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This Canada Day, I was pleased to attend a non-denominational religious event at CFB Uplands to support our soldiers and their families. The following is a portion of the speech which I gave:

Thank you very much for having me here, on this, Canada’s one hundred fortieth birthday.

Canada Day is a time of celebration. There are many days that we focus wholly on the work we are doing, and on work left to be done. Canada Day is the one day that we take the time to stop and feel proud of our accomplishments together. …

Today we can celebrate a freedom unique to our country. It is rooted firmly in the constitution for a quarter-century with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is a freedom that members of the Canadian Forces – past and present – have trained and fought to defend, time after time, here and around the world. Clearly, in the year of the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge, our freedom is not to be taken for granted, but is a product of the courageous choices of our sons and daughters – in uniform and out – in each successive generation.

As Canadians gather to celebrate pride in their country, we can rest assured that they are gathering to celebrate their pride in its institutions and in the Forces. …

Never lose sight that ours is a country of tremendous accomplishment. As in the past we liberated Holland, and we invented insulin, saving many lives – today we stand shoulder to shoulder with peoples half-way around the globe, and we decode the human genome.

As in the past we turned barren grasslands into the farms and villages of rural Canada, today we build office towers, and program phones, and turn corn into ethanol to make cleaner cars and skies.

Above all, we don’t hide from our diversity. We don’t hesitate to recognize that in our streets, we represent every race and region, faith and station and language: the Canadian nation is a bold experiment and over a century’s long success.

Our strength was best described by a young Wilfred Laurier, later to be Prime Minister of Canada. He said: “I say it is to our glory, that the struggles of race are ended on Canadian soil. There is here no other family than the human family, whatever the language they speak or the altars at which they kneel. There is glory in this fraternal union of which Canadians can never be sufficiently proud. Mighty nations indeed might well come to us to seek a lesson in justice and humanity.”

A Canada glorious and free on its 140th birthday is certainly something worth celebrating. Thank you for the work you have done to make it possible. Have a very happy Canada Day.