Address on the occasion of an address to a joint session of Parliament by the President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel

Speakers of the House of Commons and Senate; Honourable Members; Ladies and Gentlemen.

Once in a great while, members of the two Houses of the Canadian Parliament put aside partisan differences, silence our debates and come together on our very, very best behaviour. For anyone who has ever watched our daily proceedings, such occasions are nothing short of a miracle.

And I must admit...they are right! Especially today.

For we have in our presence a leader. A truly remarkable leader. Whose perseverance in the face of tyranny. Whose dignity in the face of persecution, helped make possible the democratic transformation of his people, his country and his continent ten years ago. A transformation which, by any standard, was a miracle.

I speak, of course, of the President of the Czech Republic: Vaclav Havel.

The great Victor Hugo once wrote that not even the strongest army in the world can defeat an idea whose time has come. But it is also true that for any idea to triumph in its time, there must first be a champion, a leader, a symbol.

Mr. President, in your long crusade for freedom and justice, you led a mighty struggle against some of the strongest enemies known to human progress: fear and oppression. Armed only with the courage of your convictions and the rightness of your cause, you triumphed.

Your childhood was spent, first, under foreign occupation. And then under the consolidation of a brutal totalitarian regime. A regime that chose to block your aspirations in life. In most of us, wounds like these might have created bitterness and a sense of personal futility. But in you, they fuelled the writing and acts of conscience which captured the longing of your countrymen and the admiration of the entire world.

You revealed the hollowness of an imposed political system. And your words and deeds helped secure its doom. When the time came, after so many years of privation, you were the only real choice to lead a country that, all at once, was new again. To define its new politics. Its economic transformation. And its new relationships within Europe and beyond.

Mr. President, I would like to quote from your first New Year's address to your people: " You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free and democratic; of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic that serves the individual and that, therefore, holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn."

When you visited Canada for the first time, in early 1990, that vision was still to be made real. Today, the Czech Republic is one of the leading democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. Your economic transformation, despite certain challenges today, will lead toward membership in the European Union.

You are a partner of Canada in NATO, the OECD and you are active in the WTO. Our soldiers are keeping the peace in Bosnia. And we make common cause in the OSCE.

You have sent some of your finest sons and daughters to Canada over the past century. Who have become some of our most distinguished business leaders, academics, writers and hockey players! In return, over the past decade, Canada has done its best to support your country in re-establishing democracy and re-creating a market economy. And together we are also seeking to build new trade and investment links of mutual benefit.

Mr. President, your personal journey, and that of the Czech Republic, speak to how far the cause of freedom and human rights have come in Europe. But the crisis in Kosovo is a stark reminder of how much further there is to go. And, if I might be so bold, if that journey is to have lasting meaning in the Europe of the new millennium, then its simple and powerful lessons must be applied -- without hesitation -- in that complex and troubled land.

The people of Kosovo -- and everywhere in Europe -- must one day feel the same security and attachment to their home lands that you described in your dream of a humane republic. Ideals that you have done so much to make a reality in the Czech Republic of today. And I am fortified by the knowledge that someone of your unshakeable faith in the forces of justice and right has taken up this cause -- without hesitation.

Together, with our NATO allies, we are doing the right thing in Kosovo. Together, we will prevail! We live in an age of overstatement, Mr. President. Where the meaning and value of words are often made cheap by excess rhetoric. But for you there can be no overstatement. It is my great pleasure and honour to introduce to this Honourable House, a beacon of freedom. A man whose achievements repudiate the idea that poets and dreamers have no place among statesmen.

Ladies and gentlemen: a poet, a dreamer, a statesman: Vaclav Havel.