Mr. Speaker, the international civil aviation organization, or ICAO, the only UN agency based in Canada and one of its oldest components, is celebrating its 50th anniversary today in the presence of the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Based in Montreal, like more than 30 other international organizations, including the International Air Transport Association and the secretariat for the Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, ICAO exemplifies the vitality of Quebec's chief city internationally.
It is this internationalism that the federal government was forced to recognize last winter by allowing the head office of the NAFTA environment committee to be based in Montreal. Dynamic, cosmopolitan and open to the world, Montreal will make a proud chief city in a sovereign Quebec.