A workshop of Ukrainian and Canadian notaries public was held last week in Kyiv as part of the program “Reforming the Notarial Profession in Ukraine.” This major joint Ukrainian-Canadian project in the notarizing sphere was launched in 1997, with financial support from the Canadian government, so that highly skilled experts from Quebec could render assistance to Ukraine in reforming law and justice.
“At the very outset, when we were only beginning to cooperate,” Mr. Richard Gagnon, Director General of Quebec’s Chamber of Notaries, “A large number of our notaries agreed to come to Ukraine to share their experience, take part in the expert examination of documents, and, moreover, to support and encourage our Ukrainian colleagues who were in fact creating Ukraine’s new body of notaries. I am now very pleased with what we have already managed to achieve.”
Yet, much still remains to be done. Both Ukrainian notaries and their Canadian partners are looking forward to Verkhovna Rada passing a new law on notaries public, which will enable the Ukrainian Chamber of Notaries to obtain a mechanism for reaching a new level of professional organization, successfully fulfilling its intrinsic duties, and, finally, join the International Union of Latin Notaries.
Stanislav Stychynsky, First Deputy Minister of Justice, appraised highly the relations of partnership between the two countries’ notaries public and noted that the one hundred year experience of Canada’s body of notaries shows tangible results. This is proven if only by the fact that the words private notary no longer jar on the ears of our citizens but, instead, become an indispensable thing of everyday life, when disputes arise, in one way or another about the sale of real estate, wedding contracts, free marriages, and making out wills, powers of attorney, or deeds. According to Volodymyr Chernysh, president of the Ukrainian Chamber of Notaries, the Ukrainian body of notaries could not have been built successfully without great concerted efforts of the Ukrainian Chamber of Notaries, Ministry of Justice, Verkhovna Rada Committee for Legal Policies, and the notaries themselves.
Participants in the Kyiv workshop were greeted by Canadian Ambassador Derek Fraser, himself a professional lawyer. He pointed out that Canada, as our partner, has always remembered that Ukraine, now an independent state, has taken up the formidable challenges of the epoch. Hence the desire of the Canadian government to help Ukraine in the difficult process of social reform, especially in the field of law and justice. For these are, to quote the Ambassador’s analogy, the muscles that keep up a democratic system. He added that the cooperation program, originally planned as a two year project, would be continued. In September, a large group of Ukrainian notaries will go for advanced study to Quebec, where they, assisted by their colleagues, will be mastering the practice of the Latin Notaries on the spot.
