(Ottawa) Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly was not only cooked on the sending of a turbine intended for the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, Thursday, in committee. She was also bombarded with questions about reports that Canada left behind Ukrainian employees from its embassy in Kyiv who were potentially targeted by the Russians.
Posted at 1:31 p.m.
Updated at 3:51 p.m.
WHAT THERE IS TO KNOW
- Canada circumvented its sanctions against Russia on July 9 by allowing turbines destined for a Russian gas pipeline to be sent to Germany.
- The opposition parties in Ottawa have all denounced this privilege by the Trudeau government.
- The owner of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline claims that it cannot get its hands on the turbine, thus justifying the reduction in natural gas deliveries to Germany.
- “We could see that Putin was bluffing,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock while in Montreal.
- Ukraine continues to deplore the decision, a “dangerous precedent” according to it.
The session of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development began with discussions of Ottawa’s decision to circumvent its sanctions against Moscow to send a turbine to Germany which was then to be shipped to Russia.
In their opening statements, both Minister Joly and her colleague at Natural Resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, justified the exemption. “We have strengthened the alliance [l’OTAN] instead of weakening it,” Wilkinson argued.
PHOTO PATRICK DOYLE, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
“We have strengthened the alliance [l’OTAN] instead of weakening it,” argued Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.
Before him, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly repeated what she had pleaded the day before for the first time since the beginning of this saga, at the beginning of July, namely that the objective was to show that President Vladimir Poutine was “bluffing “.
It was in fact a strategy devised by Canada with the complicity of its allies, she then assured.
Tory MP Marty Morantz pointed out to ministers the change in rhetoric. “You didn’t say in July that the goal was to see if Putin was bluffing,” he remarked at the parliamentary committee table.
NDP MP Heather McPherson echoed her colleagues’ comments. “We had already seen Putin using food and energy as weapons. He lies ! We know that Putin is lying. We know that he will not show any good faith, that he will not follow the rules, ”she said.
“He already knew the bluff was there. So now what we’ve done is we’ve weakened our sanctions regime, we’ve weakened Canada’s position in support of Ukraine, and at the same time we haven’t helped Germany to get energy, ”chained the chosen one.
She urged Mélanie Joly to “immediately rescind the exemption for other turbines” — a request that was also made by Ukrainian-Canadian Congress President Alexandra Chyczij. “I ask you to restore all the sanctions against Gazprom,” she told the elected officials.
Moreover, according to her, it is not Russia that was tricked into this story. “Germany and Canada did not understand the test [du Kremlin]. The test was about penalties. Unity on sanctions”, she argued, saying that the “bluff” that Berlin and Ottawa are happy to have detected is not “the right bluff”.
Ukrainian employees left to fend for themselves?
Turbines have caused a lot of ink to flow for almost a month, but another issue has come to the committee table: an article published Wednesday in the Globe and Mail has in effect temporarily eclipsed the issue which was to be the main theme of Thursday’s hearings.
According to what the daily reported, Global Affairs Canada had been informed that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, and that the Ukrainians who worked for the Canadian embassy were probably on lists of people that Moscow had intent to stalk.
The Canadian government evacuated its diplomats, and reportedly told the leadership of the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv not to divulge this information to these Ukrainian staff members and to leave it behind, wrote the Globe and Mail in its Wednesday edition.
As she did on Wednesday, Minister Joly insisted that she had received no information on the dangers that could have awaited Ukrainians employed by the embassy. His response did not satisfy curator Garnett Genuis, who repeatedly tried to cut him off.
And following the committee meeting, she posted a statement on her Twitter account, in which she insisted that “the Government of Canada does not have information related to a list specifically targeting Canadian diplomats and the locally engaged staff of the Canadian Embassy in Kyiv”.
The Minister adds that local employees have been offered “various possibilities to immigrate to Canada if they decide to leave Ukraine”, and that she intends to “shed light on this matter”.
The “political game” of Russia
On Wednesday, on its Twitter account, the Gazprom company reiterated that it could not take possession of the turbine that was sent to Germany from the Montreal facilities of Siemens, where it was being repaired.
“The sanctions regimes imposed by Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the disparities between the current situation and Siemens’ existing contractual obligations, make it impossible to bring in the 073 turbine. at Portovaya Compressor Station,” the company wrote.
Natural gas deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline fell by 20%. The country is thus preparing for difficult months, especially those of winter, underlined Wednesday the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, who was visiting Montreal.
Energy: a “responsibility”
And the Berlin representative was delighted that the Trudeau government showed an interest in collaborating in the energy field.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has made that clear. “Energy security today, more than ever, is a matter of absolute security and Canada is truly fortunate. We have a lot of energy,” she expressed in New Brunswick on Wednesday.
“I think it is a political responsibility for us as a country to support our allies in terms of energy security,” continued the one who is also Minister of Finance.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes no secret of his interest in collaborating on liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects in the country. He will visit Canada later this month to discuss possible commercial energy deals.
“LNG projects are for transition. Possibly it’s green hydrogen [qu’on veut produire]. And that is why I have been in contact with the governments of Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador,” pleaded Minister Joly during a lunch meeting in Montreal on Wednesday. .
“Quebecers, it’s worth studying more about what we can do in terms of hydrogen” because “we can produce green hydrogen, and that can help Europe even more — and we -same – to make the energy transition”, she continued.
Scholz in the crosshairs of environmentalists
Ahead of Chancellor Scholz’s visit, environmental groups urged the federal government to reject any plans to export gas to the East Coast. This is a false good idea, argues Émile Boisseau-Bouvier, spokesperson for Équiterre, one of the groups opposing these projects.
“Despite what the fossil fuel industry would have you believe, gas export projects are by no means a solution to the energy situation in Europe caused by the war in Ukraine, since Europe’s energy needs will largely be resolved years before any new Canadian LNG infrastructure is operational,” he said in a statement.