Allison ‘honoured’ by Russian travel ban
Grimsby Lincoln News
Dean Allison is among the 13 Canadians who Russia has slapped with a travel ban.
The Niagara West-Glanbrook MP said he was touched that Russia thinks so highly of him.
“I’m touched and honoured that they would think by putting a travel ban on me that it would change anything that is happening in the world,” Allison said Monday afternoon. “What an honour I feel.
“All kidding aside, what’s happening in Crimea is reprehensible and we will try our best to hold the Russians accountable,” added Allison, who is the chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. “We are going to continue to force the issue and continue to engage the world to make Russia accountable. That’s the real message here.”
Russia slapped travel bans on 13 Canadian officials, politicians and activists on Monday, hours before Stephen Harper was to sit down with his G7 colleagues to discuss further penalties for its occupation of Crimea.
The move comes in retaliation for similar bans and freezing of assets by Canada of officials and oligarchs aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and exiled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
G7 leaders were expected to suspend Russia from its alliance when they sat down for an emergency meeting later Monday.
“This step comes in response to unacceptable actions by the Canadian side which seriously hurt bilateral relations,” said a Russian government spokesperson, Aleksandr Lukashevich.
Along with Allison, the list includes Commons speaker Andrew Scheer, Government House leader Peter Van Loan, Conservative MPs Ted Opitz and James Bezan, Conservative Sen. Raynell Andreychuk, Liberal MPs Irwin Cotler and Chrystia Freeland and the NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar.
On Twitter, the Niagara MP brushed off the move.
“I guess I will have to hold off on buying that vacation property in Sochi. Proud to be #SanctionedbyPutin #cdnpoli #Russia
“Proud to be standing up and sanctioned along with @PMHarper and others for #democracy in #Ukraine”
The list also included the clerk of the privy council Wayne Wouters, Christine Hogan, the foreign affairs adviser in the privy council office, Jean-Francois Tremblay, deputy secretary to the federal cabinet and Paul Grod, the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.
Grod travelled with Stephen Harper to Kyiv on the weekend where the prime minister became the first G7 leader to visit Ukraine in the post-Yanukovych era.
Opitz, Bezan and Andreychuk were part of an earlier Canadian delegation to Ukraine, and Freeland, the MP for Toronto Centre, is of Ukrainian heritage and recently visited Kyiv on her own.
Harper has emerged as perhaps the most hawkish of the G7 leaders in his push for sanctions against Putin and will brief his colleagues on his brief Ukrainian visit at their meeting.
A G8 suspension for its aggression in Crimea will likely be publicly shrugged off by Putin, but some analysts believe such a move to isolate will have an effect.
Ken Brill, former U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said a G8 suspension will likely be met with a public shrug by Putin, but privately it will “rankle” the Russian president, he said.
– With files by Amanda Moore