CANADA COURIER: A nicer story on internment (06/30/96)

CANADA COURIER

by Christopher Guly

A nicer story on internment

Fresh from attending a garden party at Prime Minister Jean Chretien's official residence in Ottawa, Ivan Loun and Yuri Dzera spiritedly walk through Ottawa's downtown shopping mall, the Rideau Centre, on their way home.

Their pockets stuffed with cans of Coke, from the soiree at 24 Sussex Drive, the pair of best friends mutter observations to one another - mostly about girls. "If you take off 10 pounds from a Canadian girl she might be as pretty as a Ukrainian girl," chuckles 19-year-old Mr. Loun. He and his chum, Mr. Dzera, will soon be home, which for the past several months has been a students' residence at the University of Ottawa.

Attending a prime ministerial event in Canada was the gravy on the meat of a parliamentary student internship program that ends in July. This year's record number of Ukrainian students - 31 - also got to go on wilderness canoeing trips and attend Parliament Hill functions.

But they worked hard for that gravy, said Ihor Bardyn, the Toronto-based program director of the six-year-old Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program (CUPP). To begin with, the students don't get paid a salary. Their sole monetary gain is the $50-a-week (about $37 U.S.) lunch allowance - enough for some fresh fruit and milk.

Beyond working for members of Parliament and senators on the Hill, 10 of the students were seconded to work on a federal by-election campaign in the Hamilton East riding.

Six helped with campaigning duties for Reform Party candidate Andy Sweck; four with incumbent Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps, who resigned her seat in May after admitting she broke a 1993 federal election promise that she would leave if her government didn't kill the dreaded Goods and Services Tax. Ms. Copps won her seat back on June 17.

Victoria Hladylova, 19, a third-year economics student at the Ivan Franko State University in Lviv, was among the six who helped Mr. Sweck - who finished fourth. "We started as early as 8 a.m. and went door-to-door [canvassing] until 10 p.m.," says Ms. Hladylova, who works in Reform leader Preston Manning's office. She kept that pace for six days - a far cry from the economic-related research she was initially assigned to do for the party's communications section on the Hill.

Beyond getting some sore feet, the election experience inadvertently offered Ms. Hladylova a new career perspective. Fluent in English, she initially planned to complete her five-year undergraduate program in Lviv and go on to pursue a master's degree in economics. The Ukrainian student hasn't entirely scrapped that strategy, but is now thinking twice.

"At first, I thought I might end up working in a bank. But now, I realize I really am interested in politics," she said. "Not to become prime minister, perhaps, but maybe to work as an economist in the political arena."

If Mr. Loun wasn't so keen on playing a foreign correspondent, he would fit nicely in the glad-handing world of politics. Armed with a boyish appearance that belies a sense of worldliness, Mr. Loun averred he'd had enough time to assess Canadiana while taking care of administrative duties for Ukrainian Canadian Liberal MP Ron Fewchuk of Manitoba.

Back home, Mr. Loun, a third-year international relations student also at Lviv State University, pens a regular column for the student newspaper at Lviv Polytechnic - which is sold throughout the city at a cost of 20,000 karbovantsi (or about 11 cents U.S.). It's called Mirror Hall, and named after Lviv State University's meeting place, where the rector greets visiting dignitaries. "I met [former Ukrainian] Foreign Minister Anatoliy Zlenko," he boasts.

While in Canada, Mr. Loun, whose older brother, Ostap, is also participating in the CUPP, has been writing about his experience as a politician's assistant. "I will tell them about the day-to-day lives of Ukrainian interns in Canada," he noted.

Two of his colleagues have been working with Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stephane Dion - Ottawa's man charged with the duty of keeping Canada united. Former Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada Victor Batiuk's son, Peter (who spells his family name "Batiouk"), a fluent French-speaking third-year international law student at Kyiv University's Institute of International Relations, is one of the two.

Roman Didenko, meanwhile, augmented his work in the office of Secretary of State for Veterans Lawrence MacAulay with mediation training. As a result of attending alternative dispute resolution training at St. Paul University, the fourth-year history student at the Luhanske Pedagogical Institute has embarked on a new career that could find him helping to resolve conflicts between governments or in boardrooms.

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