Main Container

logo

Remarks by the Deputy Prime Minister introducing President Zelenskyy at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Main Content

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Thank you very much, Meric. Thank you to everyone at the University of Toronto who organized this. I’m most of all grateful to the students who are here.

Whether you are in Saskatoon, Kingston or Montréal, I know that this will be an important day for thousands of students across the country.

I’m happy to be here with you. And of course, it is a great honour for me to introduce President Zelenskyy.

But before I introduce President Zelenskyy, I’d like to briefly explain why it’s so important for him to speak to you today.

On February 24th, we all woke up to a world utterly transformed.

As we slept, Vladimir Putin had opened fire on the people of Ukraine, and he also turned his guns on the rules-based international order that the world’s democracies had worked so hard to build after the Second World War.

In the months since, he has sought ‒ at a cost of many, many thousands of Ukrainian lives ‒ to show that Russian tyranny can defeat Ukrainian democracy.

He has tried to show that tyranny can defeat democracy itself.

We cannot allow him to succeed. The Ukrainian people are showing, every day, that Putin cannot and will not succeed.

To support Ukraine, Canada has committed $1.87 billion in financial assistance to Ukraine, of which $1.5 billion has already been delivered ‒ that is more than any other country has managed to send into the bank accounts of the government of Ukraine.

I am a Finance minister. I spoke to Sergii Marchenko, Ukraine’s Finance minister, this morning. I talk to him a lot. I know he needs money to fight this war, and Canada is there. We are there with weapons, as well.

I want to say today to President Zelenskyy – and to Vladimir Putin, who I think is probably listening to us, as well – that for as long as it takes, Canada will be there for Ukraine.

Ukraine, of course, is fighting for its own democracy, its own freedom, but we recognize that Ukraine is fighting for us, too. Ukraine is fighting for all of the world’s democracies and that is why we will persist. We will not tire. We will be there.

Now, we are here at a wonderful university, and so I am going to conclude by sharing one thought about students and teachers.

In 1991, I was the age of many of you here. And I began my career then, in that year when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became independent.

I remember that time so vividly. It was a time when we, the westerners, were Ukraine’s leaders. A lot of Canadians were part of that effort. My own mother moved to Ukraine and worked on constitutional reform.

But today, the tables have turned. Today, I really believe that Ukraine is our teacher. And we, the rest of the world, are Ukraine’s students – the world’s democracies are, certainly.

And like any good teacher, the people of Ukraine ‒ in their heroic resistance ‒ are actually teaching us things we already knew:

They’re teaching us that you can stand up to someone bigger than you, even when the odds are stacked against you, if you believe in why you are fighting and if your cause is right and true.

The people of Ukraine are teaching us today that democracy is worth fighting for.

They are teaching us that the strength of a country doesn’t come from how many people you can force to do your bidding – it comes from how many people, of their own free will, will stand up together for themselves.

These are lessons that are being taught at such a great cost by the people of Ukraine to all of us. And I think we, in Canada, need to think very hard about them and apply those lessons to ourselves ‒ to our own constant effort to build and to improve our own democracy.

One of Ukraine’s first teachers was Taras Shevchenko. He was a serf who had the incredible courage to say to his people – to fellow serfs, to people who were property – that they were actually human beings.

And everyone who is Ukrainian-Canadian listening to this will know the line from Taras Shevchenko I am about to quote, everyone in Ukraine will too: “Study, my brothers. Think and read.”

That was such a powerful and revolutionary thought to say to serfs. And that’s the reason we all honour Taras Shevchenko today.

But today, Ukraine and the world has another brave and, indeed, revolutionary teacher. And that is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He is leading Ukraine, and, in doing so, he is teaching the world and leading the world’s democracies.

Slava Ukraini!