Notes for Remarks to the Nova Scotia Liberal Party Women’s Commission and Young Liberals
In seeking out new leadership, we must bring a global as well as a national perspective to bear on the challenges that we face in common and the joint action required to overcome them. We must talk about the purposes for which we want to use government powers, and our shared values and goals as Canadians. We must talk about how we have built, and must continue to build, a great country that ensures justice, equality and diversity, respect for basic rights and freedoms, human dignity, and self-worth. We must also talk about what we mean by good citizenship, and the mutual civic responsibility each Canadian has toward his/her fellow citizen and society as a whole to enable us to live together in peace and humanity.
What are we all doing here today?
Why have we taken a week-end out of our personal and professional lives to meet with other Liberals?
Why did most of you give up much of your December and January to work for Liberal Party candidates?
The answer is that you care about this country.
You care about what we are building together, and what kind of world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.
There are now some further questions to be asked:
Are you satisfied, as a Liberal, that you know where the Liberal Party is going?
Are you satisfied, as a Canadian, that you know where Canada is going? Are you satisfied that we have a national purpose, that draws us together, that makes us proud to be Canadian?
Are you satisfied, as a citizen of the world, that you know what it means to be Canadian and how Canada fits into our global village?
If you answered “no” to any of those questions, then you are feeling the same as the vast majority of Canadians.
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Canada, today, is undergoing nothing short of a revolution. The internet has drawn us into global affairs in ways that were unimaginable even 20 years ago. Instant messaging, skyping, Google-talk, pod casts, blogs, all allow Canadians to connect with one another and with people outside Canada to an unprecedented degree. PhD students with laptops run private broadcasting productions over the internet. Canadian icons, from the Hudson’s Bay Company to our heritage hotels, are bought up by foreign interests with no protest.
Much of what globalization involves may be exciting and innovative and, in any event, is unstoppable. Yet we all realize that there are certain core Canadian values that do not change and that must be defended even more vigorously in our rapidly changing world.
These are the values of justice, equality and diversity – values that have driven Liberal Party policies and underpinned a progressive, dynamic Canada since World War Two.
Recently, however, Canadians have doubted the ability of the Liberal Party to defend these values with sufficiently bold and visionary leadership. Canadians have become uncertain about how best to ensure that our diversity as a nation remains our strength.
Canadians are asking whether we have allowed our national government to be dangerously weakened. In the absence of decisive action from our federal government, have we allowed provincial premiers to expand their mandates into the vacuum?
We know that our ability to maintain an open, progressive, compassionate society – whether through environmentally sound development, adequate health care, good public education, and an adequate safety net – is seriously compromised.
We know that we are living off the diminishing capital of both Canada and the planet, trapped on the incessant merry-go-round of extreme and unchecked consumption.
On January 23rd, Canadians elected a government that is in the business of putting the country out of business, a government that will not defend our core values and a progressive, dynamic Canada.
But the clear majority of Canadians did not support the Harper conservatives and their small-minded view of Canada.
As proud Liberals and Canadians, we must now stand up clearly to those who would drag Canada down, those who would abdicate the federal government’s critical role in protecting and promoting justice, equality and diversity.
From the Harper government, to the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, they hide their abdication under the slogan “more power to the provinces”. They do not have the political courage to admit they stand for a lesser Canada, a diminished Canada, a Canada, to paraphrase the great Canadian writer Robertson Davies, that simply refers to a semi-autonomous geographic space in the attic of North America.
So much for national standards. So much for pulling together for the common Canadian good. So much for coherence and a decisive national government.
In Stephen Harper’s Canada, the only thing we will have left in common is Tim Horton’s drive-throughs.
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The challenge for everyone in this room is to ensure that this great Party takes on its historical role of articulating a clear national purpose and defending a dynamic, strong Canada, and our core values of justice, equality and diversity.
Under leaders of the Liberal Party, Canadians have built the most fascinating, diverse and cosmopolitan society in human history – a pluralist, multicultural state, dedicated to equality of opportunity and the pursuit of social and economic justice, solidified in the entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Our country is now a beautiful work-in-progress that offers itself to a troubled world – a world increasingly challenged by religious and sectarian friction – as a model of how the future can work.
But there is no roadmap or historical precedent for what we have begun.
To continue to build our diverse and vibrant nation, and to play a meaningful role in the preservation and stewardship of the planet, we need a bold, visionary national government that will firmly and forcefully speak for all of us; a government that will harness global forces to further our core values, and guarantee equality of opportunity and social and economic justice for all Canadians.
We need a bold and visionary national government that will ensure that we have the institutions and tools that reflect our shared values and that are able to project those values to the world.
We need a bold and visionary national government to establish the essentials of Canadian citizenship – clean air, clean water, our parks, healthcare, child care, parental leave, public education, handgun control, equality of opportunity for everyone.
But we need not only good government – good laws, regulations, institutions, and so forth.
We also need good citizenship.We must ask at least as much of ourselves as we do of our governments.
We have all been given such incredible opportunities and rights. Therefore, from all of us, must be demanded responsibility and contribution.
Responsibility and contribution must be demanded in respect of all the challenges we face as Canadians, whether environmental preservation, an end to the gun and gang violence that afflicts our cities, our commitment to helping those on the margins of society, our contribution to greater peace and humanity around the globe.
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How, as Liberals, do we articulate our national purpose?
How do we once again persuade Canadians that the Liberal Party can be trusted with protecting and promoting our values of justice, equality and diversity across this great country and around the world? How do we persuade Canadians that the Liberal Party is committed to building a better future, a cleaner environment, for our children and grandchildren?
National purpose in a free and diverse country such as ours is not something that is imposed from the top. Nor is it a vote in a referendum every 5, 10, or 15 years. It is the act of Canadians working together, keeping faith with those who have come before us, to build a country that matches our brightest dreams for the future.
Here are some suggestions to guide our deliberations:
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about building a Canada where achievement is measured by our commitment and responsibility to our fellow citizens, not by our level of consumption. We have to redefine wealth as well-being, not well-having. We have to have the political will to self-limit, to sacrifice, to live intelligently, not wastefully.
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about building a Canada which is the greenest country on the planet, in which the minister of the environment is on a par with the minister of finance. If we cannot preserve our planet and avoid serious environmental collapse now predicted for anytime in the next 50 years, everything else is secondary.
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about building a Canada where our children can travel and work freely, as citizens of a community, of a nation, of the world.
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about having a bold and visionary national government that pursues strategies to invest heavily in areas of long-term benefit to Canadians. In research and development of renewable energy sources, science and technology, the environmental causes of ill-health, how to reduce our waste. In the education and support of all our young people to ensure that we all have a creative, prosperous future in this, one of the greatest countries in the world.
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about expanding the opportunities for all Canadians to be the best and the brightest in whatever they choose to do. The Canadians who will find the technologies of the future to make environmental preservation coincide with economic prosperity, who will discover new sources of renewable energy, find the cures for and causes of cancer, promote good governance and development in struggling developing countries.
Our national purpose in the 21st century is about having a bold and visionary national government to continue to rebuild our international reputation and enhance our influence in our increasingly shrinking world.
We need a bold and visionary Canadian presence at all the bargaining tables around the world – from the peace tables of Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Darfur, to the ongoing Kyoto conference negotiations, to the World Trade Organization, to the United Nations, and so many more.
When Canadians have put their shared values into action, whether in the cause of landmines or in the negotiation of the recent global convention to protect cultural diversity, we have proven our worth as global citizens and have won respect around the world.
But that is not enough. There is much more that we must do.
We must invest the necessary resources in our peacekeeping capacities, our military, our international activities, and our defence of North America. Our international reputation and influence is a source of pride, but is never something to be taken for granted. It is something to be earned and maintained through hard work and, at times, great sacrifice.
We must continue to be in the forefront of the development of the international “responsibility to protect”, which is gaining support as the legal and ethical framework within which to protect vulnerable populations at risk from civil wars, insurgence, state repression and state collapse.
But we must also be clear and firm in our denunciation of the current United Nations structure. We will not merit the respect of future generations unless we insist on the fundamental changes to the U.N. that will allow the world community to put an end to genocide in Darfur, Rwanda and elsewhere, put an end to the lethal arms trade and arms build-up.
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Our diversity as a society is a great source of strength, but also a source of great responsibility. It is our responsibility to fight to ensure that our diversity does not lead to exclusion. And this duty to fight shall never end.
It is not enough to provide rights, although rights are the bedrock of our society.
It is not enough to be tolerant, although tolerance is essential.
The kind of society we must build is based on responsibility, our duty to each other – to respect each other, to help each other.
We have to inspire and demand from ourselves the discipline to understand, celebrate, and protect what makes each of us unique. Preserving the dignity of our neighbour preserves the dignity of us all.
For example, we have a responsibility as citizens to help pull our communities together to figure out how some of our young people are so marginalized to the point that they have no empathy, no compassion, no conscience.
How do we repair this tear in our social fabric? Is it because we have turned our backs on critical social programs? Do we attach too high a value to materialism? Do we lack good citizenship, social solidarity, strangers helping strangers, friends responsible for friends? Have we spent too much time talking about our differences, instead of what unites us?
We must find the answers with an urgency and determination unparalleled in recent times.
We also have a responsibility to ensure that the fundamental values of equality of men and women, and non-discrimination, are never dismantled under the guise of “less government”, or through misguided accommodation of outdated cultural norms.
This requires a refusal to pander to prejudice and parochialism. This requires moral leadership.
In this I am proud of the record of the Liberal Party which, despite enormous pressures from certain quarters, has not only defended same sex marriage as a legal requirement of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but also as a logical extension of the basic ideals of equality and diversity that underpin our inclusive society.
Finally, we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that all persons, “regardless of gender, ethnic origin and social status, political opinion, language, age, nationality or religion” are treated in a humane way. (This is proposed in Article 1 of a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities, drafted in 1997 by the InterAction Council – a group of respected former world leaders).
For example, you have the right to practise the faith of your choice. You then, however, have a responsibility not to express prejudice and incite hatred and discrimination against those of different beliefs. Religion must not be a weapon; it should be a positive force that helps us explain our mortality, our significance in the universe, how to distinguish between right and wrong, how to establish a peaceful community life and discharge our responsibility for our fellow human beings.
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There has never been a more exciting time to be a Liberal, or to be involved in politics through the Liberal Party.
In seeking out new leadership, we must bring a global as well as a national perspective to bear on the challenges that we face in common and the joint action required to overcome them. We must talk about the purposes for which we want to use government powers, and our shared values and goals as Canadians. We must talk about how we have built, and must continue to build, a great country that ensures justice, equality and diversity, respect for basic rights and freedoms, human dignity, and self-worth. We must also talk about what we mean by good citizenship, and the mutual civic responsibility each Canadian has toward his/her fellow citizen and society as a whole to enable us to live together in peace and humanity.
Our leaders must draw us beyond the short term, and make us think about how the world is changing and how irresistible forces are sweeping us into a more cosmopolitan age. They must then be able to transmit a vision of Canada to Canadians, a national purpose that draws us together and makes us proud to be Canadian. They must discuss the projects we must accomplish together, and the role of a strong national government in preserving the planet and continuing to build a unique, multicultural nation that is a model for the world. The possibilities for public action are limited only by our imagination, and these, in turn, provide the domestic examples and credibility to guide our efforts at the international level.
A few minutes ago, I asked you what you are doing here, taking time out of your week-end to meet with other Liberals.
It is because you love this country, and you are here this week-end to start the process of moving forward on justice, equality and diversity.