OTTAWA – Canada will send Ukraine with anti-tank weapons systems and upgraded ammunition, and will ban Russian crude oil imports, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on February 28.
The newly announced lethal aid includes 10 Carl Gustav anti-tank weapons systems and 2,000 rockets as ammunition for the shoulder-mounted weapons, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said at a news conference with Mr. Trudeau in Ottawa in which she also said there were no plans to send troops into Ukraine.
On February 27, the Canadian government committed nearly $20 million in additional non-lethal aid, including helmets and body armor, which Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said would be delivered to Ukraine in partnership with Poland.
Canada’s foreign affairs minister will travel to Poland on March 1 to ensure the new military aid “gets in the arms of Ukrainian soldiers that are fighting for their life and for their motherland,” she said at a separate news conference in Ottawa on February 28.
The latest military support to Ukraine is in addition to three previous shipments of lethal and non-lethal equipment, and the Canadian Armed Forces will provide airlift support to transport supplies and aid, and participate in other NATO efforts, the prime minister told reporters on February 28.
Mr. Trudeau also said that Canada will ban Russian crude oil imports, “an industry that has benefited [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin and his oligarchs greatly,” and which, the prime minister added, “accounts for more than a third of Russia’s federal budget revenues.”
Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told the House of Commons on February 28 that Canada has not received Russian crude-oil shipments since 2019 when, according to Statistics Canada, they represented only 2.6 percent of Canada’s imports.
The prime minister said his government will also ask the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – the country’s broadcasting regulator – to review the presence of Russia’s state-owned broadcaster, Russia Today (RT), on Canadian airwaves.
“There is a significant amount of disinformation circulating from Russia including on social media and we all need to keep calling it out,” Mr. Trudeau said.
“Russia’s choice to kill Ukrainian civilians, Russia’s choice to violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine and indeed the principles of peace and security that have held sway for so long and led to so much prosperity around the world – it is important that Canadians and people around the world be faced with accurate information,” Mr. Trudeau said.
“Those who are witnessing the truth are seeing civilians being targeted, grandparents joining the fight, families with young children sheltering in subway stations and people fleeing to the border with only a suitcase,” Mr. Trudeau said.
Four major Canadian broadcasters have already acted proactively to block RT.
Rogers, Bell, Shaw and Telus announced that they would no longer carry the Russian-government owned broadcaster in their channel lineups.
On February 27, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who oversees the broadcasting file in the Trudeau cabinet, tweeted that “RT is the propaganda arm of Putin’s regime that spreads disinformation. It has no place here.”
Several Canadian phone companies, including Rogers and Bell, are also waiving long-distance and text charges to Ukraine.
On February 25, Mr. Trudeau said that Canada would also support the removal of Russia from the Belgian-based SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payment system used for international financial transactions.
“Excluding Russian banks from SWIFT would make it even more difficult for President Putin to finance his brutalities,” Mr. Trudeau said at the time.
The United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU) joined that effort the day after to block certain Russian banks from SWIFT.
“To prevent the Russian Central Bank from undermining the impact of our sanctions, we are paralyzing its international reserve assets,” Mr. Trudeau said at his February 28 news conference.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian Canadian who also serves as finance minister, told reporters at that gathering that the Bank of Canada will not be allowed to conduct any transactions with Russia’s Central Bank.
“The West’s economic sanctions, I warned, would be swift, coordinated, sustained and crushing. They are,” she said.
“They will continue to be. Dictators, very much including the Kremlin’s tyrant, often fail to understand democracies. We can seem to them to be weak and divided compared to the servile conformity that they impose on their societies at the barrel of a gun, but our very openness to debate and dispute means that, once we are agreed on a course of action, we are strong and we are united,” Ms. Freeland said.
When asked whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constitutes a war crime, the prime minister instead spoke about what the Russian ruler thought he could accomplish by invading Ukraine.
“We have seen over the past couple of days that Putin made a grave miscalculation. He thought it would be easy to conquer Ukraine, to take over its capital city. He thought the West would be divided and uncertain in its response and thought he had accounted for any of the sanctions we would bring forward,” Mr. Trudeau said.
“He was terribly wrong on both counts,” the prime minister said. “The West and indeed countries around the world are united in standing up for Ukraine, not just for Ukraine but for the principles of democracy and the rule of law that have led to tremendous prosperity and stability in our world over the past 75 years.”
“Further, the courage, the resilience of the people of Ukraine in standing up to defend their homeland, has inspired us all, but has surprised Putin,” Mr. Trudeau said.
On February 27, Canada joined the 27-country EU in closing its airspace to Russian aircraft.
Canada’s House of Commons also held a special debate on Russia’s war against Ukraine, which lasted for several hours and went into the night of February 28.
While Mr. Trudeau’s liberal government has processed nearly 4,000 immigration applications by Ukrainians, opposition Members of Parliament pressed the prime minister to also lift visa requirements for Ukrainians seeking asylum in Canada.
Canada’s Official Opposition Conservat-ives also urged the government to promote Canadian oil and gas as an alternative to Russian energy in Europe.
Meanwhile, across Canada thousands of people participated in marches and demonstrations in support of Ukraine, including one on February 26-27 in Toronto and another one on February 27 in front of the Russian embassy in Ottawa.
And, on February 28, the Canadian Bankers Association announced that its member financial institutions have donated a combined $931,000 to support humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine.