Prime Minister launches Canadian Nurses Association's centennial year

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Good morning.

Thank you Tony for your kind introduction and thank you all for that generous welcome. 

Before I begin, I’d like to thank the Canadian Nurses Association and President Marlene Smadu for inviting me to participate in this, the kick-off of the CNA’s centennial year.

Usually it is Her Majesty the Queen who delivers 100th Birthday wishes in Canada, but she couldn’t be here today so I hope you don’t mind me coming as a stand-in.

I’d also like to thank Sick Kids Hospital – including President and CEO Mary-Jo Haddad – for hosting this historic event.

It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate venue. Sick Kids has been healing Canadian children for well over a century.

The same reverence for life, commitment to excellence and compassion for our fellow human beings has guided this hospital and the CNA throughout both their histories. 

I’m also honoured to share an audience with 14 nurses from across Canada – nurses who are being recognized for their exemplary leadership and diverse contributions to our national healthcare system.

Collectively they represent the amazing breadth of specialization and expertise in modern Canadian nursing.

Nurses, someone once observed, are with us every step of the way in life.

They greet and cloak us at the moment of birth;  they assist us in times of personal illness and injury; they inform and comfort us when we’re tending to our loved ones; and they are often at our bedside when our journey is done.

Canadian nurses, I’m proud to say, are among the very best in the world. Not only is their training second to none, but Canadian nurses also have a hard-earned and well-deserved reputation for combining empathy with skill and grace under pressure.

An equally deserved characteristic of Canadian nurses, in my view, is courage.

Canadian history is filled with stories of nurses who lived and worked in extraordinarily difficult and dangerous conditions.

In the settlement era, nurses were often the only source of local medical expertise and care.

To this day, in fact, nurses are often the front-line health workers in our small, remote communities, especially on First Nation reserves and in the far North.

Nurses volunteered in huge numbers to go overseas during the First and Second World Wars – and shared the grim realities and real dangers with those who faced combat.

They risked their own lives to save fellow Canadians during the devastating influenza of 1919.

And as recently as the 2003 SARS crisis right here in Toronto, Canadian nurses demonstrated once again that their first thought is for their patients, even when it means putting themselves in danger.

As the national voice of more than 130,000 of the 270,000 registered nurses working in Canada today, the Canadian Nurses Association deserves a lot of credit for the high quality of nursing in Canada.

You have made tremendous contributions to primary health reform, improving practice environments and pressing for better, more consistent regulatory policies from coast to coast.

I’m sure I can speak for the Minister when I say that the CNA is a strong and effective advocate for nurses.

And I know nurses appreciate these efforts.

The CNA has quite a schedule of activities planned to mark its centennial year. 

I’m particularly interested in the symposium on health and the environment scheduled for this spring. 

This is, of course, a topic of great importance to the federal government and I look forward to receiving the results of your deliberations.

Once again, congratulations to the Canadian Nurses Association on your centennial.

And thank-you to all the nurses here and across the country who have dedicated their lives to caring for our fellow Canadians.

Our government is committed to making Canada stronger, safer and better, and we depend on selfless, hard-working and talented Canadians like you to help make it happen.

In closing, I’d like to encourage all Canadians to reflect this year on the vital role nurses play in our society and in our personal lives, and to take the time to wish a nurse Happy Birthday.

Thank-you.

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