Hello everyone, Happy Canada Day!

I’m so happy my family and I are here with you to celebrate Canada Day – this year in person!

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You come with your own stories, your own backgrounds, your own lived experiences, and you celebrate together the country that we love and share. Because Canada Day is Canadians’ day.

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This country wouldn’t be what it is today without the people who built it and those who continue to build it up every day. People like Tristan Durocher, a young Métis man who raises awareness and advocates for suicide prevention, and who empowers Indigenous youth through music and art. People like Dr. Emily Stowe, a physician who helped create Canada’s first medical school for women in the late 1800s, at a time when schools didn’t allow women to study medicine.

Canada is about people who are constantly fighting for something instead of against.

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When Terry Fox ran to help find a cure for cancer, he was fighting to better other people’s lives. When Jean Augustine became the first Black woman elected to Parliament, she inspired a generation of young girls to follow in her footsteps.

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Our country wouldn’t be what it is today without the people who built it. People like astronaut David Saint-Jacques, who continues to reach higher and further frontiers. Heroes like Guy Lafleur, who showed us that we can all be champions.

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And our exceptional artists, like Deborah Cox and Charlotte Cardin, and all the others who performed for us today, who tell our stories with all their layers. Their art helps us better understand, understand each other better.

Of course, Canada is also the story of people who work hard a little more behind the scenes but on the frontlines. People like Pam, Gloria, Carlo and Cristina, and so many other nurses I had the chance to speak with during the pandemic. They are true Canadian heroes, so today and every day we celebrate them!

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On this day, we also celebrate those whose names are not well known, like the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who, generations ago, came to the Prairies to farm the land and put food on people’s tables. We celebrate the women and men in uniform. We celebrate…

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We celebrate the members of the Armed Forces who are there to help us fight wildfires and floods across the country. We also celebrate those deployed around the world, far from their families. I am thinking of the hundreds of people deployed to support our NATO mission in Eastern Europe. They all make sacrifices to ensure the safety of Canadians and to protect our freedom, our values, and our democracy.

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We are standing on the shoulders of everyone who built this country before us, and we work hard every day for those who will follow. All the progress we’ve made didn’t happen by accident, and it won’t continue without effort. We have a responsibility to carry forward this progress to future generations.

Now, I understand that there are serious faults in our history, the location of unmarked graves has served as an opportunity for us all to learn more about that history. I know the pain and the heartbreak this has caused for so many people. Today, we take the time to recommit ourselves to always be there for one another.

Canada has never been perfect, and it’s not perfect now. Yes, Canada is one of the best countries in the world, but our work to make it better never stops.

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Canadians are good people, and we care about each other. Whether it’s defending democracy, protecting the environment, walking the road of reconciliation, or ensuring that everyone can succeed, no challenge is too great if we face it together. And this is what our flag represents, our values and all our efforts to make our country even better.

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There’s no challenge too great if we face it together. This is Canada’s promise, and this is what our flag represents. It represents our accomplishments and our desire to improve. Every time we see the maple leaf, let’s remember the values that it stands for: compassion, hope, responsibility, justice, openness, and hard work.

Let’s remember that while we’re 38 million people living in six time zones from coast to coast to coast, we only have one country to share, protect, and cherish.

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And let’s remember the thousands upon thousands of stories, like Ali’s, a refugee from Uganda, who’s just arrived in Canada. In June, in Toronto, Ali put on a rainbow shirt and celebrated Pride openly for the first time in his life.

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Being able to be who you are, to love whom you love, to chase your dreams, to live without fear, this is the freedom the maple leaf represents.

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To Ali and to those who arrived here last week, last month or last year… to those whose ancestors arrived centuries, or even millennia ago….

To all people in Canada, this is your home, today is your day.

Happy Canada Day everyone!

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