Hon. Denise Batters: Senator Gold, Prime Minister Trudeau finally revoked the Emergencies Act yesterday but he should never have employed it in the first place. Once again, this Prime Minister and his government have failed Canadians. They exploited the division between vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians for political gain. But Canadians have rejected that division, that stigmatization and those shameful political wedges.

When will this government follow our international allies and most of our Canadian provinces and remove discriminatory vaccine mandates and restrictions?

Hon. Denise Batters: Honourable senators, I rise today to condemn Russia for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. We are all horrified by the images streaming from Ukraine in the hours since this invasion. It’s a country under siege from all directions. All at once, its citizens are cowering in subway tunnels and people are gathered together with heads bowed in prayer because there seem to be no other options at this point.

As the granddaughter of Ukrainian immigrants who sought refuge in Canada 100 years ago, I feel this invasion deep in my soul. I visited Ukraine in 2014 as an observer for the presidential elections that year. I was struck then by the deep gratitude of Ukrainian people for their burgeoning democracy and was touched by the elderly women from Ukrainian villages who brought fresh flowers from their gardens to the polling station to give thanks for the opportunity to express their democratic right to vote. I am thinking of those elderly women in Ukraine today, honourable senators.

Canada cannot abandon Ukraine’s citizens to the madman Vladimir Putin. We must condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Putin’s brutal and entirely unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and we condemn Putin’s flagrant disregard for Russia’s obligations under international law. But we must do more than just stand by and condemn the evil acts of the dictator Putin. Canada must act now to stand up for a peaceful and free Ukraine.

For years, Ukrainian authorities have been pleading with Canada for defensive arms, but the Trudeau government did not provide them. It only agreed to provide some defensive arms on the eve of the invasion. They were provided so late that I do not know if they will even reach Ukrainian soldiers in the field. Now Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has asked every able Ukrainian citizen to take up arms themselves against Putin’s forces. The Trudeau government’s delay and virtue signalling are ineffective in the face of such a monumental threat.

On February 13, the Prime Minister tweeted, “ . . . we’ll keep standing strong in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” That was the same day that Canadian trainers in Ukraine headed for the Polish border and Canada was evacuating its embassy in Kyiv. What have all these words and those uttered by other Western leaders meant for the Ukrainian people? We can see the results of that today, and it breaks my heart.

The least we can do now is open our borders to the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are now fleeing their country. The official opposition will support this motion, but I implore our Canadian government to understand that this is not the time for weak words. It is our moral duty to act now to help the people of Ukraine.

[Editor’s Note: Senator Batters spoke in Ukrainian.]

Senator Batters: Senator Gold, I am proudly triple vaccinated and I promoted vaccination and COVID health measures widely throughout the pandemic. The vast majority of Canadians are vaccinated as well.

Now we are at a point in this pandemic where some measures that were put into place are no longer necessary. Even Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, has said vaccine mandates need to be re-examined. The time for freedom is now. Why won’t this Trudeau government follow the provinces and our international allies and end federal vaccine mandates and restrictions? Is it just more of this Prime Minister’s desire for authoritarian control?