Harper vows ‘unblinking’ support for Ukraine
PM’s strong stand against Putin garnered respect among those attending gala
On the13th anniversary of the Sept.11 terror attacks in the United States, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned that Canada faces new threats but will stand alongside Ukraine with “unblinking resistance.”
At the United for Ukraine Gala fundraising dinner on Thursday, Harper gave the keynote address and spoke of the threats toward democracy from old foes and new.
“I am prompted by today’s sombre anniversary — that of 9/11 — to acknowledge a sad truth . . . Threats we thought we had overcome are returning to trouble us yet again,” Harper said Thursday night to the 1,200 people gathered at the Toronto Congress Centre.
“In the13 years since the Twin Towers (in New York), the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 were attacked, we have confronted terrorism in one failed state only to have it surface in yet another. And now an old foe — one we thought had been consigned to history — has risen once again in another incarnation to threaten the world’s stability and security.”
Before Harper spoke, hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, whose grandparents are Ukrainian, made a surprise appearance with his wife Janet. Eugene Melnyk, owner of the Ottawa Senators, who is a tireless fundraiser for Ukrainian causes, introduced the Great One. Gretzky joked that this was the first and only time the owner of an Ottawa hockey team would get a warm reception in Toronto.
Harper, whose strong stand against Vladimir Putin has gained him strong support in the large Ukrainian-Canadian community, verbally lacerated the Russian president in his speech.
The only certainty in Putin’s words is that “the truth must be something else entirely,” Harper said to applause.
“Desperate to obscure his own failures of leadership Mr. Putin has been stoking the fires of the crudest form of populist nationalism. Desperate to camouflage, on his watch, the strug- gles of Russia’s present, and waning hopes for its future, he has been summoning ghosts from the past — ghosts of an imperial Russia that have manifested themselves in his reckless and illegal annexation of Crimea, and in the war being waged at first by his proxies — and now by his soldiers — in Ukraine’s east,” he said. Harper added the sanctions in place against Putin’s regime are working and that the Russian econo- my is teetering on recession. He extolled the virtues of Canada’s ties to Ukraine, reminding the friendly crowd that 1.2 million Canadians are of Ukrainian heritage, among them four past and present provincial premiers. And he announced that next week the new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will make an official state visit to Canada. Canadian election observers will also be on hand in Ukraine during the October parliamentary vote.
The sold-out dinner, with tickets going at $125 a plate, had a bevy of Tory politicians in attendance, ministers and ambassadors including Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, former Ontario premier Ernie Eves and provincial Progressive Conservative leadership candidates MPPs Christine Elliott and Lisa MacLeod. Toronto mayoral candidate, John Tory — the former leader of the Ontario PCs — was also in the crowd.