Canadian Foreign Minister Begins Ukraine Visit at Critical Moment

OTTAWA – As Mélanie Joly arrived in Ukraine on Sunday for her first visit to the country as Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Canada’s Official Opposition Conservatives are hoping back home that the Canadian Liberal government she represents will extend a military training mission in Ukraine the Tories argue is needed more than ever as the threat to Ukraine from Russia intensifies.

Joly will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna, and visit with Canadian Armed Forces troops deployed on Operation UNIFIER that has trained more than 30,000 members of the Security Forces of Ukraine (SFU) as of last September, six years after the military mission began.

UNIFIER is scheduled to conclude at the end of March, although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has signaled that it intends to keep the military operation going as part of Defense Minister Anita Anand’s mandate.

But another deadline has come and gone involving Canada and Ukraine, and that’s of major concern to Canada’s Conservatives.

The International Coordination and Response Group for the victims of Ukraine International Airlines [UIA] Flight of PS752 had set Jan. 5 as the date by which Iran was to engage in negotiations for reparations to the families of the 176 people who died after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired two surface-to-air missiles at the aircraft on which they were on board on Jan. 8, 2020.

In a statement released after the January deadline passed, the group – which Canada, Ukraine, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Afghanistan (no longer listed as a member) formed after losing citizens and residents in the airline disaster – said that in light of Iran’s refusal to participate in a dialogue, it “will now focus on subsequent actions to take to resolve this matter in accordance with international law [and] hold Iran accountable for the actions and omissions of its civil and military officials that led to the illegal downing of Flight PS752.”

In their own statement, Canada’s opposition Conservatives blamed the Liberal government for “steadfastly refus[ing] to assign full responsibility to the Iranian regime for its act of terrorism” on the UIA flight that claimed the lives of 138 passengers with ties to Canada.

“The Trudeau Liberals have also failed to take any meaningful action at the international level to demonstrate Canada’s horror and disgust at the missile strikes two years ago,” said the statement by Michael Chong, the Conservative shadow foreign affairs minister and Melissa Lantsman, the Tory shadow minister for transport.

Neither Joly nor Canada’s transport minister, Omar Alghabra, were available for interviews.

However, James Bezan, the deputy Conservative whip in the House of Commons whose name also appears on his party’s statement, spoke to the Kyiv Post.

He said that victims’ families are frustrated by the lack of progress on the PS752 investigation, particularly on the part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which has reportedly assigned 120 members to work with Ukrainian officials on their criminal case against Iran.

Transferring information to Ukraine has been “slow”,

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told victims’ families in a July 2021 letter to them that Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) News obtained.

“The RCMP’s efforts are one part of the overall government of Canada effort to seek justice for victims and ascertain as much detail as possible on the downing of PS752,” said Robin Percival, a spokesperson for the national Canadian police, in a statement to the Kyiv Post.

She said that Canada’s Mounties are working “alongside” Global Affairs Canada – the country’s foreign affairs department – “and other governmental partners to provide assistance and support services in the spirit of a whole of government approach.”

“The RCMP commitment has and will continue to be to support the Ukrainian investigation any way it lawfully can,” Percival said. “The RCMP wants to see justice for the families, and their loved ones who were the innocent victims of this tragedy.”

Bezan noted that a Canadian court has already found Iran guilty of terrorism and awarded damages to victims’ families.

In early January, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice revealed the award – in the amount of $134million – plus interest, to the families of six of PS752’s victims. It followed a decision by Justice Edward Belobaba last May in which he found that the missile attacks against the aircraft were “intentional” and constituted “an act of terrorism.”

Since the defendants, which included the Islamic Republic of Iran, the IRGC and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, did not file a defense – nor recognize Canadian court authority – Belobaba’s ruling is considered a default judgment.

The next move is the Trudeau government’s, said Bezan, who is of Ukrainian descent and represents a federal Manitoba riding in the House of Commons.

“Canada has to find a way to get the regime in Tehran to provide the compensation to the families of those who were shot down,” he said. “We need to make sure that every possible instrument is used to collect on the assets that the Iranian regime has in Canada.”

Under Canada’s State Immunity Act, a country that “has supported terrorism” is “not immune from the jurisdiction of a court in proceedings against it that relate to terrorist activity by the state.”

Bezan said that although the Commons passed a motion in 2018 listing the IRGC as a terrorist organization, the Canadian government has yet to make that happen.

In their statement, the Conservative parliamentarians called on the Trudeau government to both impose Magnitsky sanctions against “those responsible in the Iranian regime if they failed to cooperate with the investigation” on PS752 – as well as “to begin discussions with the International Civil Aviation Organization to limit Iran’s ability to operate commercial aircraft in international airspace until [the country] agree[s] to abide by international norms in the investigation…and negotiate reparations to the families of the victims.”

During a virtual memorial hosted by the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims and held on the second anniversary of the tragedy, Trudeau said that the UIA plane was shot down with a “disregard for human life” and that Canada would “not rest until Iran is held accountable.”

Bezan said that the Trudeau government needs to “take a strong position in bringing Iran to the table to provide compensation and confiscate any assets that belong to the Iranian regime, including the embassy and the official residence, and use those assets to compensate the victims’ families.”

Canada cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2012 when it closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats from Ottawa.

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