diplomats-of-canada

"Respect for the dignity of the human being is really the key, to resolving financial and economic crisis, and to give hope to millions of youth who find themselves a bit in a desperate situation in many countries."

"Good offices are very important, it's the work behind the scenes, it's the mediator, it's the credible guarantor."

"Power is real and somebody is going to have it. So, if you would exercise it ethically and in the national interest, why shouldn't it be you? And why shouldn't it have been me?"

"As the years go on and nobody else has done this, I feel an obligation to remind people of what it really meant to be elected the leader of a governing party. The value of it is to inspire others to aspire"

"The idea of delegitimizing the results, as a result of his own vanity, is something that he has taken on and it is very dangerous, the notion that you would want to open a wound and encourage people … to believe somehow an election was stolen from their candidate is really a crime against democracy"

"Unconsented sexual touching is a sexual assault, and somebody who does that, who thinks he has a right to do that, who does it thinking that it’s a reflection of his value because he’s a celebrity, et cetera, I mean that is predation"

"They got to deal with it. [The party] ought not stick its head in the sand. It ought to show leadership. We talked about abortion, we talked about gun control, I dealt with a lot of issues that nobody in their right mind would choose to deal with but they had to be dealt with"

"I'm sorry, if you're not worried about climate change, and you're not worried about resurgent authoritarianism, and you're not a champion of the rights of women to make the contributions they need to make in society, I’m not interested"

"He has released a wave of misogynistic rhetoric in the guise of being opposed to political correctness, the giving permission of people to express the worst misogynistic attitudes is incredibly dangerous and very, very worrisome"

"The things I’ve done are different, but the values and interests that underlie them are quite the same."

"The sad thing is that one of the most enjoyable things in life is singing together with others, but it’s also one of the most efficient ways of spreading a virus."

"Governments are not always the best doctors when it comes to diagnosing economic ailments and prescribing the right treatment"

"Not the sexism that says 'We don't like women,'" she said. "It's the sexism that holds you to a different standard, that doesn't give you the benefit of the doubt, that operates on the assumption that you don't really belong there"

"Because of who you are and what you can do, lots of doors will open for you, and you have to decide which ones to go through."

"[F]acts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too. How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue? ... [C]ollectively, we don’t say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.” ... If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”"

"8 December 2009 per Globe and Mail"

"A fundamental requirement of a Foreign Service Officer is that he or she report on a given situation as observed or understood. It is only in this way that any government can draw conclusions knowledgeably and make its considered decisions, even if at variance with the reports received."

"Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my memory."

"Well, Mr. Prime Minister, I can't waste any more time on you. I must get back to work."

"Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong."

"I have an intensive hatred for discrimination based on colour."

"I am not anti-American. But I am strongly pro-Canadian."

"I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind."

"Everyone is against me - except the people!"

"There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past."

"I was criticized for being too much concerned with the average Canadians. I can't help that; I am one of them!"

"The Prime Minister was the first of the leaders from other lands who was invited to call upon me shortly after I entered the White House; and this is my first trip--the first trip of my wife and myself outside of our country's borders. It is just and fitting, and appropriate and traditional, that I should come here to Canada--across a border that knows neither guns nor guerrillas."

"Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects."

"Nothing, I suppose, could better demonstrate than the Suez crisis the extent to which the United Nations had remained a central factor in our foreign policy. Our problem was, and is, one of long standing, how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will have a strong foundation. It remained my conviction that there could never be more than a second-best substitute for the UN in preserving the peace. Organizations such as NATO were necessary and desirable only because the UN was not effective as a security agency. UNEF was a step in the right direction in putting international force behind an international decision. The birth of that force had been sudden and had been surgical. The arrangements for the reception of the infant were rudimentary, and the midwives had no precedents or genuine experience to guide them."

"When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation... I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down."

"One of the interesting byways in this whole situation (it was perhaps more than a byway) was the conviction expressed when the [Suez Canal] Users' Association was created and the principles established for the international operation of the canal. The Users were absolutely confident, rather arrogantly so, that the Egyptians could not possibly run the canal. They could not produce the pilots, and would have to appeal to the other nations. The Users had only to sit back and the Egyptians would be on their knees saying: "Please run the canal for us." That, of course, did not happen. The canal was run just as efficiently after the Egyptian take-over as in the past. I remember a Norwegian shipowner saying: "Don't worry too much about the details of international control. They'll have to come to us in a few weeks and beg us to run the canal for them because it is a major source of their revenue and they want to make money out of it." The Egyptians made more money from it than ever did the Suez Canal Company."

"Things can be done under the incentive of terror and fear that can not be done when the fear disappears."

"My own views began to change before the next Nazi move, the occupation of Austria in [March] 1938.... No longer was it possible for me to believe that Nazism was a temporary aberration in German politics, that the good sense of the German people would soon take care of the Fuehrer, and that the greater danger to peace was French over-reaction to Hitler's moves, with the United Kingdom supporting such reaction. This feeling was replaced by the fear of aggressive war brought about by the policy of a German regime which now must be considered as evil and savage and an immediate menace to freedom and to peace. This regime could not be allowed to triumph in Europe, for its triumph would be a threat to free men everywhere."

"This was not enough for a minority now demanding much sterner action to meet the Nazi threat. At the head of this group was Winston Churchill. His prestige, however, after his stand during the abdication crisis [in late spring 1937] and his aggressive, bellicose speeches on the need for more arms, was at a low point. Not many listened to him yet. He was still considered an irresponsible failure and an unreliable character."

"Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe. If we ignore this, there will be no peace. There has been a widening of horizons to which in the West we have been perhaps too insensitive. Yet it is as important as the extension of our vision into outer space. Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously."

"True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it because man's words, for good or ill, can now so easily reach the millions. Very often the words are good and even inspiring, the embodiment of our hopes and our prayers for peace. But while we all pray for peace, we do not always, as free citizens, support the policies that make for peace or reject those which do not. We want our own kind of peace, brought about in our own way. The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction. The life of states cannot, any more than the life of individuals, be conditioned by the force and the will of a unit, however powerful, but by the consensus of a group, which must one day include all states. Today the predatory state, or the predatory group of states, with power of total destruction, is no more to be tolerated than the predatory individual."

"Of all our dreams today there is none more important — or so hard to realise — than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality."

"Alfred Nobel decreed that this award should be conferred on someone who, in the opinion of the Committee, should have done the most or the best work to promote fraternity between nations for the abolition and reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. As to the first, I do not know that I have done very much myself to promote fraternity between nations but I do know that there can be no more important purpose for any man's activity or interests. So far as abolishing arms are concerned, those of Nobel's day are now out of date, but I used they will destroy us all. So they must be themselves destroyed. As for the promotion of peace congresses we have had our meetings and assemblies, but the promotion through them of the determined and effective will to peace displaying itself in action and policy remains to be achieved."