State Luncheon Hosted by His Excellency Óscar Arias Sánchez,
President of the Republic of Costa Rica

San José, Monday, December 14, 2009

We are extremely grateful to you for graciously hosting this luncheon in honour of Canada’s first State visit to Costa Rica, which will be an excellent opportunity for dialogue and sharing.

My husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, our delegation and I are all delighted by the warm welcome Costa Ricans have given us.

I am reminded of what you so brilliantly said in Oslo in 1987, that “peace can only be achieved with its own instruments: dialogue and understanding, tolerance and forgiveness, freedom and democracy.”

Those words were especially powerful, if I may say so, because they were spoken by one of the major architects of the peace processes implemented to resolve the armed conflicts that ravaged Central America in the 1980s, someone from a country that decided to abolish its army in a region of the world where, too often, the sound of gunfire was law.

I have already had the privilege of speaking to you—at the Summit of the Americas held in beautiful Quebec City when I was a journalist for Canadian public television.

I am pleased to see you again, Excellency, and to be able to tell you of my personal admiration and of how proud Canada is to work with Costa Rica to improve security, increase prosperity and promote democratic values across the entire hemisphere.

And, as I mentioned earlier today before the members of the Legislative Assembly, we also applaud the commendable efforts Costa Rica is making to form consensuses and find solutions to the very serious problem of global warming that is reverberating across our entire continent, from north to south, from accelerated melting of ice in the Arctic to devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean.

We share the same conviction that humanity is at a crossroads: we can either triumph together by building on our collective strengths, or we can refuse to work together and therefore aggravate what is happening to the planet, perhaps beyond repair.

I am anxious, Excellency, to hear what you have to say about these concerns we share, concerns that require a broader and more committed definition of citizen responsibility.

It is in that same spirit of openness and solidarity that we are going out and meeting with the people of Costa Rica as we did yesterday in Puerto Limón and as we will do today and tomorrow in the capital.

My husband, a filmmaker and philosopher by trade, is anxious to meet those who are as passionate about the seventh art as he is, and to explore opportunities for co-operation.

I am also looking forward to observing, on the ground, the results of certain Canadian investments in Costa Rica.

I therefore raise my glass, Excellency, to the friendship between our people. May this State visit allow us to nourish the already healthy dialogue between Costa Rica and Canada.