canadian community will watch in disbelief, as the unity once displayed by Canada’s political parties in support of Ukraine is broken by the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).
Not long ago, the CPC was a global leader in support for Ukraine, as Operation Unifier was launched under the Harper Government in 2015 in response to the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas. Canadian Armed Forces trained over 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers, modernizing their military doctrine to NATO standards. In return, those Ukrainian soldiers did Canada proud by heroically repelling the Russian invasion forces from Kyiv in February 2022, when the world was predicting the capital would fall within days, and later from Kharkiv and Kherson.
And yet, just weeks after voting against the renewal of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, the CPC voted to cut funding to Operation Unifier. Clearly, the 1.36 million members of the Ukrainian Canadian community see it for what it is: A vote against Ukraine’s victory, and a vote for Putin’s victory. If the Conservative Party of Canada is going to continue to make decisions that abandon Ukraine in its most desperate hour of need, they should tell their constituents as much.
Many of those constituents have spent nearly two years volunteering, advocating, working late nights packing medical supplies into containers, spending their rent money on drones and body armor to keep their friends alive. And some made the ultimate sacrifice by traveling to Ukraine to defend it against Russian aggression. They laid down their lives in the name of freedom for Ukraine and the West, including Canada. They understood that Ukraine must win the war against Russia, otherwise Europe, Canada and the United States will be next in defending themselves against Russian aggression, with soldiers from NATO countries, including Canada, shedding their blood.
If Russia is not defeated, it will be as much a threat to Canada in the future as it is to Ukraine today. We are not insisting you make Ukrainian independence your cause. We are just asking you to think through the war in Ukraine and the need to support Ukraine from the point of view of your own interests, as well as Canada’s national interests.
Most Canadians understand that supporting Ukraine is in Canada’s security interest, except apparently the Conservative Party of Canada.
