H.E Hon. Ralph Goodale, P.C's Canada Day Speech

Notes for Remarks by H.E. Hon. Ralph Goodale, P.C.

High Commissioner for Canada in the United Kingdom

at a

Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce Canada Day Breakfast

Canada House, Trafalgar Square

June 28^th, 2024

Good morning, everyone – greetings and good wishes from the Government of Canada.

A little pre-maturely, but nonetheless sincerely - Happy Canada Day!  Bonne fete du Canada!  And welcome to this annual Canada Day Breakfast hosted by the Canada-UK Chamber of Commerce.

As we celebrate Canada and its wonderful relationship with the United Kingdom, I want to take a moment to celebrate all of you and what you and your teams do everyday to build and strengthen economic ties between our two countries.  Increasing trade and investment, and promoting partnerships and collaborations in science, technology and innovation – and across many other fronts – is an extremely important thing for both Canada and the UK.

Those bilateral economic exchanges of all kinds now add up to well over $410 billion – driving growth, creating jobs, stimulating brainpower, innovation, productivity and prosperity.  So, thank you for being such a vibrant part of this relationship.

And thank you to Nigel Bacon and his team for doing a constantly great job of pulling us all together, and for being our hosts this morning.

Canada Day is a great event every year, but starting tomorrow and for the next 12 months, we are embarking on an extra special time for Canada and for Canada House.

This venue – the single most visible embassy for any country in all of London – was officially opened for the first time as “Canada House” on June 29^th, 1925.  King George and Queen Mary were here to do the honours.  So tomorrow (June 29^th) we begin our Centennial Year in Canada House, and on June 29^th, 2025 (one year hence) we will celebrate a hundred years in this historic location.

The Chamber has become a vital part of our Canada House family.  We value your presence in the Canadian High Commission.  And we look forward to celebrating our centenary with you.

Let me take just a moment to acknowledge your recent change in Chamber leadership.  To Bill Smith, for a very successful three-year term as president, thank you for your stewardship and guidance.  And to Wayne Lee who was chosen as Bill’s successor, congratulations and best of luck in this new role.  I know Wayne will bring his typical level of energy and enthusiasm to this important new assignment.

We’re almost a half a world away from Canada, but on this special occasion, let me reflect for just a moment on the fundamental nature of Canada – especially at a time when the world seems so filled with examples of extremism, demagoguery, anger and hate.  By contrast, Canada has been described as one of the finest examples of “peaceful pluralism” the world has ever known.

Our population is small by global standards, but we are very complicated – starting with Indigenous peoples, and the Norse and the French and English explorers and settlers, and then never-ending waves of enriching immigration from just about everywhere.

Our 41 million people include every ethnicity, colour and creed, two official languages and many cultures – quite literally the diversity of the whole world – all mixed together, unevenly, not in a melting pot, but as a brilliant, dynamic mosaic, and spread out sparsely across the second-largest landmass on earth.  East to West, across seven time zones.  North to South, from the North Pole to the same latitude as California.

How do you build a country from such complexity?

On a visit to Canada some years ago, Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth, put it this way:  Canadians, she said, do NOT ask each other to deny their forebears or to forsake their inheritance, but only that they value and respect the religious and cultural heritage of others, just as they enjoy their own.

Sounds a bit like the Golden Rule.  It’s the same spirit embodied in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which Queen Elizabeth signed into our Constitution in 1982.

But writing it down is relatively easy.  Living by it – diversity, inclusion and mutual respect – is tougher.  It’s not automatic.  It takes work.  And despite our good intentions, history has recorded some tragic lapses:

• There was once a Chinese “head tax” in Canada;

• We had internment camps during two world wars;

• Refugees were turned away on the Komagata Maru and the MS St. Louis;

• A provincial government was once elected with help from the Ku Klux Klan;

• Indian Residential Schools, Missing and Murdered Women and Girls, the Sixties Sweep of Indigenous children;

• Recent intolerance toward newcomers;

• Explicit discrimination against the LGBTQ2 community;

• Antisemitism and Islamophobia.

No, Canadian pluralism is far from perfect.  The truth is, we always have to work hard at the principled values and conduct that bind our big, complicated, rambunctious country together.

Values like our sense of fairness and justice.  An unshakeable commitment to freedom, equality, democracy, human rights, due process and the rule of law.  A spirit of generosity, compassion, caring and sharing.  Open hearts and open minds.  Pride in our vast diversity.

We need always the creative arts of inclusion and accommodation.  To make room for one another.  To reach out, to listen to each other.  To try very hard to understand one another, and then be ready to act with and for each other together.

Not because that action may be in the narrow self-interest of a comfortable majority.  Not because we HAVE to act that way, but because we WANT to.  Because the action we take with and for each other together is RIGHT for the fair and decent and wonderful country we aspire to be.

So, Canada, more than anything else, is a triumph of the human spirit.  We are built and held together, not by the force of arms or the force of laws, or “force” of any kind.  Not by geography or language or culture or history, but by our common WILL.  We are a country because we WANT to be.

And nation-building, the Canadian way, is a never-ending process.  We’re never “done”.  Canada is now, always has been, and ever will be, a precious work-in-progress that we dare not take for granted.

And every day, it all depends on “US”, and how we chose to treat one another.  Human-being to human-being.  Canada depends on all of us – respectfully, hopefully, optimistically, relentlessly – nation-building, day-by-day, together.

Bonne fete du Canada!  Happy Canada Day!