It is both
an honour and a pleasure for me to once again address
the Assembly.
(spoke in English)
For more than 70 years, Canada has supported the
United Nations and its institutions in the pursuit of
world peace. On many occasions Canadians have put
their lives on the line to deter active conflict between
peoples. It is a duty we accept and it is a record of which
we are proud.
Today, there are many embattled parts of the world
where the suffering of the local populations and the
threats to global security deserve our urgent attention,
and I could easily use my entire time here on any one
of them. There are, however, other areas of service to
humankind. It is to some of those that I wish to speak
tonight, for there is more to peace than the absence of
war. Where human misery abounds, where grinding
poverty is the rule, where justice is systematically
denied, there is no real peace — only the seeds of
future conflict.
(spoke in French)
Of course, misery and injustice are not the only
roots of war. We need only look at the world today to
appreciate that.
(spoke in English)
Then we understand how the worst of human
nature — perverse ideologies, religious extremism and
the lust for power and plunder — can rob people in so
many places of property, hope and life itself. That is
why Canada has always been ready and willing to join
with other civilized peoples and to challenge affronts to
the international order, affronts to human dignity itself,
such as those that are today present in Eastern Europe,
particularly Ukraine, in the Middle East — Iraq, Syria
and elsewhere — and of course many parts of Africa.
Canada’s positions on those issues are well known,
and we will continue to contribute to the extent to
which we are able in assisting our friends and allies
in the international community to deal with those
grave challenges. But while those extreme situations
are being confronted, other problems — pandemics,
climate change and, of course, the problems of
underdevelopment — remain.
(spoke in French)
And we feel strongly that no effort is ever in vain
if it offers peoples an alternative to conflict and the
possibility of a better life for them and their families.
(spoke in English)
Canadians therefore seek a world where freedom,
democracy, human rights and the rule of law are
respected. We hold those things to be intrinsically right
and good. We also believe that they are the necessary
foundation for a better world for more people and are
necessary for prosperity. With prosperity comes hope,
and with hope, the greater inclination of free peoples
everywhere to find peaceful solutions to the things
that divide them. Indeed, we believe that freedom,
prosperity and peace form a virtuous circle.
For that reason, the growth of trade among nations
and the delivery of effective development assistance to
ordinary people — simple, practical aid — are the things
that have become the signatures of our Government’s
outreach in the world. Trade means jobs, growth and
opportunities. It has made great nations out of small
ones. The story of my own country, Canada, is a case in
point. Historically, trade has built our country, just as
today it is reshaping our world. Trade means ordinary
people can support their families and even dare to
dream of something much more.
(spoke in French)
Our Government has worked hard to establish a
vast network of modern trade agreements.
(spoke in English)
The trade agreements we have concluded tear down
the barriers of tariff and excise and enlarge markets and
opportunities for buyers and sellers alike. Canada has
now established such links with countries that today
possess more than a quarter of the world’s people and
nearly half the world’s business. And our free-trade
network will grow larger yet. It is not, by the way, an
exclusive club for wealthy nations.
(spoke in French)
Canada has already liberalized its trade with
countries better known for their determination to
succeed than for the size of their economies, thereby
opening the way for them to access Canadian and other
markets. We have no reason to stop now. As indicated
by my colleague from Senegal, President Macky Sall,
“Aid is needed for development, but what is needed
even more is investment”. He is quite right.
(spoke in English)
Yet no matter how freely we trade, millions of
people will need a helping hand for some time to come.
Easily the most important example, and the one closest
to my heart, is the worldwide struggle upon which
so many of you have been engaged, in the maternal,
newborn and child health initiative. Saving the lives
of the world’s most vulnerable mothers, infants and
children must remain a top global priority. That is, the
world must honour the commitments made in this very
Hall to mothers and children in the year 2000. And
there has been remarkable progress.
(spoke in French)
Thanks to inexpensive vaccines and the combined
efforts of multiple partners, more children are
being vaccinated today than ever before. And as the
importance of nutrition becomes better understood,
more and more children are surviving. Thanks to
simple, low-cost, easily accessible techniques, literally
millions of mothers and children who a mere 14 years
ago might have died not only survive today, but thrive.
(spoke in English)
I think especially of the 2010 meeting of world
leaders at Muskoka, which raised about $7.5 billion
dollars, $2 billion of it from private donors. Based on
that, the United Nations launched what the Secretary-
General called the “Every woman, every child” initiative,
with the goal of saving 16 million lives by 2016. An
important aspect of that work has been monitoring
both the receipt of monies pledged and how they are
used. The assurance of full accountability has allowed
recipients to plan with greater certainty and donors to
give with confidence. With His Excellency President
Kikwete of Tanzania, whom we have just heard, it was
my honour to co-chair the World Health Organization’s
Information and Accountability Commission linked to
that initiative.
On this, we have a clear vision, and that vision is
achievable. We know how to help a great many of those
vulnerable people. We have seen what can be done. We
want simply to rally the passion and the will to make it
happen. We are preventing deaths, and we can prevent
more — deaths of thousands of children every day from
easily preventable causes. We can stop the thousands
of mothers dying in childbirth who would survive
with relatively little intervention. We also know who
we need to be working with — new partnerships that
bring together Governments and agencies of the United
Nations, including the World Health Organization, the
World Food Programme and UNICEF, with the private
sector, partnerships that are producing real results and
taking us to new heights of excellence.
Here I am thinking of the Maternal, Newborn
and Child Health Network in Canada, a group that
represents a broad base of Canadian civil society and
is a key implementing partner on the ground. As many
representatives know, in May in Toronto, Canada hosted
the world’s leading actors on that subject. We heard
the success stories — for example, the Micronutrient
Initiative through which 180 million children received
vitamin A, pills that cost pennies but drop child
mortality by 25 per cent. We heard about the Global
Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and how
during the three-year period between
2010 and 2013,
immunizations saved the lives of 2 million children.
We have partnerships to deliver better nutrition and
partnerships to deliver better measurement, because
vital statistics are critical. One cannot manage what
one cannot measure. And in that mission, we measure
progress in precious lives saved. So every child needs
a birth certificate.
(spoke in French)
We also heard that in the world today is a greater
obligation with regard to accountability, not only with
regard to the vast sums of money pledged, but also the
way in which that money is spent.
(spoke in English)
So our consensus was clear. We have seen success,
and we have momentum. Saving the lives of children
and mothers is a fight we can win. To get it done, two
things are needed now: political focus and renewed
financial commitment. I therefore urge the Assembly, in
the strongest terms, to ensure that, maternal, newborn
and child health remains a clear and top priority in the
evolving post-2015 development agenda — and one
of a limited number of priorities. That is the political
focus we need. Then there is the financial commitment.
I know we all have many competing priorities. But we
have come so far that to stop now would be a tragedy.
I must say I was very encouraged this afternoon
at the Secretary-General’s “Every woman, every child”
event, when President Kim of the World Bank and other
leaders announced new financing for the Bank’s Global
Financing Facility for Every Woman Every Child.
That Facility will help developing countries access the
financing required to improve their health systems. I
was pleased to announce that Canada would financially
support the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility for
Every Woman Every Child.
(spoke in French)
We urge other countries to do likewise because
to provide viable solutions to prevent the tragic death
of women and children, we need to increase budget
allocations on the part of both donors and the developing
countries.
(spoke in English)
In closing, let me just say this. There are many
individual countries and many specific causes that will
rightly occupy our deliberations here this week. Let us
also not forget to look beyond those crises at the long-
term opportunities and efforts that can truly transform
the world. We have it in our power to create a better
kind of world for our children’s children than the one
we have today.
And we should, for it was never the intention of the
founders of the United Nations — Canada being one
of them — that ours would be a world where terrorists
could get the resources necessary to sow death and
destruction but where workers and families could
not get jobs and opportunities, or where mothers and
children could not obtain the necessities required to
live and thrive.
The world that Canada strives for is the world that
the founders of the United Nations wanted from the
beginning, as boldly articulated in their Declaration
of 1 January 1942 — a world where “life, liberty,
independence and religious freedom” are defended,
where “human rights and justice” are preserved, and
where all join “in a common struggle against savage and
brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world”. In such
a world, there can be prosperity for the impoverished,
justice for the weak and, for the desperate, that most
precious of all things, hope.
It is easy to look at the many problems of the world
today and become despondent. Yet for all our failings,
there has been, for most of humankind, tremendous
progress in my lifetime. Therefore, I am enough of an
optimist to think that because we can create a more
prosperous, fairer and hopeful world, not only should
we, but indeed, I believe we will find the will to do so.