Mr. President, Prime Minister, Madame Grégoire Trudeau, Mr. Speaker of the House of Commons, Excellencies, hon. senators, members of the House of Commons, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen.
Mr. President, it is a great honour to have you with us here today, and I would like to thank you for addressing this joint session of Parliament.
The obvious enthusiasm with which you have been received has already spoken far more eloquently than anything I might add about the admiration that we have for you.
As our two countries both seek to advance the same principles that you have already mentioned, we share the same hopes and dreams, not only for ourselves but for those of our brother nations as well. Because of this shared belief in upholding these principles, Canadians from across this great country have followed your presidency closely, and we have watched you face many challenges. Through it all you have persisted with calm, with reason, and with an unwavering clarity of purpose. The result has been an extraordinary legacy for the American people and for the whole of the international community.
The great American philosopher and war veteran Philip Hallie, when writing about the turmoil in the world, said that we are, each of us, living in the eye of a hurricane. The destructive and cruel power in the world, of both nature and of fellow human beings, is always nearby, swirling around us. But in the centre, in the eye of the hurricane, there can be peace and calm. Our job, individually and collectively, is to do our best to push out the borders of the eye of that storm, to expand the calm, to expand the reasonable and the good that is and can be in the world we live in.
Mr. President, in a world that has so often seemed riven by ways of anger and destruction, by unimaginable acts of violence and forces beyond our control, you have stood tall. You have stood tall for the power of reason over passion and principle over politics.
In your very own words, from The Audacity of Hope, you have cautioned us that “we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, and above all, a bond that will not break.”
In closing, Mr. President, on behalf of all of my parliamentary colleagues, and indeed on behalf of all Canadians, I thank you for the very inspiring words you shared with us today, for your years of leadership in the world, and most especially, for your very strong and enduring friendship with our great country, Canada.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]