A powerful message from Canada’s Liberal leader in response to Wednesday’s shootings

Canada flag License Some rights reserved by archer10 (Dennis)What would you want a liberal to say in the wake of shocking and violent events in your country? It must be something pretty close to Justin Trudeau’s words, full of dignity, wisdom and empathy.

Watch the video and see the excerpt below:

They want us to forget ourselves. Instead, we will remember. We will remember who we are. We are a proud democracy, a welcoming and peaceful nation, and a country of open arms and open hearts. We are a nation of fairness, of justice, and of the rule of law. We will not be intimidated into changing that.

If anything, these are the values and principles to which we must hold on even tighter. Our dedication to democracy and to the institutions we have built is the foundation of our society, and a continued belief in both will guide us correctly into the future. Staying true to our values in a time of crisis will make us an example to the world. Criminals cannot and will not dictate to us how we act as a nation, how we govern ourselves, or how we treat each other. They cannot and will not dictate our values, and they do not get to decide how we use our shared public spaces.

Today, some speak of the loss of innocence in Canada. This is inaccurate. Canada is not, and has never been, innocent to the threats we face; and we know, as we have always known, that we are not immune. What is true is that we have never let those threats shape us, and we have never bowed to those who mean to undermine our values and our way of life. We have remained Canadians, and this is how we will carry on. We will get answers to how and why this happened. They will be vital in preventing any future attack.

And to our friends and fellow citizens in the Muslim community, Canadians know acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith. Continued mutual cooperation and respect will help prevent the influence of distorted ideological propaganda posing as religion. We will walk forward together, not apart.

Credit to the nice people at Upworthy for doing the transcript.

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11 Comments

  • He’s a star that Justin Trudeau. One to watch. We should be cooperating far more with him…and doing it publicly

    On a technical note, i find the need for a written transcription all the time online rather old fashioned. I thought by now audio and visual things would stand alone. Feels like a backwards step, all this bloody transcribing of everything. His delivery is far more nuanced and the written word does not express that in the same way.

  • Richard Dean 24th Oct '14 - 3:01pm

    The written word is very helpful for those of us who have hearing difficulties!

  • Eddie Sammon 24th Oct '14 - 7:47pm

    The full speech was better, but it still came across a bit weak to me, which is possibly why they too are a third party. We know terrorists are plotting attacks against us, so we can either sit on our hands and hope they target us last, or go out and get them. Lloyd George re-armed in the People’s Budget and it is time to do the same now.

  • @Eddie Sammon

    They have been consistently polling ahead, and healthily beyond the margin of error, of the Conservatives and the NDP since Trudeau became leader. Whilst they were in power for 60 years during the 20th century, they did did hit a rough patch this century – but that seems to be changing.

  • Eddie Sammon 24th Oct '14 - 9:08pm

    Thanks ATF, I just think radical muslims should try to set up their caliphate democratically and tolerance is the wrong thing to prioritise when people are running up to buildings and shooting people. We’ve had two attacks there in a week, why should we be tolerant about that?

    When it comes to these violent extremists you can either fight them or not. You can’t go in half-hearted into a fight or you will lose. I’m not the first liberal to recognise this.

  • Eddie Sammon 24th Oct '14 - 9:22pm

    I still haven’t got across how passionately I feel about this. If we don’t fight: we lose. If we fight half hearted: we draw. So we have to fight properly. I only feel this passionate about the most extreme groups, but if we can’t even find the will to wipe IS out then we have a problem.

    I see myself as a moderate, but if I am feeling like this, and have been since the rise of IS, then I hope others will too and the people will demand more action. Platitudes about freedom and tolerance is just liberal backslapping that doesn’t change events on the ground.

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 24th Oct '14 - 9:37pm

    Eddie, nobody is suggesting that we don’t take Islamic State on. They are a brutal, nasty bunch who have to be stopped. But there are those who would take away our civil liberties needlessly and pin it all on the need for “counter-terrorism” measures. Labour tried to spend squillions on ID cards which would have been ineffective but allowed them to keep tabs on us all.

    If we start surrendering our liberty to spurious security concerns, then the bad guys have won. It really is that simple. Of course there are some compromises you have to accept – like airport security but as a rule, the state should not have the right to interfere with citizen’s liberties and privacy without an extremely good reason.

  • Eddie Sammon 24th Oct '14 - 9:42pm

    Caron, your post has calmed me down. I was sitting here furious. Maybe I just needed someone to emphasize. Thanks. I agree we shouldn’t sacrifice a load of freedoms in response.

  • Caron Lindsay Caron Lindsay 24th Oct '14 - 9:56pm

    I’m glad that helped.

  • Igor Sagdejev 24th Oct '14 - 10:01pm

    IS should be fought as hard as we can. That’s pure evil. But Caron is right that we should not dismantle our own liberties in the process.

  • Exiled Scot 25th Oct '14 - 1:17am

    The problem Caron is we haven’t just started surrendering our liberty we’ve spent 15 years giving it away meekly under Blair and Brown (and now shamefully Cameron and Clegg).

    Liberal Canada won’t introduce secret courts. Nick Clegg did.

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