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To ukrainians
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Thank you every one for this opportunity
to speak. Thank you to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Myrolsava, Alexandra
Skandrij, Markian McColl and so many others for making this happen.
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You know, I grew up in the 1970s and
1980s and I remember the cold war. I remember the invasion of Poland.
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I remember the threat of nuclear war
and bombs dropping on our heads in the 1980s. Of not knowing whether, in junior
high, whether there would be a world for us. And there was.
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We did see a different future.
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I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I remember Ukraine becoming a sovereign country.
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So much of Ukraine’s liberation was
because of your work, here in Canada. Here in Manitoba. Here in Winnipeg, where
Ukrainians built and shared and found a place where you could preserve and
promote your language and culture.
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The invasion of Ukraine is not the
action of a strongman, but of a weak man a desperate attempt to disrupt, divide
and undermine our allies and our selves. To disrupt Ukraine, and to divide us
and our allies.
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And there is no question that
democracy is under threat, because there are people who have been seeking to
pull it apart for decades.
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But democracy has greater strength
than any tyrant can shake.
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My grandfather came to Manitoba in
1903, working on the railroad. He served in World War 1 and helped liberate
Mons in Belguum. He survived the Spanish Flu. He worked side by side with
Ukrainians.
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On this very day, February 26, in
1937 he delivered a speech in this building, in the middle of the Depression,
when there was instability around the world, and democracy seemed to be in
retreat.
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“I have been in this country a long
time. I saw the farmers break the prairie with a yoke of oxen. I saw the
railway builders lay the rails across the plains. I saw the young men clatter
over the cobblestones in France. I saw the people bear, with patience, the
burden of the Depression.
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I have seen enough to believe that
democracy has sufficient strength to solve its own problems.”
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Democracy has sufficient strength to
solve its own problems.”
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And there are Russian Oligarchs who
are backing Putin. And they have investments around the world, and their names
keep showing up in tax havens.
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And our disagreement is not with the
Russian people
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Because if Putin and the oligarchs
who back him really believed in what is best for Ukraine, they wouldn’t be
hiding their money away in some offshore account in Panama or Malta.
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They would be putting it back into
Russia. They would build businesses, or pay taxes, or give to charity. But
that’s not what these Oligarchs are doing. They are backing the invasion of a
sovereign state.
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Ukrainians survived and outlasted
oppression.
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Ukrainians
survived and outlasted famine
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Ukrainians
survived and outlasted war
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Ukrainians will all survive and outlast Putin and this unwarranted act of
aggression
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We are gathered here today, in
Manitoba, to say with a single voice: we stand with Ukraine.
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We say, with a single voice, to the
people of Ukraine: You are not alone in your struggle, and your struggle and
identity will not be denied.
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Because your struggle is our
struggle.
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And all of our struggle is to repair
this world.
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To make it more free. To make it more
democratic. To make it more just.
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We did not create this the world that
we live in. We inherited it. But we do not have to leave it to our children.
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We stand with you today and always.
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