First of all, let me express my sincere gratitude to you for taking the time to meet with us and that we have this wonderful opportunity to actually talk to each other, and to be here within the framework of the Canada-funded project regarding judicial education for economic growth in Ukraine.

As you may know, Ukraine is in the process of developing all kinds of reforms, some of them are very substantial, one of them being constitutional reform. Changes to the Ukrainian constitution are being developed as we speak. They will deal with the devolution of powers, the decentralization of powers, from the central government to regional and local governments, oblast level and city level. A significant part of this reform includes the reform of the judiciary, the courts.

Many people in Ukraine express dissatisfaction with how the judicial and court systems work. Therefore, these are very important changes that are being developed and contemplated right now. One of the most important parts is to strengthen the independence of the judiciary.

We want to improve the funding arrangements for the system as to bring back the trust of the people into the system.

The current parliament is very busy. We have already adopted a number of laws that deal with different aspects of the judicial system and a great number are still under development.

We also mentioned commercial courts. Again, there is a lively discussion in the society. Many views are being voiced and some of those views are that we don't.... In Ukraine we have separate administrative courts and separate commercial courts. Some people have said that we should do away with this specialization, but in recent laws that dealt with the judicial system, they have remained.

We've been here for a few days now and I can see that our systems are very different. I like many things about the Canadian judicial system. I like the fact that whenever a case is initiated and filed, it stays in the same city and province all through the appeal process.

In Ukraine, in many cases when a case is first heard and there is an appeal, it moves to a different city. For example, it would have to go to a different oblast. Then, of course, the final appeal is at the supreme court of Ukraine, which is located in Kiev. There are many more movements for the parties involved. I wish we could streamline it somehow, as well.

There was a sort of philosophical question, whether we should do away with the specialized courts, like commercial and administrative courts. The prevailing thought is that the legislation is so complex that it's good to have specialized commercial and administrative courts.

There are many discussions that are still ongoing.

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