Honourable senators, I rise today to express my solidarity with the people of Ukraine and to celebrate International Women’s Day.

As Vladimir Putin wages another brutal and senseless war in Ukraine, I want to honour the many brave women of Ukraine who have been working for peace for decades and their Russian sisters who have shared in their clarion call for justice.

They are women such as Oleksandra Matviychuk, chair of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, who warns that, for the Kremlin, war crimes are not mistakes but tactics, and that Ukraine is only at the forefront in the battle between the authoritarian model and the values of the free world.

Consider Lyudmila Huseinova, the Civic Ombudsperson for Children’s Rights in occupied Donetsk, imprisoned since 2019 for her human rights work.

Also consider Coady International Institute graduate Oksana Potapova, co-founder of Ukraine’s Theatre for Dialogue and now a refugee in Romania, whose profile on the Nova Scotia institute’s site quotes her as saying, “Creating a peaceful and just world will require a radical shift of power dynamics” and that she had come “. . . to Coady to learn about non-hierarchical, participatory leadership . . . .”

Colleagues, I will give the last words to Xenia Emelyanova, a Russian poet who bravely posted this moving exhortation online at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine back in 2014:

Destined from birth.

What’s destined from birth?

That when they took you from your mother mucus-covered, dove-colored,

somewhere up there, in the heavenly spheres, it’s already known

where you’ll lay your head forever.

And while the blood still pulses in your soft fontanele,

you’ve already become that person

destined from birth.

What the hell’s destined?

What does birth mean?

It’s your ancestors, all their sins, their genes, their souls,

blood and sweat,

it’s your people.

It’s our faces in the church crowd, Lord,

not-so-distant relations.

It’s us, Your flesh and blood, from a single root,

in a single language praying to You: woe,

woe so terrible there’s nothing worse,

even we can’t bear it, submissive though we are.

Evil, black-hearted, blind,

death’s begun to whistle again.

Our own “Hailstorms” and “Hurricanes” fired on our people,

hair standing on end from the news.

How many children, Lord, have we buried this winter,

how many will we bury still?

Help us find our strength, lift up our heads,

throw off the devil’s yoke.

Enough of their butchery, enough baring our backs for their brand!

Give us the will to act, we’re up to our knees,

up to the seventh generation in blood—we’ve already redeemed our guilt.

It’s time to shake off death and impotence,

stop the slaughter, stop the war.

Thank you, wela’lioq.