Canada–Ukraine relations
Canada–Ukraine relations are the bilateral ties between Canada and Ukraine.
Formal relations
Diplomatic relations were established between Canada and Ukraine on January 27, 1992. Canada opened its embassy in Kiev in April 1992, and the Embassy of Ukraine in Ottawa opened in October of that same year, paid for mostly by donations from the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Ukraine opened a consulate general in Toronto in 1993 and announced plans to open another in Edmonton in 2008. Canada also has a consulate in Lviv.The main bilateral agreement signed between the two governments is the joint declaration of the "Special Partnership" between the two countries signed in 1994 and renewed in 2001.
Sales of Canadian military hardware to Ukraine were permitted by the government of Justin Trudeau in December 2017, as Global Affairs Canada minister Chrystia Freeland lifted the restrictions that had been imposed for an undetermined period of time.
Free-trade agreement
On September 22, 2009, talks between Canada and Ukraine on a free trade agreement began.A Canada–Ukraine Free Trade Agreement was signed in July 2016 and entered into force on 1 August 2017.
High level visits
In 1992, the Governor General of Canada, Ramon Hnatyshyn, visited Ukraine—his ancestral homeland with which he closely identified—in his capacity as Vice-Regent. This was followed in 2005 by the formal state visit of Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and again in 2009 by Governor General Michaëlle Jean. In 1994, Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma, in a gesture recognizing the importance of Ukraine-Canada relations, undertook a visit to Canada, his first state visit abroad. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien visited Ukraine in 1999. In 2008, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko travelled to Ottawa and other centres as part of a state visit. While in Ottawa, he addressed a joint meeting of the House of Commons and Senate of the Canadian Parliament, a rare privilege extended foreign dignitaries.In September 2014, the Ukrainians visited Ottawa to plead for weapons, like anti-tank missiles, surveillance gear and armoured vehicles, with which to subdue the eastern separatists along the border with Russia. Defence Minister Jason Kenney said no. In July 2015 while Stephen Harper was still in power, it came to light that more than 5,400 Eryx anti-tank missiles, 10 Husky vehicles and Buffalo vehicles, four specialized landmine detection systems and 194 LAV-2 Light Armoured Vehicles had been declared surplus by the Canadian military.
In July 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Canadian military trainers who were in western Ukraine as part of the effort to subdue the separatists in the east along the border with Russia. In Kiev a few days later, Petro Poroshenko thanked Canada for its contributions. The leaders signed a free-trade agreement on that date.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, at that time the former prime minister of the Ukraine, visited Ottawa in May 2017 on a fruitless quest for weaponry. He met with Chrystia Freeland and Ralph Goodale.
In July 2019, the Canadian government hosted the third Ukraine Reform Conference in Toronto for three days, where more than 800 people from 36 countries and international finance organizations like the IMF took part. The theme was the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Ukraine. Newly-inaugurated President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced a new agreement for Canada to supply military hardware to the Ukraine. The weapons would be used as part of the effort to subdue the separatists in the east along the border with Russia. Justin Trudeau refused to sign the agreement. Trudeau and Zelenskiy "declared a mutual interest in improving student exchanges and youth work permits" but nothing was done, although money was found to "promote gender equality".
Politics
The main Canadian political parties are keen to be seen promoting democratic reform initiatives in Ukraine, encouraging Ukraine to engage and possibly join Western institutions such as the EU, NATO while distancing itself from Russia. This is a delicate matter as the East vs West trajectory is a normally sensitive political issue in Ukraine. Direct involvement would violate international protocol, and possibly undercut pro-Western forces in the country. Nevertheless, many Canadians were part of an international observer team that monitored Ukraine's 2004 presidential election. Canadian media were typically sympathetic to the forces of the Orange Revolution, with the national magazine Maclean's running a front-page story on the protests. Documented election irregularities by observer teams led to a re-run of the election resulting in the presidential electoral victory of the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko. Canadian Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, Canada's head-of-state representative, would attend Yushchenko's investiture wearing an orange scarf, the colour of the pro-Western movement.Sub-national ties
Much about the relationship is based on the legacy of migration. However, Ukrainians, migrating to Canada, did not come equally from all parts of Ukraine, nor did they move equally to all parts of Canada. The largest number of Ukrainian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries settled in the Canadian Prairies and accounts for this region's strong cultural and historical ties with Ukraine, notably Western Ukraine from whence the majority came. Ontario has also been a province that has attracted Ukrainian immigrants, especially in the immediate post-war period. Recent immigration to Canada from post-independence Ukraine is a function of resumed immigration flows and targeted provincial immigration programs. The latter has resulted in migrants coming to those provinces identifying Ukraine as a potentially significant area of immigrant recruitment for skilled workers.The majority of Ukrainians who migrated to the Canadian province of Alberta between 1893 and 1929 came from a few small districts in western Ukraine, many of them in modern-day Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. Consequently, Alberta's premier Ralph Klein visited Ivano-Frankivsk in 2002, reciprocated by a subsequent visit to Edmonton from the governor of Ivano-Frankivsk, Mykhailo Vyshyvaniuk, at which time the two governments signed a trade and cooperation agreement. Alberta is expected to sign a similar document with neighbouring Lviv Oblast. Other recent significant contacts at the provincial level include Premier Roy Romanow's official visit to Ukraine in 1995 and the visit of Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma to Saskatchewan at the invitation of Premier Romanow, as well as delegations to Ukraine from Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan at the ministerial level, all of which have led to a series of concluded agreements and memoranda of understanding on culture, education and economic matters. As a means to increasing prospective relations, a number of provincial jurisdictions have also established formal Advisory Committees.
Finally, beyond a number of twinning regional agreements, e.g. Saskatchewan-Chernivtsi oblast, a number of Canadian cities are also twinned with Ukrainian municipal counterparts, strengthening cultural and social contacts at the local level. Twinned cities include Toronto/Kiev, Winnipeg/Lviv, Vancouver/Odessa, and Saskatoon/Chernivtsi.
- Kyiv and Toronto
- Chernivtsi and Saskatoon
- Lviv and Winnipeg
- Odesa and Vancouver
- Uzhhorod and Hamilton
- Dnipropetrovsk and the Region of Durham
Humanitarian and development aid to Ukraine
The Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce plays an important role in promoting trade and business ties between the two countries. In 2016, Global Affairs Canada established the Canada-Ukraine Trade and Investment Support Project, which is budgeted for five years and was designed "to lower poverty in Ukraine through increasing exports from Ukraine to Canada and investment from Canada to Ukraine".
Canadian non-governmental organizations also have substantially provided aid to the Ukrainian army and set up rehabilitation clinics for Ukrainian soldiers during the War in Donbass.
Educational Contacts
The longest standing educational partnership at the post-secondary level is that of between the University of Saskatchewan and Chernivtsi National University. An inter-university agreement has been in existence between the two partners since 1977. The relationship, however, currently operates through the Ramon Hnatyshyn Canadian Studies Centre, a research and teaching unit created in 2003 and devoted to Canadian studies at Chernvitsi National University. The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy has also established a Canadian Studies Center in 2009 to help facilitate the study of Canada and to foster greater inter-university contact and scholarly exchange.Bilateral exchanges between Canadian and Ukrainian universities exist in the sciences, social sciences and humanities across a variety of fields. Canadian universities and colleges with active exchange programs include: University of Alberta, University of Manitoba, University of Saskatchewan, University of Toronto, Queen's University, St. Thomas More College and MacEwan University.
In 1991, with the support of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation of Toronto, the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program was created. CUPP has provided Ukrainian university students with an opportunity to learn how democracy functions in Canada by working closely with Canadian Members of Parliament of all parties. Ukrainian students are competitively selected from among 48 participating institutions of higher-learning in Ukraine.