The Ukrainian Canadian Bar Association is alive once again with a renewed purpose of helping out with the situation in Ukraine.
The revival of the association last week, which faded away after its creation in the early 1990s, comes at a critical time for Ukraine, a country that remains in crisis after the ouster of former president Viktor Yanukovych early this year.
Ukrainian-Canadian lawyers say they’re reorganizing themselves partly because they could get requests to provide assistance with judicial reform in their home country.
“This initiative came about quite clearly as a result of what’s been happening in Ukraine since approximately this time last year, which is the [demonstrations at] Maidan and then the invasion and everything else,” says Alex Ilchenko, senior counsel at Pallett Valo LLP in Mississauga, Ont., and the new president of the revived association.
Over the summer, members of the Ukrainian-Canadian bar got together with Paul Grod, the president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and decided they needed a network of Ukrainian-Canadian lawyers to help each other and their birth country.
