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Toronto, Ontario
Thank you.

We are the big tent at the centre of Canadian politics. And we always will be.

Our opponents call us names. They throw mud. They send hate mail and attack ads. And in their spare time, they pretend to run the Government of Canada.

Recently, they’ve accused us of trying to start a “culture war.” But let’s be clear:

We didn’t end a 25-year consensus on a woman’s right to choose—they did.

We didn’t cut Toronto Pride, and attack the CBC—they did.

We didn’t divide rural and urban Canada over gun control—they did.

We didn’t tell women’s groups to “shut the f— up,” or lose their funding—they did.

Ce n’est pas nous qui avons divisé l’Est et l’Ouest du pays sur les changements climatiques et les énergies propres. C’est eux.

Ce n’est pas nous qui avons dit que les artistes et les créateurs sont des enfants gâtes et des élitistes. C’est eux, les Conservateurs.

That’s how Stephen Harper does business.

We are better than this. We are better than this as a country.

And let’s be clear about something else:

We didn’t drop you into a 54-billion-dollar hole—he did.

We kept our promises—he didn’t.

He promised smaller government. Then he increased spending by 25 percent.

He promised not to run a deficit. Then he put us in deficit before the recession.

He promised not to raise taxes. Then he taxed income trusts and raised payroll taxes.

Stephen Harper flies around, boasting about our economy. And it’s true—Canada is better off than some other countries.

But that is no thanks to Stephen Harper. It’s thanks to the Canadian people, and Liberal policies that Stephen Harper and his party opposed at every turn.

When Paul Martin was cutting taxes and paying down debt, they voted against every measure.

And when Jean Chrétien was regulating the banks, Stephen Harper wanted to deregulate them.

Thank goodness he wasn’t prime minister.

Canada is better off today because of what Liberals did: ten years of balanced budgets. Ten years of debt repayment. Ten years of tax cuts. Ten years of investment in learning, innovation, and infrastructure. A sound CPP. 12 straight payroll tax cuts. And the best banking system in the world.

There is only one party whose fiscal record stands up: ours, not his.

We’re also the only party that’s talking openly and honestly about the future.

Plus tôt cette année, à la conférence de Montréal, nous avons réuni quelques uns des plus grands penseurs et preneurs de décisions du Canada. Nous avons aussi eu plus de vingt-cinq mille personnes qui ont participé via Internet et dans des événements parallèles d’un bout à l’autre du Canada.

Nous avons discuté du Canada que nous voulons pour 2017, le 150ème anniversaire de notre pays.

At the Montréal conference, we changed how politics is done in this country.

We threw open the doors and windows. 25,000 people joined us, from Whitehorse to Fredericton.

We talked about the Canada we want in 2017, the 150th anniversary of our country. We talked about the challenges that are coming our way.

‘Challenges’ is too polite; it’s a freight train coming down the track.

An ageing population. Rising household debt. Skilled labour shortages. Soaring healthcare costs and retirement costs.

The message we heard in Montréal was: Wake up. Get ready. These things are happening.

Since Montreal, a lot has happened: interest rates are on the rise, and that will put pressure on every middle class family with a mortgage, and every government that has to borrow money.

And every government is borrowing money. The sovereign debt crisis is not happening on another planet. It’s coming our way.

Stephen Harper doesn’t want to talk about any of this. He lives in the paradise of an eternal present—where the recession is over, and where right-wing ideologies discredited in the 90s can take up where they left off, as if nothing had happened.

Look no further than his number one economic policy: 6 billion dollars in additional tax cuts for profitable corporations, every year.

Now, our record proves that the Liberal Party is committed to competitive corporate tax rates.

But we’re competitive already—second-lowest in the G7, 25 percent lower than the Americans.

Why? Because of a decade of Liberal tax cuts.

We will cut corporate taxes again, but not when recovery is fragile, not when we’re in a sovereign debt crisis, and not when we’re in a 54-billion-dollar deficit.

We will cut corporate taxes—when this country can afford it.

The difference between us and them?

They trust tired right wing ideologies.

We trust the facts, and the facts are: we need to get this deficit under control, and we need to invest in Canadians.

So we’ll push the ‘pause’ button on corporate tax cuts.

We’ll reduce the deficit to 1 percent of GDP within two years of taking office, and then declining every year until the books are balanced.

And we’ll do what Stephen Harper hasn’t done, for four years—we’ll invest in Canada’s people.

The question we asked in Montréal was not, what could we do, but, rather, what must we do, to get Canada ready for the future.

And so, we have chosen three core priorities for a future Liberal government: learning, care, and Canadian leadership in the world.

First: learning.

A few weeks ago, I was at a high school in Winnipeg. I did what I always do; sat on a stool and took questions, many of them from Aboriginal young people. And then something happened.

After answering questions, I went up to a young man, he must have been about 15. He was a little bit mussed up, he looked a little tired. I patted him on the arm and I said, ‘Hang in there. Finish high school.’

He looked at me for a long time, and then he said, ‘You have no idea.’

And he pointed to the gymnasium door at the back of the hall, and he said, ‘when I go out that door, it’s a jungle. And I don’t know whether I’m going to be able to come back. And I don’t know whether I’m going to be able to finish.’

As Liberals, we say to that young man—we say to all young Canadians who stand at the cross-roads between hope and despair—

We will stand by you ‘til you finish high school. We will stand by you ‘til you finish post-secondary. We will stand by you ‘til you have the solid ground of Canadian life under your feet.

And in standing with you, we stand for the principle that is at the heart of being a Liberal: we are all in this together. We stand or fall together. Every Canadian must have an equal chance to share the full promise of Canadian life.

Keeping that promise—and God only knows how far short we are—all starts with learning.

Affordable early learning and childcare spaces in every part of Canada, for every family that needs them.

Equality of educational opportunity for every Aboriginal Canadian, from primary through post-secondary.

A pledge to every Canadian middle-class family that worries how it will pay for the post-secondary education of their children: if they get the grades, they get to go.

A pledge to invest in skills training, language training, and adult literacy—so that every Canadian with a learning disability, every Canadian with literacy problems, every new Canadian who needs to learn English or French—every single person in this country gets a fair chance at the Canadian dream.

Equality of opportunity is the heart of the Liberal social vision. But it’s also the heart of our economic vision.

Conservatives want Canadians to believe they have to choose between equality and economic success, just as they want Canadians to believe you have to choose between environmental stewardship and economic progress.

We reject these false and tired choices.

Educational equality for all Canadians is the key to unlock our economic future—when 70 percent of jobs will soon require post-secondary education—just as Canadian environmental leadership can put our country back where it belongs: at the head of the pack.

Our second priority is care. We can’t have a productive and competitive society when families are out of the labour market, caring for loved ones at home.

I speak with a certain amount of authority and passion here. I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s.

Millions of families in this country go through the same anguish that my brother and I did.

Our party must be there for those families.

A few months ago, a man who suffers from ALS—Lou Gehrig’s Disease—came to meet with me in my office. His wife was with him.

They told me that the EI system gives her six weeks of compassionate leave benefits, and that’s it. Six weeks to care for the man she loves.

We’re a better country than that. We know that a country can be compassionate and competitive at the same time. In fact, you can’t be competitive, unless you are compassionate.

A new Liberal government will do more to help families care for loved ones at home.

We’ll also protect workers’ pensions, especially those on long-term disability. And we’ll create new ways to save for retirement, with a supplementary CPP.

Our third priority is Canadian leadership in the world. Our party has to stand for a passionate internationalism, a passionate commitment to the world.

Under Stephen Harper’s leadership, we’ve become a big country that acts small.

We’ve seen it with climate change. We’ve seen it with maternal and reproductive health. We’ve seen it with international trade.

At the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen last December, the message from the international community was, ‘Canada, please leave the room so we can get something done.’

We can never let that happen again.

We can lead the world in the fight against climate change. We can lead the world on clean energy.

We can speak out in the world—and we can speak in our own voice—and a Liberal government will lead the way. The party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms must speak for those rights and freedoms overseas.

But our challenge is not just to stand for peace and human rights on the international stage. We need to change the way we think about ourselves. We need to embrace, to rejoice, in what we are fast becoming: the most open, most international society on earth.

Nearly twenty percent of our population was born overseas. We speak every language on the planet, plus our two official ones. Two million Canadians work outside the country at any given time.

We need more Canadians out in the world, not less. More connections for trade and tourism, not less.

My opponents attack me for having worked outside the country. They say it makes me less of a Canadian. But I’ll tell you something—I think it makes me more of a Canadian.

Because you look around this country—you look around this room—and you see the incredible richness of our people. We speak the languages of the world. We understand the cultures of the world.

This is an incredible asset for Canada—and I want more young people to go out and come back, out and back, out and back, testing themselves against the world, being enriched by the world, and coming home to make Canada stronger. That’s a goal worthy of our great country.

So this is the choice that we will offer Canadians.

On one hand, a Conservative government that wants more corporate tax cuts with borrowed money.

On the other hand, a Liberal alternative that freezes corporate taxes, fights the deficit, and makes targeted investments in our future—learning, care, and leadership in the world.

In our proudest moments, our party has summoned our fellow citizens to build the country we love.

We are the party of Medicare, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, fiscal responsibility, and national unity.

And what these achievements have in common is that we have them in common—a visionary optimism about what we can do together—as one great people, sharing one great country.

So now we must make the case for change—for a Canada where every child gets an equal shot. A Canada that leads by example.

The Canada we imagine when we are at our best—compassionate in our prosperity, united in our leadership.

That’s the Canada we want—that’s what we’ll celebrate in 2017, the 150th anniversary of our country. That’s what we’ll build together.

So let us begin.

Thank you.