The Conservatives have voted en masse against a modernized free trade deal with Ukraine in its final rejection of the enabling legislation, while a new poll says the party’s voters are at the forefront of declining Canadian support for the European country during its war with Russia.
Bill C-57, the legislation underpinning the new Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA), passed third reading on Tuesday by a vote of 214-116 with the support of the Liberals, Bloc Québécois and NDP in the House of Commons, and now heads to the Senate. Members of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s party who voted to oppose the deal included foreign affairs critic Michael Chong and defence critic James Bezan.
The Conservatives attribute their opposition to the bill to its imposition of a carbon levy on Ukraine. However, the Liberal government and Ukraine’s embassy in Canada say the agreement’s reference to “promote carbon pricing” imposes no obligations. Ukraine also already has carbon pricing.
It’s rare to see a partisan split in Parliament on matters related to Ukraine, a subject on which the Liberals and Conservatives have traditionally agreed – especially as the European country has been battling an all-out military assault by Russia since February, 2022. But the Conservatives this past fall also voted against a series of government spending estimates including more funding for Operation Unifier, a Canadian Armed Forces effort to train Ukrainian forces.
Shortly before Tuesday’s vote, Liberal House Leader Steven MacKinnon condemned the Conservative opposition, saying it represented a “moral failure” to oppose a trade deal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had asked Canada to pass. This vote, he told the Commons, is about “trade arrangements with one of our closest allies, the people in the country of Ukraine, who are repelling, as we speak, and dying, against Russian invaders.”
Meanwhile, a late January survey by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute says the number of Canadians who believe the country is offering “too much” support to Ukraine has doubled since the early days of the war. The poll found 25 per cent of respondents supported that statement, up from 12 per cent in May, 2022. The online survey of 1,617 adults was conducted Jan. 29-Jan. 31.
Since January, 2022, Canada has committed more than $9.7-billion to Ukraine in financial, military, humanitarian, development and immigration assistance. That works out to slightly more than 1 per cent of the last two years of federal spending combined.
Angus Reid president Shachi Kurl said the survey shows Conservative voters are driving the bulk of this change in sentiment toward Ukraine. She said 43 per cent of respondents who identify as having voted Conservative in the 2021 federal election said Canada has done “too much” for Ukraine – up from 19 per cent in May, 2022.
By comparison, the number of respondents who backed the Liberals in 2021 and hold this view has grown very slightly – to 10 per cent from 5 per cent. And the same for New Democrats, to 12 per cent from 5 per cent.
The revised Canada-Ukraine trade treaty replaces the original deal, which took effect in 2017. CUFTA includes new chapters on investment and trade in services, among other things.
Alexandra Chyczij, national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, applauded C-57′s passage through the Commons but said she was “disappointed that the vote in favour of the bill was not unanimous.” Ukraine’s embassy in Canada declined to comment on the Conservative vote, saying its ambassador was out of the country.
Mr. Poilievre, speaking Tuesday morning to reporters in Montreal, was asked whether he felt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spent too much money on Ukraine and whether his party would reduce the spending going to Ukrainians.
The Conservative Leader did not directly answer the question but instead attacked Mr. Trudeau for Canada’s failures on Ukraine, including allowing Russia to circumvent Canadian sanctions to obtain more than 190,000 electric detonators in 2022, according to research released last year by Brussels-headquartered Open Dialogue Foundation. He also cited the government’s much criticized decision to allow natural-gas turbines for a Russian pipeline to be repaired in Canada and sent back – a decision Ottawa reversed in December, 2022.
Mr. Poilievre noted his party has called for aging Canadian Armed Forces rockets to be sent to Ukraine: “That will save us money that we won’t have to spend on disposal,” he said. Mr. Poilievre also said Conservatives would change laws to enable liquefied natural gas to more easily flow to Europe and supplant Russian supplies of petroleum. This would “break European dependence on Putin and turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people in this country.”
Don Plett, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, declined to say how Conservative senators would vote: “We look forward to studying Bill C-57 once it arrives in our chamber,” he said in a statement.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland defended Canadian support for Ukraine, saying Ukrainians are fighting for a rules-based international order on behalf of other countries. The Russian assault on Ukraine, which first began in 2014, is the first time since the Second World War that a country has tried to change international borders in Europe through a military assault.
“We are not one of the largest economic or military powers in the world. So, Canada has a national interest in this war and really, we have to thank the Ukrainians,” she said. “It is very important for Canada’s national security that the Ukrainians will win this war.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, who just returned from a visit to Kyiv, described the situation there as dire. Mr. Poilievre has been talking about “the importance of freedom” but the reality, she alleged, is “he’s about freedom for some and not all.”