Check against delivery.

Thank you, Hedy, and thanks to the whole B.C. caucus—Hedy, Sukh, Ujjal, Joyce, Keith.

Thank you to our election readiness group, our senators, and the LPC(BC) executive for keeping us strong in this province.

Thanks to the great candidates we’re attracting, right across the province. Gold-medal talent. Thank you, Ross .

Thank you finally to Mae Brown, Liberal legend, who is here with us today. 90 and still going strong.

It’s good to be back in Whistler, and it’s good to be here with you. Thank you for your loyalty and devotion to the party.

You’re here—I’m here—because we believe in this party. In its traditions, in its future, in its responsibility to our fellow citizens.

Canadians need us. We can’t afford to let them down.

I’m ready to fight for Canadians you’re ready to fight for Canadians and together we will win for Canadians.

Our job is to offer a clear alternative to Stephen Harper.

Civility and common purpose in place of cynicism and division.

Idealism in place of opportunism.

Hope instead of fear.

Listening and learning from Canadians, instead of manipulating them.

Telling them the truth, not feeding them fairy-tales.

Offering Canadians a vision of a united and confident future, at a time when our future seems uncertain.

We’re not just in a recession, we’re in a fundamental restructuring of the global economy.

Canada has to find its place in a new world—where fossil fuels are expensive, carbon has a price, brain power and intellectual property drive our economy, and the markets of the future are in China and India, not just the United States.

Canadians are ready to take on this new world. You can see it here in B.C.

But Canadians are looking for a government that plans for the future, instead of just scheming for its own re-election.

A government that does what only good governments can do, bring Canadians together around shared objectives: creating the jobs of tomorrow, retirement security and health care for all.

A government as compassionate, creative, competent and courageous as the Canadian people.

A Liberal government.

Instead, we have Stephen Harper. He doesn’t believe in government at all.

Oh, he likes power, all right. He likes politics.

Everything is political with him. I know—I’m twelve feet away from him in the House of Commons. Feel for me. Feel my pain.

Stephen Harper craves power, but he doesn’t believe in the positive power of government to create opportunity and hope for all Canadians.

He doesn’t. We do.

He’s been in power for four years, and you know what he’ll be remembered for? His lasting legacy? His attack ads.

The 24-hour non-stop politics of spite.

Stephen Harper’s office is directing Conservative MPs to mail out thousands of flyers—at taxpayers’ expense—accusing his opponents of anti-Semitism.

Irwin Cotler? Anita Neville? It’s just unbelievable.

Stephen Harper would rather divide communities than build a consensus against anti-Semitism, terrorism, and hatred.

And all in an effort to win votes.

This is unworthy of his office. And it must stop.

But even more troubling is the Afghan detainee torture scandal.

The Conservatives were warned about torture dozens of times by their own public servants.

First, they turned a blind eye. Then, they attempted a cover-up.

And when that didn’t work, the Harper government did what they do best. Smear a courageous public servant who blew the whistle.

This would be bad enough even without the consequences for Canada on the world stage.

The Harper government has tarnished our reputation abroad.

Our troops deserve better than this. They deserve better than deceit and cover-up. They’re not on the other side of the world to condone these tactics. That’s not the Canadian way.

These sorry incidents remind us why we’re here.  Four years of this has been bad enough. Four more years is just unthinkable. We’re the only people who can stop him. And we must.

Four years of Harper economics have taken this country from surplus to deficit, from growth to stagnation.

The stimulus was supposed to create jobs—to position Canada for the opportunities of tomorrow.

Instead, they’re doing routine maintenance on government buildings, and calling it stimulus.

They’ll change the doorknobs on a government building  and put up a big blue sign out front, and hand out giant cheques with Conservative logos on them—this isn’t investment. It’s advertising.

Another example. The Canada Line.

Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin invested in the Canada Line.

The Conservatives are spending your tax dollars covering the SkyTrain in big blue partisan colours. That’s their idea of investment. It’s not ours.

The Conservatives spent ten times more on promoting their Re-Election Action Plan than on H1N1 awareness.

The stimulus money isn’t going to places of high unemployment.

It’s not going to attack joblessness among youth—the highest in a generation.

It’s not going to hard hit forestry regions that need help most.

It’s going explicitly to Conservative ridings.

Canadians wanted an economic plan. What we got was a Conservative re-election plan. We deserve better.

And all these cheap politics aren’t cheap at all. The deficit’s gone from zero to 32 to 50, and now 56 billion.

A million-and-a-half Canadians are still out of work, while Stephen Harper’s spending more than any government in Canadian history.

With Harper, you get half the leadership at twice the price.

We accept the necessity of deficit spending in a recession. But running a deficit means borrowing from your kids. And if you’re going to borrow billions from your kids, you’d better have a darn good

reason.

Stephen Harper’s party favours aren’t good enough. After four years, this government is all cheques—and no balance.

Ask yourself: what, really, has Harper achieved in four years?

He promised not to tax income trusts—and he did.

He promised not to raise payroll taxes—and he’s just done so.

He promised not to appoint senators—and he appointed 27 in a single year, the most on record.

He promised not to run a deficit—and he’s just given us the biggest in Canadian history.

Stephen Harper walks around pretending to be a man with principles and priorities.

But there isn’t a promise he won’t break to stay in power.

People ask us what we’d do differently.

Our priorities are clear:

Fight for new markets.

Create clean energy jobs.

Stand up for Canadian technologies.

Secure healthcare and pensions.

And invest in learning so that every child, every new Canadian, every Aboriginal Canadian gets a fair shot at life—no matter where in the country they live.

Les autres pays préparent l’avenir. Ils investissent aujourd’hui pour créer les emplois de demain. Ils investissent pour développer le savoir et le savoir-faire de leurs citoyens.

Other countries aren’t standing still. But Stephen Harper is. Our future is slipping away. And it doesn’t need to be that way.

Canadians don’t want it to be that way. And Liberals won’t let it be that way.

In the U.S., President Obama is putting six times more per capita into clean energy and research than the Conservatives.

Right now, Canada is investing less in renewable energy per capita than the State of Alaska.

So when it comes to clean energy, Stephen Harper isn’t just behind Barack Obama. He’s behind Sarah Palin.

We’re three weeks out from the U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen.

And Stephen Harper’s negotiating position is, “just say no.”

The Conservatives are going to Copenhagen with nothing—nothing—to say.

That’s not leadership.

This party is ready to lead on the environment: protecting our boreal forests, our watersheds, our lakes and rivers, our sensitive marine habitats, and doing what the conservatives haven’t done in 4 years—institute a cap and trade system to get our carbon emissions down.

Look at another area where we need to lead—the digital economy.

Il y a dix ans, nous avions le meilleur programme au monde de développement des services en ligne.

In 1997, we were the first country in the world to connect all our schools to the internet.

Now we rank twenty-eighth out of thirty major economies in terms of broadband internet speed and cost. Twenty-eighth. Only Mexico and Poland are worse.

We’ve got to hook up every rural, remote and northern community in Canada—so we can build opportunity in every region.

If Stephen Harper won’t do it, we will.

Harper’s also taking us in the wrong direction on crime.

He’s taking us due south, to a justice system that talks tough but acts dumb—that thinks long sentences alone will keep our communities safe.

They tried that approach in the United States They’ve put two-and-a-half million people in jail—more than four times the population of Vancouver—and it didn’t work.

We’ve supported tougher sentences—in government and in opposition. But we also need to give young people something to be part of, something to belong to that isn’t a gang, somewhere to go that isn’t the street.

We need to tell young people that if you break the law we will punish you—but we will do everything in our power to keep you from going wrong in the first place.

And that does not make us soft on crime. We’re the party that took on child predators in the 1990s. We tackled organized crime. We modernised youth criminal justice. And we are proud to stand with our

police—and stand for smart, effective gun control.

Police officers check the gun registry nine thousand times a day—and it costs less in a year than the Conservatives have spent on their partisan advertisements in the last three months.

And if you register your car, and you register your mortgage, and you register your dog, then for heaven’s sake you should register your gun, too.

We will make the registry work for all Canadians. We will work with rural Canada to make it better, to make it easier. But we will not abandon our police officers, we will not abandon gun control, and we

will not let Stephen Harper kill the gun control registry.

Stephen Harper’s agenda is no secret. He wants our federal government to be a bystander, not a nation-builder. He wants to build prisons, not day care spaces. He wants our voice in the world to be an echo.

We Liberals believe in government as nation-building, and we have the record to prove it: Medicare, the Canada Pension Plan, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, official bilingualism and multiculturalism, and

the best public finances in the world.

We summoned up the best in Canadians and together we built the country we love—and we won’t let Harper take it apart!

That’s why I knocked on doors for Mike Pearson. That’s why I organized for Mr. Trudeau.

Because I’m in politics for the same reason as you: to renew a great tradition, to defend Liberal values, to serve our country, and lead Canada to its brightest days.

We are a serious people. You ask us to do something difficult, we will never let you down.

I learned that as a reporter in Bosnia, in Rwanda, in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Everywhere I’ve travelled, in the conflicts zones of the world, I’ve seen our peacekeepers, diplomats, and aid workers make us proud.

They share the Canadian example—of peace, order, and good government—with the world. But they need a government that has the will—the grit—to back them up.

The world needs Canada at its best. Because in a world ravaged by linguistic, ethnic and religious conflict, we are a beacon of hope. And we need a government that makes us shine bright once again.

That’s the kind of leadership only Liberals can provide.

Leadership means thinking big again. Restoring Canada’s ambition.

The Vancouver Olympics show what this country can achieve when we do think big.

But when the Games are over, what then? What common goal can we offer to inspire our country to our best?

2017 marks the 150th anniversary of our federation. It is a rendezvous with our destiny, and the time to prepare for that rendezvous is now.

Our party must own that anniversary. We must be the party defining the national goals we want to achieve.

We must set ourselves the target of being the best educated, the healthiest, the greenest and the most international society on earth.

These are goals worthy of a great people. These are goals worthy of a great party. These are goals we can achieve together.

Let’s get to work to give Canada the leadership we deserve.

Thank you. Merci.