Zelenskyy right to shame Canada over its inaction

We need action, not lapel pins, writes Sabrina Maddeaux.

On Tuesday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Canada to imagine if it were this country that was at war. Speaking to Parliament via video link, he asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and MPs to imagine if someone laid siege to Vancouver. He asked them to imagine if the CN Tower were levelled by Russian bombs.

To imagine if cruise missiles were falling on our territory, casualties were adding up, schools and kindergarten facilities were being destroyed and Canadians were left without heat, hydro, food or water.

Zelenskyy asked our leaders to imagine if Russia wanted to annihilate Canada and its people.

The address Zelenskyy delivered to Canada's leaders, many of whom wore blue and yellow ribbons on their lapels in a show of support, can best be summed up as an inverse version of John Lennon's Imagine. Instead of peace and harmony, there is war, destruction and 97 dead Ukrainian children and counting.

It painted a vivid picture of the consequences of, despite having decades to reinforce and meaningfully work toward Lennon's vision, Western leaders allowing Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs to have their run of the world. The West buried their heads in the sand as Russia and its elite committed some of the biggest financial crimes in history, sabotaged democracy, illegally annexed Crimea and tortured prisoners to death.

Now, Ukraine is in a fight for its life as the West faces a diminishing menu of no-win options. Zelenskyy once again appealed for a no-fly zone over his country, as well as more severe sanctions. Canadian politicians know very well they and their NATO allies can't support a no-fly zone without risking a possible world war with a nuclear power. But the alternative, so far, seems to be watching Ukraine slowly bleed out on the world stage.

While Canadian leaders may not be able to institute a no-fly zone, they can certainly feel shame — and Zelenskyy's address should make

There is war, destruction and 97 dead Ukrainian children.

them feel it deep in their bones. Canada may not be a significant military power, but it is a world leader when it comes to dirty money and looking the other way when it comes to financial crime. Historically, we are one of the worst Western nations in instituting and enforcing sanctions. Our Sergei Magnitsky Act, when compared to the use of Magnitsky laws in peer nations, has barely been used to sanction corrupt foreign actors over the years.

In Trudeau's introduction to Zelenskyy, he said Canada prides itself in standing up for underdogs in the name of human rights. But the truth is we've cowered not just from Russian criminality, but Chinese criminality, Saudi Arabian criminality and more. We tend to say all the right things, then proceed to do nothing, enabling and emboldening bad actors in the process.

After Zelenskyy spoke, it was the Greens' Elizabeth May who had the most forceful response. While other party leaders repeated the same talking points we've heard time and time again, May fought back tears as she spoke.

“President Zelenskyy, we do not want to let you down. We fear we may inevitably let you down, but we will find every tool we can find and, where there aren't adequate tools, by God, let's invent them,” she pleaded to her peers in Parliament. “In 1956 in the Suez Crisis, not-yet prime minister Lester B. Pearson ... invented UN peacekeepers. We need to invent something now, to stop the war, to stop Putin, to save Ukraine.”

It's that sort of ambition, that sort of passion that Zelenskyy and Ukraine need from Canada. If we can't offer them a no-fly zone, we must still do better than we are right now. This, however, may require the sort of inventive, outsidethe-box leadership and bias for action Parliament has let atrophy like an unused muscle.

If we are to imagine a better future, one where Ukraine survives and corrupt regimes and wealthy kleptocrats don't steal, maim and kill with impunity, then Canada's leaders must back up their big words with swift, uncompromising commitments to much more radical ideas than lapel pins. If we're serious about preventing more wars and rights abuses, about protecting the world's underdogs, we won't just act against Russian tyrants and oligarchs, but against all of their kind around the world.