Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Belief in liberal freedom and democracy is always belief in it in a particular place, in a national home with histories that only those who are born in a place or who adopt its citizenship can hope to understand.
Free speech is one of our fundamental principles and it's pretty hard to speak freely when people are yelling at you when it's your turn. That would never be allowed in a classroom or in any other kind of meeting.
Certainly, we want to make sure that kids go to school full-bellied, but is that always the government's job to be there to serve people their breakfast? Is it my job to feed my neighbour's child? I don't think so.
I trust Canadians to be able to look at the different parties, the different leaders, the plans, the teams, and make a responsible choice. And I'm very, very confident that's exactly what Canadians are going to do.
The Fair Elections Act in its final form will require every single voter to produce ID showing who they are before they vote. Away from the noise in political Ottawa, everyone understands that this is common sense.
Any reform of that fundamental nature, potentially constitutional, it has to go to the people. It has to be a be a referendum, and that's why it was a plebiscite in all of the provinces in which it's been attempted.
We do send regular e-mail alerts to EI claimants to inform them of jobs available in their skill set, in their communities, so they are aware that these jobs exist and it's just a matter of the employers hiring them.
The fact is Canadians understand that immigration, that people fleeing for their lives, that people wanting to build a better life for themselves and their kids is what created Canada, it's what created North America.
One of the greatest feelings in life is the conviction that you have lived the life you wanted to live-with the rough and the smooth, the good and the bad-but yours, shaped by your own choices, and not someone else's.
Liberal democracy has endured because its institutions are designed for handling morally hazardous forms of coercive power. It puts the question of how far government should go to the cross fire of adversarial review.
Lincoln was not an intellectual, but no one in 200 years understood the language of the King James Bible or learned Blackstone's Laws of England, or Cicero, or the language of the Founding Fathers, better than he did.
I've always favoured proposition over opposition. But we will oppose the government when it's off track. We'll support positive suggestions that we'll bring forward and support the government when it's making progress.
I've always been a youth advocate. I mean, that's been my brand, reaching out to young people. All my life, when I've dealt with youth I'd be thinking back to my own experience. Now I look at my kids and think forward.
We require Canadians who are collecting EI benefits to prove they are looking for work. It's only fair that we require employers looking to benefit from the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to prove they really need it.
Canada's a huge country, so to be able to unite the country through communication satellite technology or to be able to observe it through remote sensing technology from space is a natural fit for a country like Canada.
If Rob Ford decided he wanted to run for the Liberal Party in 2015, we'd say, 'No, sorry, the way you approach things, the way you govern, the way you behave is not suitable to the kind of Liberal team we want to build.'
Ultimate authority in a global system remains with sovereigns. Governments will not have it any other way: politicians face instant rejection from their electorate if they allow transnational authorities to dictate terms.
We're getting companies to invest in Canada, to expand their workforces, to do more R&D. I think people are looking at Canada and realizing we're a place that is building for the long term and where the world's going to be.
Our Government is investing in stronger communities by supporting the important work of charities by reducing their administrative burden, encouraging charitable giving and allowing charities to use modern electronic tools.
Secessionists, whether in Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec or anywhere else, invariably assume that a person must either be Scottish or British, Catalan or Spanish, Quebecois or Canadian. What about those who feel they are both?
One of the things that we have to realize is we cannot get off gas, we cannot get off oil, fossil fuels tomorrow - it's going to take a few decades. Maybe we can shorten it, but there's going to have to be a transition time.
I'm very struck by what you can do in a classroom. I've got 200 students. You don't do partisan politics in a classroom, that's not appropriate. But you want to give them a strong sense that these are the issues that matter.
Fear is a dangerous thing. Once it is sanctioned by the state there is no telling where it might lead. It is always a short path to walk from being suspicious of our fellow citizens to taking actions to restrict their liberty.
Of all the memories I have of my father and of our relationship, none is warmer and more poignant than what happened a year before he died, when he came to visit me while I was teaching at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver.
The politics of personal destruction, the politics of division, the politics of fear, it's all there. It helps you to define the politics of moderation - the politics of democratic respect, the politics of hope - more clearly.
I think we need to price carbon; there's no question about it. The way we do it needs to be based on science and not political debates and attacks, and that's why I'm drawing on experts and best practices from around the world.
I remember the bad times as a succession of painful emotional snapshots: Me walking into the library at 24 Sussex, seeing my mother in tears, and hearing her talk about leaving while my father stood facing her, stern and ashen.
Anytime I meet people who got to make the deliberate choice, whose parents chose Canada, I'm jealous. Because I think being able to choose it, rather than being Canadian by default, is an amazing statement of attachment to Canada.
As all human beings are, in my view, creatures of God's design, we must respect all other human beings. That does not mean I have to agree with their choices or agree with their opinions, but indeed I respect them as human beings.
Bishop Frederick Henry of Calgary is facing at least two official objections to his public statements along with expensive hearings before the Alberta Human Rights Commission for expressing his biblical views on same sex marriage.
As prime minister, I would relinquish to citizens as much of my social, political, and economic control as possible, leaving people to cultivate their own personal prosperity and to govern their own affairs as directly as possible.
You can't be Canadian without being aware of at least one other country, the United States, 'cause it's so important to us. I think we sometimes like to think that, you know, Americans will pay attention to us from time to time, too.
I'd really love to go for a fourth trip into space with maybe Mr. Duceppe and Mr. Boisclair, and I am convinced, I am convinced that after such a trip, Quebec sovereignty will no longer be an issue. Space travel affects us that much.
This pandemic has provided an opportunity to reset. This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to reimagine economic systems, that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.
I think the crux of the matter was that if we were going to become partners in, for example, the International Space Station, we had to gain the respect of a country like the United States and particularly its space organization, NASA.
The old boy network is still too strong in Canadian business. A visit to the Toronto clubs at lunch stands in about as great a contrast to the multicultural, multiracial subway underneath as can be humanly imagined. This is not healthy.
Richard Nixon made a toast to me as a future Prime Minister of Canada when I was 4 months old, sitting as a centerpiece in the middle of a table as my father had plonked me down there. It was more about politeness than any great vision.
If you are ideologically opposed to income splitting for families, why wouldn't you scrap it for seniors? What is the distinguishing principle between income splitting for people with kids and income splitting for people who are retired?
It is time to unleash our economy... to unleash the free market system so that businesses can grow and prosper so that our workers can be rewarded for their work and our economy can relaunch to its rightful place at the head of the pack.
I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis - I'm in favour of legalizing it. Tax and regulate. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model isn't working.
One of the biggest divides in Canada - I said it in 2006, and I said it right through my political career - is urban-rural. Lots of parts of this country feel entirely left behind. And they're mobilized by, you know, the gun control issue.
I'd like to see more Canadians of diverse backgrounds engaging with parties that line up with their convictions and ideologies to make sure that no party gets to run against Muslim Canadians or any other group of Canadians and demonize them.
I want to lead the Progressive Conservative Party, a party that will promote true conservative values and principles. I can tell you right now, I am not the merger candidate. I am not interested in institutional marriages with other parties.
Public service does not necessarily mean service in the House of Commons, and public service is not synonymous with partisan political activity. It comes in a thousand colours, but the common denominator is: it's not about me - it's about we.
I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa, you try to make every barbecue, festival, parade and charity run, but sometimes you feel pulled in 14 directions at once.
Open nominations means it is local Liberals who choose who gets to be their representative. But what that doesn't mean is that somebody can behave any which way and bully other people out of the nomination and then be the last person standing.
There are Americans will find it difficult to believe that the Prime Minister can simply impose candidates on ridings, and can so efficiently move individuals out of private life and into the Cabinet with virtually no resort to the electorate.
If we wander around as politicians jumping at every shadow and desperately afraid of having our words taken out of context or attacks layered on in an unfair way, I think we're actually doing a disrespect to Canadians, to people's intelligence.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, Those who can, do, those who cant, teach, forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
No kid graduating in a political science class in Canada should not understand what's happened to income inequality since the 1970s, period. And then, what do we do about it? It's the biggest problem out there, in all western liberal societies.