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Prosperity reigns in confident Canada.

Article Excerpt
Canada's confidence as a nation of influence, and personal identity, is skyrocketing. Canada and the government are asked to use this new confidence to develop the nation into what Canadians want it to be. Focus should be put on restructuring healthcare, continuing multilateralism, boosting the economy and living standards, and keeping Canada beautiful and healthy by ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Canada's sovereignty depends upon it. Speech to the University of Toronto, Ontario, November 12, 2002.

My first memory of speaking in front of a public audience was during my first year of high school in grade nine. I was part of a debating team and the resolution was resolve that Canada should seek economic integration with the United States. Now that was 40 years ago. More than that actually. And I tell you that not to put emphasis on how long ago I went to high school but rather just to remind you that the subject of our relationship with the United States, issues of identity, issues of sovereignty have been around in Canada for as long as we've had a confederation.

It's inevitable of course when you put a country of our population against a country of our neighbours that those issues are going to arise. Since the awful events of September 2001 those questions are more and more in the context of security--of joint efforts to fight terrorism. But it's more then just a question of borders. It's more then just a question of access to the American markets. It's however important those questions are. It's ultimately a question of what kind of country we want. It's an issue of defining our principal interests as a nation and developing a strategy for protecting them.

It's a question of borders of a different kind. The frontiers of nationhood; the borders of sovereignty. And it's that subject I'd like to speak about this morning. Not in the sense of laying out answers, necessarily. But I hope more in the sense of starting a conversation. I think it's important as Canadians that we talk about these questions, frankly, and often. That we work together towards some consensus on the Canadian view toward what our strategic interests are, and what's the most effective way of protecting them.

I suppose it's also comforting to know that we're not the only nation that's preoccupied with questions of this kind. For us it's chronic and it's terribly important because of our proximity to the United States and the extraordinary influence it has on our lives. But there's no nation in the world really that hasn't felt the affect of globalization on it's sovereignty. There's no nation in the world whose sovereignty in a strict sense hasn't been diminished as a result of the free flow of talent and information and capital that comes with the opening of international markets, in the wave of globalization over the last 10 or 15 years.

Every country in the world has to...