NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS BY PRIME MINISTER JEAN CHRÉTIEN

February 27, 2003
Mexico City, Mexico

It gives me great pleasure to be here today, at the oldest university in the Americas. I congratulate you, the faculty and student body, as you celebrate a remarkable 450 years of tradition and history. You have earned an international reputation for excellence in scholarship and teaching.

I am particularly gratified to receive, on behalf of the Canadian people, this most prestigious award. It acknowledges the contribution that Canada, its people and government, have made to world peace, security and prosperity. I thank you for this honour, which I am pleased to accept in the name of my fellow citizens.

Peace, security, and prosperity are essential elements of my address to you today. They form a trinity of well-being – a formula that creates the foundation of quality of life and strengthens democracy.

As we know, in too many parts of the world we see the negative side of this formula: poverty, instability, and conflict and the end result of hopelessness, despair, and political uncertainty.

Today I would also like to reflect on how the relationship between Mexicans and Canadians, as partners and friends, is growing and changing. And how we can meet, together, some of the complex challenges we face in this hemisphere and indeed globally to transform poverty, instability, and conflict into peace, security, and prosperity.

We come from a good starting point. Trade has sown the seeds of prosperity across North America. Canada’s first commercial mission was sent to Mexico in 1887. As early as 1905 a trade commissioner was posted to Mexico City in support of Canadian investment in the electricity, urban transport and banking sectors. But it is in more recent times that our trade relationship really took off -- with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.

Since that time our trade has multiplied three-fold. Canada has become Mexico’s second largest market, after the United States; while Mexico is the fourth largest purchaser of Canadian goods and services. Canada and Mexico hold an impressive thirty percent share of the US market. Over the past decade, North America has led the world in economic growth.

NAFTA has served us well and has served as a catalyst for cooperation in other sectors: the environment; labour; energy and agriculture – to name a few. As a result, Mexico is the Latin American country with which Canadians have the most substantial and profound political agenda.

This political agenda benefits from the fruitful and frequent meetings between our countries. President Fox and I have now met six times since your July, 2000 elections. Over the past year, half of the Canadian cabinet has met with its Mexican counterparts, several more than once. The linkages between our parliamentarians – several of whom are with me today – and between our officials are expanding exponentially.

The people of Mexico and Canada are also busy forging links. Every year, almost a million Canadian tourists visit Mexico and over 180,000 Mexicans travel to Canada for business, pleasure or study.

Canadian educational institutions host more than 10,000 Mexican students. There are over 400 university-to-university cooperation agreements, including 30 with your university alone. We support 10 Canadian Studies programmes in Mexican universities, including the recently established Margaret Atwood/Gabrielle Roy Chair of Canadian Studies and Culture at UNAM. UNAM also has an active programme in the city of Gatineau, in my home province of Quebec.

Canada was honoured to have been chosen as the featured country at last year’s International Cervantino Festival. Over 260 Canadian artists took part – the largest ever Canadian cultural exposé in Mexico.

We will provide a strong contingent again this year, including the National Arts Centre Orchestra. We mount an annual Canadian Film Festival, and we invite you to attend this year’s edition, to be held in June.

Our newest, and most important, bilateral endeavour is governance cooperation. Mexico is undergoing a profound democratic transition.

President Fox and I agree that the quality of governance is crucial to a flourishing democratic political system.

As a result, over the past two years, our officials have pursued opportunities to exchange expertise on the management of government, including: budget planning; access to information; strategic planning; borders and related security issues; e-government; and federalism.

Governance exchanges have resulted in our institutions and peoples understanding each other better than ever before. I see governance cooperation as being at the heart of what the Canada-Mexico dynamic can accomplish not only for our citizens, but, by example, throughout the hemisphere.

Through our bilateral trade and cooperation, we are strengthening the foundation of prosperity, security and peace.

But there is more we must do to extend these benefits throughout our shared hemisphere – the Americas.

Many countries of our region are being put to the test – trying to reverse the equation of poverty, instability, and conflict. Mexico and Canada must be concerned because in the face of these challenges, democracy can become vulnerable.

The state of Venezuela is under severe strain. Violence continues to threaten that country’s democratic institutions.

Recent terrorist attacks in Bogota have presented a new threat to Colombian democracy – that of urban warfare. The situation in Haiti is untenable – such that without further efforts by the Government and opposition parties to implement OAS resolutions, the country will sink further into despair. The recent violence in Bolivia has shaken that country and placed its democratic ways in jeopardy.

Canada encourages all sectors in these countries to live up to the commitments embodied in our common hemispheric instruments and mechanisms.

In this respect, I am most pleased that Mexico will be hosting the Hemispheric Security Conference in May. We see the conference as an unprecedented opportunity to acknowledge the shift in the hemisphere from traditional notions of security to a more encompassing approach.

Mexico’s new foreign policy direction follows a similar path to Canada. You recognize that democracies must be fortified by measures that seek to address poverty, instability and conflict, and specifically the issues of environmental degradation, and human rights.

We must do all we can – and Canadians are determined to do our part – to protect the democracies of the hemisphere and make them stronger. Together we have forged strong tools. We have the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which was conceived at the April 2001 Quebec City Summit of the Americas. We have the Quebec City Summit Declaration and Plan of Action that commits us to reduce poverty and work toward social and democratic development. We have the Inter-American Convention against Corruption to strengthen the development of democratic institutions. We have the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas to strengthen the role of legislatures. We have the Inter-American Convention against Terrorism – which Canada was the first to ratify – to coordinate our hemisphere’s fight against terrorism.

We also have momentum toward establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas, to promote trade and economic prosperity that is sustainable and fairly shared.

We have many tools at our disposal, but they are effective only if we use them together, in a coordinated way.

No nation – no matter how strong and powerful – can be effective acting alone. Today’s issues – global terrorism, crime and corruption, and environmental damage require multi-lateral and coordinated solutions.

Canada has developed a strong belief in the value of a multilateral approach to global problems. Multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the Organization of American States are essential to managing our evermore integrated world. It is through these organizations that we can work together toward a more secure hemisphere.

We have the means at our disposal to build strong and well-governed institutions, resolve conflicts, fight terrorism, organized crime, and illegal drug trafficking. With perseverance, we can make this hemisphere a place where each individual can live freely and in safety.

World events have shocked us profoundly.

We are faced with the harsh truth that our personal human security is intimately linked to the security of strangers living continents away. We have learned that great powers are not safe from danger. Wealth cannot buy safety. Military might is no guarantee of security.

To protect our own security we must take action to advance human development in places far away from our borders.

By helping people lift themselves out of poverty, we advance our own security, prosperity and well-being. In the long run, the issues of poverty, trade, and development are as important to a secure, stable world as addressing the immediate threats we face from terrorism.

I am proud of Canada’s leadership in promoting human security on the international scene. Working within the United Nations, the G-8, and The Human Security Network, we will take action in favour of governance and accountability, conflict resolution, and peace.

Canada’s engagement has made a difference throughout the world. The Ottawa Convention for the elimination of landmines is one good example. The influence of the Ottawa Convention has gone beyond the borders of signatory states. It has made the use of landmines a much broader, moral issue that has changed the practices of many states – even the practices of states who were not signatories.

Another area where Canada took the lead was in the establishment of the International Criminal Court – another key element in the global human security agenda. With the landmark creation of this body, we strengthened human security around the globe because heinous crimes will no longer go unpunished.

The worst criminals on the world stage – who were so seldom brought to justice before – will feel the full weight of justice. They will be made responsible for their crimes and face the consequences of their actions.

Prosperity, security, and peace. Together, Mexico and Canada have achieved much.

While it is true that the other side of this equation – poverty, instability, and conflict – gets more headlines, we must not get discouraged. As any experienced politician will know – and I think with almost 40 years in politics I can consider myself experienced – good news stories seldom make the headlines.

The quiet efforts to build trade and prosperity, strong democratic institutions, and instruments to avoid conflict, make a lasting difference and form the background of many a success story. And we must agree that the partnership and friendship between Mexico and Canada is a success story.

Our bilateral cooperation has been so mutually beneficial. Now is our opportunity to work together so that these benefits are enjoyed by more people and to help other nations of the hemisphere follow our example. Even in the face of difficult situations, we must not give up our efforts to promote prosperity, security, and peace.

On the contrary, we must work harder to ensure that opportunity and prosperity make their way into more communities and households. We must work on behalf of all citizens of the Americas, indeed of the world, so that more may enjoy the benefits we share.

Prosperity, security and peace are the building blocks of strong democratic nations. Let us use our experience, our commitment, and the tools of multilateralism to continue building them, block by block, together.

Vive le Canada, Vive le Mexique. Thank you very much.

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