Mr. Speaker, I would like first of all to congratulate you at the outset of your mandate. I would like also to congratulate all my colleagues here on both sides of this House and tell opposition members that it is my hope that we will be strong adversaries but never enemies.
Like millions of my fellow Canadians, I was not born in Canada. As a young man, I came from very far, indeed from halfway around the world, to give my family and my children a wide range of opportunities that I could not enjoy myself. The island where I was born, Mauritius as it is officially known, was then a British colony and we had to exile ourselves in South Africa or Europe to get postsecondary education.
After having completed most of my postsecondary studies, I chose Canada as my country of adoption. Canada is as large as Mauritius is tiny. Its tropical climate gives Mauritius almost perpetual sunny and hot weather. But except for the geographical contrasts, the tiny island of Mauritius and the large Canada share striking similarities. Like Canada a former French colony, Mauritius would later be subjected to conquest and colonization by the British. Like Canada, it has kept the heritage of the languages and the cultures of both founding countries. In both cases, Parliament is bilingual, Common Law exists alongside the Civil Code, and the French language lived on and even thrived under the British regime and afterwards.
I was fortunate enough in my tender years to grow up in both the English and the French cultures and to benefit from both. I have always known from experience that it is possible to appreciate at the same time Molière, Victor Hugo or our own Gilles Vigneault, on the one hand, and Shelley, Shakespeare or writers of our time like Hemingway, Margaret Atwood or Michener, on the other.
My own experience in my family, with friends or in a number of occasions in my life have taught me that languages and cultures, far from dividing us, can be a valuable means through which people can meet, share ideas and be united in the same spirit. I speak three languages, since Creole is now recognized as an official language, but I would have dearly liked to get to know many more languages and cultures when I was young.
Just like Canada today, although English and French are dominant there, Mauritius is a genuine meeting point for all the most diverse religions and races.
The most fortunate similarity with this small country and the very large one that Canada is could very well be their sense of peaceful democracy, where individual liberties and human rights are highly valued and represent a most precious asset.
When I first set foot in Canada, I felt at home right away, I felt comfortable and secure in this most democratic country. After living for a few years in British Columbia, I chose to move to Quebec 30 years ago.
I had the opportunity, during my career, to visit Canada coast to coast, to discover small and big lakes, cities, towns, and rural areas. I also had the chance during my life to visit many different parts of the world. I have seen the sun rise on the Zambezi, and set in Southern Australia.
The more I visit other countries, the more I appreciate other lifestyles and living conditions, and the more I appreciate Canada, its climate of profound peace and liberty, its profound democracy.
This is why today is a very special day for me. It is an especially moving occasion for me, my first address in the Parliament of Canada. That I, who has come from so far away, indeed like many of my colleagues here in this House, should have the opportunity and privilege of taking a direct part in the political life of our country, is itself an eloquent testimony to the values of openness and generosity which characterize the Canadian spirit and way of life.
It is difficult for me to conceive that in theory this country could break up, not because of profound divergences as to the values, equity or democratic ideals that we share, but mainly because of language and culture.
It is indeed astounding to me to believe that we English speaking and French speaking Canadians who for close to two and a half centuries have shared geography and history, have shared the rigours and also the beauty of this vast land, but above all have contributed to building a common weal of shared values and experiences, a common way of life, a system of democratic politics and justice where fundamental freedoms have always flourished, could choose to tear up our common heritage because some of us live in French and some of us live in English.
I deeply respect the Quebecers who chose to be represented by a majority of members from a party advocating Quebec independence. However, while respecting that choice, I firmly believe that it will bring about results quite different from those targeted by my colleagues of the Bloc Quebecois as their primary goal.
In fact, their very presence here is, in my opinion, the most vivid and eloquent testimony of the greatness and the democratic value of Canada. How many countries in the world would have been so democratic as to welcome with complete freedom, in a peaceful and serene manner, in their main Parliament, parties which might destabilize them, if not dismantle them? The members of the Bloc Quebecois are the most striking evidence of the democratic value, the openness and the profound freedom of Canada.
As we enter the 21st century I am proud to belong to a party whose mandate in this critical juncture in our history is to restore the confidence of Canadians in our political system, to restore in them hope for the future, to govern in truth, fairness and integrity and above all to preserve the Canadian federation and its shared geography and values from sea to sea.
If Canadians have now reached a level of such deep cynicism and mistrust in our own institutions and in our collective capacity to change our lives for the better, if so many of my compatriots in Quebec are turning inwardly toward the parochial panacea of separatism, it is because our institutions have failed them in their justifiable expectations.
As the one truly national party represented in this House, our responsibility is an onerous one: to preserve the integrity of this country by showing Canadians that their institutions can indeed change their lives for the better.
In laying the foundation for the Liberal government's mandate and program, the throne speech confirms our electoral commitments to redirect Canada toward the path of recovery and job creation, after several years of economic recession and consequent unemployment.
However it calls for far more. It calls for the restoration of integrity, honesty and responsible management in the conduct of our affairs. It calls for the government to set an example, both real and symbolic, of the kind of restraint and discipline that it asks of others. It calls for the renewal of hope for our young people, so dynamic, increasingly well qualified, yet for a very large number of them, despairing of that first job which will be the start of a meaningful career. It calls especially for our seniors and the disadvantaged in our society for the maintenance of our social safety net created and nurtured by Liberal governments over the decades.
It will mean a new approach to unemployment and welfare support systems that through training and other positive and constructive programs will give hope and dignity to the unemployed and their families. It will mean a more decisive place for women and minorities. I am so proud there are so many women and minority representatives in our ranks. It certainly means the recognition of the aspirations of our first peoples in the objective of taking charge of their own ways of life within Canada.
Importantly it reconfirms the status of our two official languages as the precious expression of our foundation and evolution as a fair country. In "Creating Opportunity", the Liberal electoral program, our party has set the course toward a sustainable society, a goal we should all endorse regardless of party affiliation.
No longer can we accept a society of waste where unbridled consumerism results in the unnecessary degradation of ecosystems and the natural resources that are the springboard and sustenance of life and living. No longer can we tolerate the despoliation of the ample resources with which we have been blessed and for which we are trustees.
We must change our way of life and our way of producing and start respecting the integrity of the ecosystems and their capacity to maintain and renew themselves. In a world which is more conscious of global equity, of the need to distribute more equitably the wealth between rich and poor countries, we cannot
continue to consume energy and resources as frenetically as we have been doing in North America for the past fifty years.
If we still want to be taken seriously at the international level as sustainable development champions, we must set the example here, in this country, as a society that integrates its environmental concerns and objectives with its government objectives and methods. I am delighted about all the measures our government intends to take to integrate environmental concerns within a sound management process for our country.
During the last two years, I had the privilege of working very closely with the Algonquins from Barrière Lake on a three-party agreement concerning an integrated resource management project in La Verendrye Park. This dynamic initiative, the first of its kind in Canada, not only reinforced my environmental beliefs, but proved once again that it is possible to reconcile the protection of our ecosystems with our ways of thinking and doing things. May I say how much we could learn on this issue from our First Nations.
The respect and love the Algonquins of Barriere Lake and certain other First Nations show for mother earth is a touching lesson for us all. It is one I find especially moving and inspiring.
Among the most precious resources for which we are responsible are the largest water reserves in the world. The renowned Canadian scientist Joseph MacInnis told me the other day that, during a recent conversation, the distinguished chairman of National Geographic , Gilbert Grosvenor, let him know that water would be the first and foremost priority of his internationally acclaimed publication during the 21st century.
We are blessed with the enjoyment of the greatest freshwater system in the universe: the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin. It constitutes 80 per cent of the total freshwater reserves in North America and 20 per cent of the world's reserves.
Water is a goal of our new age, of the 21st century and beyond. To provide an idea of the magnitude of our dependence on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence water, we draw from the ecosystem each day, on both sides of the border, 655 billion gallons of water. That is equivalent to 2.5 trillion litres. If we were to store this water in jumbo tank cars, it would be equivalent to 19 million tank cars of 34,000 gallons each. These tank cars, if tied together, would stretch over 237,000 miles. That is the equivalent of 9.5 times the circumference of the world at the equator.
I have heard it suggested in scientific and environmental circles that the Great Lakes basin may become the population magnet of the 21st century. With the west and southwest of the continent drying up, with the groundwater table close to exhaustion in certain areas, a large migration of people northward toward the essential and crucial resource that is water is a distinct possibility for the future.
Needless to say, we will have to do better in our stewardship of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence if we are to accommodate the large numbers of fellow citizens who may choose in future to take advantage of this unmatched resource.
We will have to do considerably better than today. The record shows that in 1990 we were dumping into the Great Lakes seven million gallons of oil, 80,000 pounds of lead, not to mention 1,900 pounds of PCBs and 1,000 pounds of mercury.
We must strive to build this new sustainable society around a clean industry strategy which would include a binational clean strategy for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence basin where the bulk of our population lives and works.
I cannot help but wonder how Joliette, Marquette and de la Salle would feel if they saw some of us renounce the great legacy of wide-open spaces that they left us. I hope that during the present term we will find a way to convince the Bloc Quebecois members and their followers that this great Canadian legacy which we built together is made up of too many common values and is the result of too many common efforts to be forsaken so lightly.
I close my first address to this House in praying that Canada and Canadian unity shall prevail and that it shall flourish into the 21st century and beyond and that our great traditions and values of democracy, peace and freedom will continue to mark our lives together.
Long live Canada. May Quebec and its immensely proud and rich heritage and contribution be always a vibrant and crucial part of it.
