Canada launches free trade talks with Ukraine

From Alberta Farmer Express:

Canada’s farmers and farm machinery makers are among the expected beneficiaries from the launch of talks toward a free trade agreement (FTA) with Ukraine.

International Trade Minister Stockwell Day and Ukrainian Economics Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn announced the talks Tuesday, saying the two countries will meet in the coming months on "a range of trade and investment issues to facilitate economic relations and fight protectionism."

An FTA with Ukraine could further open markets for Canadian exports ranging from agricultural and seafood products to machinery and pharmaceuticals, the Canadian government said in a release. An agreement "could also help to address non-tariff barriers."

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Minister Day at the Holodomor Memorial Complex, which commemorates victims of the 1932-33 famine.  Conservative MP, James Bezan, introduced Bill C 459 last year – an Act for Canada to establish a Ukrainian Famine and Genocide Memorial Day and to recognize the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 as genocide.

Minister Day and Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, witness the signing of commercial contracts between Canada’s SNC-Lavalin/West Group Engineering and Ukraine’s UkrAgroLeasing.

Minister Day addresses a Canadian, Ukrainian and international business audience in Kiev Kyiv.

[Thanks to Nash Holos for pointing these out, photos courtesy of the Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway.]

National Capital Commission Approves Name for Ottawa Monument: "To Victims of Totalitarian Communism"

We reported earlier this week on the politically incorrectness of erecting the victims of communism memorial, but now a compromise has been made:

TORONTO, Sept. 22 /CNW/ – The National Capital Commission (NCC) approved the title "A Memorial to Victims of Totalitarian Communism – Canada, a Land of Refuge" for the monument to be built on national capital region land to the more than 100 million victims of totalitarian communism.

Tribute to Liberty, the group behind the memorial, has already added "totalitarian" to the intended wording to appease federal naysayers, but is now facing further difficulties over what NCC members allege is a "provocative" reference to communism. The NCC wants to excise any reference to a specific ideology from the memorial and dedicate it to the victims of totalitarianism in general, watering the project down into bland nothingness.

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Possibly the worst communist criminal of them all, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, left a butcher’s bill that runs into the tens of millions. His relentless paranoia fuelled repeat purges, mass starvation, ferocious internal security and gulags, which destroyed generations and fed off the minds and bodies even of those tasked with keeping the slaughterhouse running. But, today, the 20th century’s most ruthless criminal is lionized in Russia as a man who got things done, while his chief henchmen are commemorated on stamps and statues. There is even a brand of Russian cigarettes, Belomorkanal, named after a prison camp where 100,000 died.

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Why is Stephen Harper providing pay benefits to Red Army veterans?

From Borys Wrzesnewskyj’s Facebook page:

Ottawa – Members of Parliament were aghast to learn that Canadian taxpayers are funding Russian Red Army veterans’ pensions. Legislation introduced by the Harper Conservatives on June 1, 2009 — ostensibly to provide benefits for Canadian-Polish war veterans who fought so valiantly with the Allies during World War II — will also provide payments to one of the most hated and notorious armies in history.

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By the time “Uncle Joe” was done, the instruments of his oppression, the Red Army and the NKVD, had the blood of 45 million innocents on their hands. Today, Canadian veterans of the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) who fought both Nazi and Soviet evil in Europe’s bloodiest battles do not receive veterans’ benefits, yet this legislation introduced by the misguided Harper Conservatives is providing veterans’ pay to Red Army veterans — the very people they fought against.

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Most disturbingly, it appears that this was not an inadvertent oversight by the Conservative government. Red Army veterans were invited to take part in the Royal Assent of this Bill and were feted by Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. In fact, even Prime Minister Harper has gone out of his way to meet with Red Army veterans.

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