Address to the Saskatchewan Liberal Party
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| ←Wikisource:Speeches | Address to the Saskatchewan Liberal Party by |
| Delivered in Saskatchewan, 4 November 2005. |
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Fellow Liberals, thanks for inviting me to address you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Tonight I want to talk about Saskatchewan, Canada and the challenges we face as Liberals. It's been a tough week for the party, and we need to use this weekend to take a deep breath and focus on rebuilding our strength. I know we can. First, let me say how good it is to be back here. The University of Regina was kind enough to award me an honorary degree and I've been a Whelen lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan. This province has been good to me. In the summer of 2001, my wife and I drove from Thunder Bay to Victoria. Some of our happiest time was spent here in Saskatchewan. It was August. The wheat was being harvested. The canola was bright yellow. On the back roads, when you got out of the car and let the plume of dust settle behind you, the silence and the stillness were overwhelming.
My wife is Hungarian, so our favorite place was Esterhazy, the town where CPR land agents in the 1880s brought peasants from my wife's country to homestead. There's a cemetery above Esterhazy where those Hungarian pioneers are buried. When you stand among the gravestones, you can feel the spirit of the pioneers and draw inspiration from their endurance. Those pioneers loved Canada because it gave them their second chance. That's what this country was for my father and what it remains to this day-the land of second chances-and it is our duty as Liberals to keep it that way. That summer in Saskatchewan, I was following the route of my great grandfather on my mother's side, a Scottish Canadian minister named George Munro Grant, who had accompanied Sanford Fleming on an expedition across Canada in the summer of 1872 to map the route for the projected Canadian Pacific Railway. I'm proud of my great grandfather. He was a nation-builder, one of that founding generation of visionaries-Sandford Fleming, John A MacDonald, Wilfred Laurier-who understood that the way Canada settled the West would determine whether it had a future as a nation. My great grandfather was certain of one thing: if eastern and western Canada did not bind themselves together with steel Canada would not survive. Western and Eastern Canada needed each other then. They need each other now. Talk of Western alienation is cheap. Overcoming that alienation is hard. We have to try. Westerners have to talk. Easterners have to listen. It is essential that we stay together. The alternative to a united Canada is what it was in my great grandfather's day: eventual annexation to the United States. Canadians didn't want it then. They don't want it now.
When my great grandfather traveled in Saskatchewan two great realities impressed themselves upon him. The first was that the language of the trail was French. That's because his guides were Metis, veterans of the fur trade and of the buffalo hunt.
L'héritage français de l'Ouest reste encore vivant. Il y a quelques années, j'ai mangé une bonne soupe de pistou dans un village francophone à une heure de Saskatoon. Pour moi, le Canada c'est ca, la chance de parler français, non seulement au Québec, mais ici, en Saskatchewan.
Bilingualism is not a sop to Quebec. It's a constitutional recognition of the history that has made us what we are. Francophones are not a minority like any other, another piece of a multicultural mosaic. They helped found the West. When national institutions protect French, they protect our survival as a distinct society, a national political community that flourishes not by suppressing differences of language and culture, but by encouraging and protecting them. Let's remember that it hasn't always been this way. Sometimes our founding cultures have fought each other. The people of Saskatchewan remember what happened at Batoche in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. These events remind us that tragedy can result when founding peoples fail to respond to grievance, fail to treat each other with respect. We should be proud of our ancestors' achievements and big enough to acknowledge their mistakes. So we don't repeat them ourselves. If the first thing I learned from my great grandfather's trip through Saskatchewan in the 1870's was that French was the language of the trail, the second thing I learned was the importance of the Plains Cree and Blackfoot heritage in this part of the world. When my great grandfather crossed the Plains, the buffalo hunt was dying out and smallpox was decimating a once great civilization. My great grandfather, like most white men of his time, thought the Indian way of life was dying. The aboriginal revival across Canada, and especially across the Prairies-beginning in the 1960's-would have astonished him. It has astonished us all. And it has strengthened our country. Negotiating Treaty Six was central to the nation-building project of 19th century Canada. In the 21st century, developing aboriginal self-government while maintaining the indivisibility and unity of Canadian citizenship is central to the nation building challenge of our generation. Both partners need to be tough with themselves: tough enough to admit mistakes, tough enough not to let guilt drive the agenda, and tough enough to accord each other recognition and respect.
My great grandfather was a nation-builder. The task of nation building is never done.
We are engaged in a crucial adventure in citizenship ; according full inclusion and equality for aboriginal peoples, full inclusion and equality for new immigrants. If we succeed, this will be the most exciting adventure in our history of nation building. Getting this right means understanding simple truths. We all belong here. No body is better than anybody else. Nobody's history entitles them to more than anybody else. We have to make a go of it together: French, Metis, aboriginal, descendants of the old pioneers and the new pioneers arriving every day from all parts of the world. Building a nation out of all of these elements demands patience, a willingness to learn, a sense of humour and a sense of justice. Here too Saskatchewan points the way. You have been practicing the politics of inclusion and tolerance for a long time. Within a short drive of where we're standing, there are Ukrainian, Hungarian, Italian, Mennonite, Hutterite, French and Cree settlements. The way these communities live and let live makes me proud to be a Canadian. Saskatchewan has a strong identity as a province, but its contribution to the national political culture of our country has been immense. The best example of this is publicly funded health care. Without the political imagination of the people of Saskatchewan, I don't think we would have Medicare as we know it today. Yes, it was the CCF who first launched the idea, but it was a Liberal government in Ottawa that had the wisdom to turn a Saskatchewan idea into a Canadian achievement. Our Canadian model of nation-building-one nation state, two languages, three founding peoples, tied together by a commitment to social justice for all-doesn't come cheap. We can't fund social programs unless we also keep pumping money into higher education, basic science and technology. Liberals understand that productivity and justice are not opposed to each other. We need to be more productive so we can be more just. We need to be more just so we can be more productive. Leaders like Ralph Goodale understand this-which is why they have done so much to further investment in basic science and sustainable development in the province. Saskatchewan has also taught the rest of Canada how to live next door to Alberta. The rest of Canada needs to understand that Alberta's success is not a problem. It's an enormous achievement. But success presents a challenge. When Alberta is next door, how do you stay competitive as a business location? How do you hold on to your best and brightest? Instead of complaining about its neighbor's success, Saskatchewan has adapted: keeping tax rates competitive, ploughing public investment into high tech, higher education, basic research; culture, sports, recreation and urban life so that your best and brightest want to stay here in this beautiful province. So you see, I've learned a lot from the people of Saskatchewan, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to tell you so.
Let me turn now to the challenges facing the Liberal Party. The months ahead are critical to the future of the Liberal Party. An election is beckoning in which we will have to give an account of our stewardship to the people. The Gomery report exonerated the Prime Minister for taking action to get the truth out into the open. The report praised Ralph Goodale for shutting down the Quebec sponsorship program within 24 hours of taking office as Minister of Public Works. We can be grateful for this decisive leadership. But we're not out of the woods. The people's confidence in us has been damaged. The people's faith in politics itself has been weakened. As Liberals we've learned a very painful lesson. A very small number of political operatives in one province can do the party damage right across the country. What makes us all angry about the events in Quebec is that WE know Liberals aren't like that, but the public has some reasons to say: you would say that, wouldn't you? So how do we win back public confidence? The Prime Minister has taken the right steps: the party has refunded the illicit payments; it has cashiered the members who disgraced our reputation. But we need to do more than change the rules and toss out the bad apples. We need to change the political culture of our party. We have been in power in Ottawa for a long time-and for good reason-because we have done a good job. But some Liberals have grown used to a culture of entitlement. Some in our party convey a sense that they have a right to be there, and that they can do what they like. We need to change this. How ? By getting back to basics, by remembering what democratic politics and the Liberal Party are supposed to be for. Our job is to serve the people. We owe an account of our stewardship of power to the people.
The test of political morality in a democracy is pretty simple: can I explain myself to the people who elected me, trusted in me, believed in me? If I can't, I shouldn't be doing it, whatever it is. We are not entitled to anything as Liberals. Trust is earned. We must prove our worth to our citizens every day, and when we let them down, we have to ‘fess up' and come clean. Our job as Liberals is not just to serve the party. We all came in to the party because we love politics-the excitement, the sense of being part of something larger than ourselves, of making a difference to the country we love. We're in this game because we are the enemies of cynicism, of disengagement, the tired talk of "they're all the same'. So our task as Liberals is not just to renew and reform the culture of our party. We want to restore faith in politics itself. The Liberal party's real opponents are not the Tories and the NDP. We can handle them. Our real opponent is cynicism, disengagement and disillusion about democratic politics itself. We can't re-energize our party, restore faith in ourselves and restore faith in politics, unless we remain united.
Let's remember a few simple truths.
Jean Chretien led us to three majority governments. He fought steadfastly for the unity of his country for 40 years. He is entitled to respect and admiration. The current Prime Minister has decisively attacked the culture of entitlement and corruption in Quebec. We owe respect to both of these leaders. A few commentators down east are saying the party is divided. Some even say there are two Liberal Parties, not one. You know the truth. There has always been one Party. There always will be just one party. We need to stay united. We need to get back to serving the people. We need to restore faith in politics.
One final message.
We need to remember our history. We need to remember who we are, what we have contributed to our country. We are the party of Wilfred Laurier. We are the party of King, St. Laurent, Pearson, Trudeau, Chretien and Martin. This is an unchallenged record of leadership for our country. I cannot think of another political party-anywhere in the democratic world-that has governed its people so long or so well. We are more than just a party. We are a national institution. We are the coalition -of francophones and Anglophones, aboriginal and settler peoples, urban and rural, westerners and easterners- who come together through the Party because we love our country and we want to hold it together and hand it on to our children in better shape than we found it. The national unity of our country is damaged when our party cannot claim that we represent every region of the country. That's why the West is so important to the Liberals and why in the next election we need to turn our support in the West from outposts to bastions, from points of light, to a chain of beacons running right across the Prairies. To re-establish ourselves as a truly national party, we need ideas. Parties without ideas die from the neck down. When parties become election machines, people stop caring about them. They stop working for them, and stop voting for them. Ideas are our life-blood. The mistake we made in Quebec after 1995 was that we stopped making the case for Canada with ideas. Instead we started making it with money. The worst thing about the scandal in Quebec is that a few of our operatives acted as if they could buy the votes of the Quebec electorate. It never pays a party to treat voters with contempt. Let's treat our fellow citizens with respect. That means listening to them, talking to them like adults, offering them something better than slogans, offering them arguments that persuade and ideas that inspire. The arguments that inspire are not about this policy or that policy-though policy matters. Our key argument is that politics itself should be inspiring: it is the never ending art of bringing us together as a people, enabling us, as a community, to achieve what we could never achieve just as individuals. The creation of this political community-Canada-is a precious achievement. The party that has defended our national achievement best has been the Liberal Party. We can win the people's trust, if we remind them of our national vocation, and our record as the great unifier of our people. The battle for Canada is never over. Being a Canadian is being committed to a perpetual argument about who we are, what holds us together and how we bring out the best in each other.
To tire of this argument is to tire of our country. Liberals never tire of the battle for Canada. We know that our task ahead is challenging. We can't provide strong national leadership without a majority in the House of Commons. The country has seen what minority government looks like and they'd like something stronger. We need to give the Prime Minister the tools to finish the job. We need to get Ralph Goodale the support in Parliament he needs. We have our work cut out for us. But Liberals-especially Liberals in Saskatchewan-have never been afraid of a challenge. You are tough. You are determined. And I'm here to cheer you on and say: if we stay united, we are bound to succeed.
Thank you for your attention.
