Hello, everyone. Today I conclude my participation in the United Nations General Assembly. 

Over the past few days, with leaders from around the world, I have worked on important issues like environmental protection, the fight against poverty, and gender equality.

As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this year, Canada continues to reaffirm the importance of the rule of law and the rules-based international order. We need these rules to foster the stability that is essential to global prosperity and economic growth. Yesterday, at the UN Security Council, I called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine immediately, completely, and unconditionally. On top of the horrors caused by Putin in Ukraine, Russia’s war is causing global inflation, which hurts all of us. Russia is weaponizing energy and food, leading millions to face shortages.

Canada will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes, and we will always stand up to defend the rule of law and the rules-based international order.

Over the past few years, many challenges—like Russia’s war in Ukraine, the pandemic, and global inflation—have shown us how interconnected we all are. It’s increasingly clear that economic policy is climate policy, is security policy, is social policy. A good example of this is gender equality, one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Gender equality plays a key role in achieving all of the other SDGs. The latest World Bank estimates show that GDP per capita would be almost 20% higher if all gender employment gaps were to be closed. Discrimination is holding all of us back, not just women and girls. Whether it’s gender equality or other SDGs, our targets cannot be understood and effectively addressed in isolation. And that’s also true for climate action.

Here at the United Nations, I spoke of Canada’s efforts to fight climate change while making life more affordable and creating jobs. I announced new commitments to further reduce pollution, including methane emissions. I also announced funding to support countries that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and for which we need to ensure access to assistance. And I spoke with leaders from all around the world about the next steps to take to protect our oceans, develop clean energies, and grow sustainable economies.

We know that our citizens are living the realities of climate change, so I invited two Canadian firefighters to speak to leaders about the need to keep increasing our ambition. Back in 2021, in Glasgow, I launched the Global Carbon Pricing Challenge, which brings countries together on cutting emissions through pollution pricing. Chile, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, and New Zealand have already joined. The EU Commission has also confirmed its support, and yesterday we announced that Norway, Denmark, Vietnam, and Côte d’Ivoire are joining, too. And we’re continuing our work so that more countries join us in the months to come. This system not only fights climate change in Canada, it also puts money back in people’s pockets.

This morning, I also had a meeting with several partners to discuss the situation in Haiti. Our objective is to promote Haitian-led solutions to the crisis and to mobilize support from the region and the world. Canada will continue to support Haiti. We will invest $45 million to help feed up to 100,000 children at school every day for five years. We will invest in the United Nations Development Fund’s pooled fund for justice in order to help fight violence against women, among other things, and we will continue to help strengthen the Haitian National Police.

In addition to this assistance, today we are announcing new sanctions against three members of Haiti’s economic elite. I would once again like to thank all those who were there this morning and all those who are actively working on solutions to help Haitians.

Before I end today, I want to say a few words about the Affordable Housing and Groceries Act, the first piece of legislation introduced by our government this fall. This bill will amend the Competition Act to better protect families and consumers and help stabilize grocery prices for Canadians and it will remove the federal GST on the construction of new apartment buildings to help get more rental units built faster. I urge opposition leaders back home to help us get today’s real solutions passed quickly. We’re focused on making life more affordable for Canadians and we’ll be continuing this work in the days and weeks to come.

Thank you for being here.