Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to have a chance to add my words to those of my colleagues on the passing of a remarkable Canadian whom I was very, very lucky to know. Obviously I did not get to know him because I play hockey. I did not get to know him in courtrooms, although I was a practising lawyer. I got to know him before I was involved in partisan politics, while I was working with other women leaders and other people in civil society working for child care when Ken Dryden was minister of social development.
I will not take all my time, because so many good words have been said of the way in which he inspired youth, the way in which he championed important causes, and the remarkable achievement of being a successful NHL player while also, as my friend from Winnipeg Centre said so eloquently, making sure his education was completed. Although many people will debate whether choosing the practice of law was a good choice, I endorse it myself. Because Ken Dryden had such a keen mind and a heart for public service, he did so much for this country and for women.
Let me share what I remember. I remember Ken Dryden's working ceaselessly to get signed agreements with each of the 10 provinces in this country to guarantee that we would have affordable early education and child care for every Canadian child. I remember working with Martha Friendly, who founded the University of Toronto's Childcare Resource and Research Unit, and her tireless work with then minister Dryden.
It is Martha I want to quote now. I never heard Ken Dryden say these words, but Martha said she will never forget Ken Dryden saying, as he started on this mission, “We need to get the system so in place that we’re painted into a corner and it can’t ever be removed.” Unfortunately that did not occur. He created a universal child care program, and it obviously set a benchmark. It set the stage, and we still have work to do, because every child in Canada deserves the best start in life and deserves high quality early education and child care, and every parent needs to know that when they drop their child off at child care, it is affordable and they are not choosing between their rent and child care.
Let me close with Ken Dryden's own words. When he achieved this for Canadians, the selfless, hard work in a very partisan and difficult place, Ken Dryden described himself as “the luckiest guy in government” because he was given a tough job to achieve something meaningful. I would ask all of us to reflect on that. When will we feel we have accomplished something that makes us feel we are the luckiest person in Parliament because we were given an impossible task and we accomplished it?
His family, Lynda, Sarah, Michael and his grandchildren, has our deepest sympathy and gratitude for sharing a remarkable human being, a truly decent human being of remarkable talent and skill, who gave his life, his dedication and service to inspiring Canadians, not just when he served in this place but also with the legacy he left for us to achieve and deliver on the promises he started so brilliantly to deliver.