Rideau Hall, Monday, May 26, 2008

Excellency, Mrs. Yushchenko, my husband Jean-Daniel Lafond and I are so delighted to welcome you here to Rideau Hall where, beginning in the reception room, a Ukrainian vision of Canada awaits.

As soon as I was installed as governor general of Canada, I wanted the walls of this institution to pay tribute to the spirit of adventure and daring of Canadians, who came from every background imaginable to help shape our country.

I immediately selected the works of William Kurelek, a Canadian painter of Ukrainian heritage, whose vivid images recount the epic Ukrainian migration to Canada, from the famine in their homeland to the golden prairie fields of wheat, from their arrival by boat in the Port of Halifax to their settlement on the lands of western Canada.

This desire to escape the misery engendered by a regime of terror and to put down roots in a country where anything is possible speaks to me and to so many of my fellow citizens. Which is why I am so delighted that a painter, whose parents emigrated from Ukraine, has captured this journey with such startling clarity. Such is the power of art to transcend borders and unite people through shared experience.

President Yushchenko, I am delighted to see that you and Mrs. Yushchenko strongly believe in the power of the arts, and have made cultural expression a priority. 

As you know, Canada is home to over 1.2 million citizens of Ukrainian heritage, the largest Ukrainian population in the world outside of Ukraine and Russia.

Generation upon generation of Ukrainian immigrants in Canada, from coast to coast to coast, in the East as in the West, have made the bonds of friendship between us stronger.

Many have played and continue to play a vital role in every aspect of our society.

They include my predecessor, the Right Honourable Ramon Hnatyshyn, former lieutenant governor of Saskatchewan Sylvia Fedoruk, former lieutenant governor of Manitoba Peter Liba, former premier of Manitoba Gary Filmon, former premier of Saskatchewan Roy Romanow, Premier of Alberta Ed Stelmach, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada John Sopinka, comedienne Luba Goy, musician Ivan Doroschuk, and the owner of our very own hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, Eugene Melnyk.

And, in recent years, Canadians everywhere have watched closely, enthusiastically, as Ukraine overcame repression and at last achieved democracy.

On December 2, 1991, Canada was the first Western country to recognize Ukraine’s independence, and a number of memoranda of understanding have since been signed in such key fields as trade, technical co-operation, defence and mutual legal assistance.

What’s more, the Canadian International Development Agency’s program in Ukraine is one of the most important in Eastern Europe, focusing primarily on good governance, democratic development and strengthening civil society.

To me, this speaks volumes of just how important the success of the new Ukraine is to us, of how your future is so promising.

Your country may be just sixteen years old, but as Mrs. Yushchenko recently stated at the World Movement for Democracy, it has over 7,000 years of history and determination.

Our hopes for prosperity and happiness are all the greater because we see your country taking decisive steps to reclaim a freedom that has long been flouted and to assert its role as a responsible nation on the world stage.

We applaud you for this, President Yushchenko.

The Orange Revolution came about as a great explosion of hope and the victory of freedom. An entire nation rose up with a single voice to say no to injustice, no to repression, no to censorship, no to voter fraud.

This revolution signalled the beginning of vital changes to the democratic life of your country.

But the most important challenge still lay ahead: the implementation of those changes.

As you yourself have said, “the course is difficult, but despite this it is genuine, its results are tangible, and I am certain, long-lasting.”

You had to create democratic institutions, stimulate the economy, re-institute the rule of law, and give rise to a civil society.

Every one of us here this evening rejoices that Ukraine is on the right track and that, in the prophetic words of one of your great poets, Taras Shevchenko, “freedom stands with justice on the threshold of your lands!”

What you have undertaken collectively to give the citizens of Ukraine the means to defend their viewpoints freely, to protect their rights and to take part in the birth of democracy should be praised throughout the international community.

And Canada is proud to tell you so once again this evening.

President Yushchenko, if I may, in this year commemorating the victims of the Ukrainian Holodomor, I would like to give a special thought to your many fellow citizens who fell victim to “brutal despotism,” in the words spoken by Canada’s prime minister on November 28, 2007.

It is in this spirit that Canada proudly co-sponsored the Government of Ukraine’s motion to UNESCO to honour the millions who lost their lives in the famine.

We honour their memory and, today, it is toward the future that we, Canadians and Ukrainians, move with the hope that we will never again see the barbarism of the last century.

And it is because of the solidarity that unites us and our shared desire to see dignity and respect for human rights triumph that I am delighted this evening, President Yushchenko, by the deep and abiding friendship between our two countries.

Long live the affection that unites our peoples!