Canada to help reform Ukraine's notaries (02/16/97)

Canada to help reform Ukraine's notaries

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - Canada's minister for international cooperation, Don Boudria, recently announced a new federal government project to support notarial reform in Ukraine.

The Canadian International Development Agency, which Mr. Boudria heads, has given the Order of Notaries of Quebec $1.2 million ($870,000 U.S.) to develop the program.

Over the next two-and-a-half years, the Chambre des Notaires du Quebec will work with Ukraine's Ministry of Justice to review the role of notaries under Ukrainian law and establish a regulatory body for the profession.

A notary is a public officer who attests or certifies such written documents as deeds or wills to make them authentic. Notaries also take affidavits and depositions. The new CIDA project will also include the development of model notarial deeds and the training of women notaries to help them open their own private practices.

An office will also open in Kyiv that will be dedicated to compensating victims of legal malpractice.

"The success of this reform will have a significant positive impact on private-sector development," Mr. Boudria told a meeting of Quebec's notaries in Montreal on February 6.

The notary project is not the first time the Canadian government has helped Ukraine in its legal reforms. From 1993 to 1995, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada hosted members of Ukraine's legal and judicial communities in months-long specialized academic training and work internships in Canada.

The University of Alberta law faculty is currently running a three-and-a-half-year legal training and curriculum development project involving 18 Ukrainian law professors. Four of the academics completed their Canadian training last May and are now teaching new, Western-influenced law courses at the Center of Legal Studies at the University of Kyiv.

The $1.5 million ($1.1 million U.S.) project, which also involves York University in Toronto and Montreal-based McGill University, ends in December 1998.

Canada's Office for Federal Judicial Affairs is working with Ukraine's Justice Ministry and its new Department of Judicial Affairs, the Ukrainian Supreme Court and Ukraine's Judicial Council to train judges throughout Ukraine in judicial ethics and better courtroom management.

The project, worth $2.2 million ($1.6 million U.S.), began in July 1996 and ends in September 1999.

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