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Jack Layton's Speech to the Delegates

Thank you – Merci!

Thank you, Willy and Ed, for your leadership and your confidence in me...and to Audrey McLaughlin, who I know is watching up in the Yukon.

Thank you to the First Nations on whose land we stand…and with whom we stand for the future.

Je remercie aussi Alexa, pour avoir démarré le processus de renouvellement qui a permis ce vote de revitalisation à Winnipeg.
Et je remercie aussi les néo-démocrates de tous les coins du pays qui ont vu le besoin de revitaliser le NPD et de bâtir un parti plus vaste, plus visible et plus vibrant.
And thanks to the thousands of new members who were excited by our solutions and joined us in re-energizing our party…because that’s what this leadership race is about.

How can we re-energize the NDP and build the growing and visible left-wing party Canadians want?

How can we win more seats in Canada’s next Parliament?

Because winning shouldn’t be taboo in the NDP. We must never equate winning with compromising our principles. Because electing more New Democrats means fewer Canadians will die homeless, choke on smog, or leave school because they can’t afford it.

Winning is good.

Good for the NDP. Good for Canadians.

Because it’s no accident that in the decade that saw the NDP go from 44 MP’s to just 14…

Fewer affordable homes have been built…

More pollution is in our air…

And Medicare is being privatized…

Privatized by Ernie Eves here in Ontario, by Ralph Klein in Alberta and by Gordon Campbell in British Columbia.

And let me tell you, Gordon, is it’s a good thing you didn’t hurt yourself in Hawaii. Because then you would have seen what private, for-profit health care looks like.

My friends, brothers and sisters, we need to change all this!…because people aren’t as happy as Gordon Campbell was grinning in his mug shot.

It’s got to change because people are hurting in Canada today.

I’ve seen the plight farm families face.

I’ve stood with Jim Robbins on his farm in Laura, Saskatchewan and seen the withered wheat in a parched field.

I stood there and wondered why the Liberals had abandoned him…abandoned our farmers to George Bush’s trade war and climate change.

And then I remembered, we’re governed by a Liberal government that thinks Western Canada includes Mississauga.

My Western Canada includes places like the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, where I met with homeless people like Tom at the Carnegie Centre and saw the pain that poverty brings.

It’s a pain felt right across this country when communities lose hope.

Communities such as Rushoon, Newfoundland, where Jim family is divided by thousands of kilometers after he had to leave home to find work.

We need to change that.
Oui, nous avons besoin de changer cela.
Et nous pouvons le changer avec l’aide des voix de tous les Canadiens progressistes, incluant les voix des jeunes comme Simon que j’ai rencontré dans un resto-bar de Montréal. Il est fatigué des batailles du passé et veut aller de l’avant… pour bâtir un projet social dont il pourra être fier. .

Nous pouvons le bâtir ensemble, parce que lorsque nous unirons les voix de gauche du Québec avec les voix de gauche de la Saskatchewan, à ce moment mes amis, les Libéraux commenceront à trembler.
Des tremblements à Ottawa.

Ah, Ottawa, home of the finance minister, who’ll call up a bank president to save a NHL team but won’t pick up a phone to call that same banker to help a student with her loan…

And has yet to pick up a phone and say to the corporate presidents, you know, if your criminal negligence causes a workplace to collapse around its workers, you…are…going…to…jail.

But John Manley will pick up a phone and call a bank president for the Senators.

Yes, I’ve been to Ottawa. And I don’t like what I see.

I don’t think Canadians like the current charade, either, where the PMO cares only about stage-managing the slow motion exit dance – performed in front of a hall of mirrors that reflects the emperor’s exaggerated legacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with Barenaked people…but this emperor has no clothes.

Jean Chretien’s legacy is already clear. Just ask Jim in Saskatchewan… or Tom in Vancouver…or the mother I spoke about when I launched my campaign on Parliament Hill.

The mother who became homeless after being evicted.

The mother who watched her daughter study for community college on a cot in a homeless shelter…because she was evicted for choosing to pay her daughter’s tuition instead of the rent.

Mr. Chrétien, that’s your legacy. Because the last time I was in your office in Ottawa, you told me your government had lost interest in affordable housing.

Well, it’s lost interest in a lot more than that.

Your government’s adrift.

And it’s a government that concentrates power in the PMO instead of listening to Parliamentarians…

Medicare will not be saved in this Ottawa.

Kyoto won’t be implemented in this Ottawa.

Racial profiling at the border won’t be stopped in this Ottawa.

So we need to change that Ottawa…now.

Because I don’t believe that Parliament is the only place where politics happens. I believe politics happens both in Parliament and beyond, so we’ve got to put politics back into communities…

…back into work places

…and back into universities!

Because politics happens when seniors have to choose between buying prescriptions or buying food and politics happens when tens of thousands of people march in peaceful protest, saying loudly and clearly:

George Bush, read our lips.

Your daddy was wrong and you are, too. War in Iraq is not the answer.

And it’s not.

Around the world last weekend, people in communities made that point clear. They showed…and countless New Democrats were among them…that being visible and active outside Parliament really matters.

And who’s inside Parliament matters, too…as the brave, beautiful comments from France and Germany this week show.

Notre travail, dans ce processus de revitalisation, est de joindre les deux efforts… parce que les politiques se dessinent tant à l’intérieur du Parlement qu’à l’extérieur de celui-ci.
Nos politiques doivent le faire aussi.

Cela commence en revitalisant notre parti pour que nous puissions faire élire plus de députés… plus de députés qui mettront de l’avant les solutions excitantes que les Canadiens désirent.

Des solutions qui sont pertinentes pour des villes comme celle-ci : bâtir des logements, appuyer le transport en commun et reconnaître que les municipalités fournissent des services sur lesquels les Canadiens se fient et qu’elles ont besoin d’une nouvelle entente.

Within a local phone call of this convention centre, there are more MPs than in any province except Quebec.

It’s easy to poke fun at Toronto.

Lord knows calling in the army when there’s just a nanometer of snow on the ground doesn’t help.

But people still live here…and believe it or not, they don’t feel their government is listening to them, either. People die here, too. People like the man who froze to death in the park beside Metropolitan United Church two days ago.

These people need solutions.

When 80 per cent of Canadians live in cities…and feel the Liberals aren’t listening…I say let’s start talking to those Canadians about solutions…in Edmonton…Saskatoon…Hamilton and, yes, in Toronto.

Many cities are choking on smog, so let’s get innovative.

Right outside this building is a North American first: A wind turbine…a windmill…in an urban centre. I’m proud of what we did. I want to do more.

I want to retrofit buildings for energy efficiency. Energy savings would pay the cost. Across this country, it would create jobs…almost one million years of employment. And it would provide stable returns for public pensions instead of investing them in the next Enron.

I know this works because I helped put programs like this in place.

And you know, it’s not a question of downtown versus small-town, but a question of valuing where we live.

And whether it’s commuter rail in Vancouver, freight rail in Saskatchewan or Windsor…or passenger rail in Quebec, the linking of our economy, environment and communities must occur.

It’s got to occur. And occur now.

Because we need to see our values in action again.

Des valeurs comme le droit à des soins de santé publics et de qualité.
Des valeurs comme une éducation publique accessible.

Values like full employment…where we have a government that cares about a national auto policy and dumping steel.

Canada could be building the cleaner, alternative-fuel vehicles we’ll need and using Canadian steel to build turbines instead of importing them.

Mais nous pouvons mettre ces valeurs et ces solutions en action à travers un NPD revitalisé qui peut faire élire plus de députés.

Mais si nous croyons que notre avenir peut être plus prometteur, nous devons célébrer nos victoires tout en reconnaissant le besoin de développer de nouvelles idées.
Des idées novatrices qui reflètent des choix modernes et viables.
Il est temps de faire connaître ces choix. Parce qu’il n’y a aucun doute sur les choix de Stephen Harper. Il n’y a aucun doute sur les choix de Gilles Duceppe.

And we better be clear about choices, too.

The NDP I want to lead chooses to protect the pensions of working families instead of protecting CEO’s of the next Enron.

The NDP I want to lead chooses Roy Romanow’s prescription for Medicare over Ralph Klein’s trip back to the future.

And make no mistake, the NDP I want to lead chooses to make the tough choices. Like building 20,000 units of affordable housing instead of buying six expensive military planes for the same price.

It’s a choice I’m comfortable making. Because we cannot honour Stephen Lewis’s quest for justice in Africa without also listening to his plea to end the senseless militarization of our world.

Stephen Lewis has good ideas.

So do you.

That’s why the NDP we can build together will be a cauldron of ideas and solutions that speak to Canadians’ hopes and aspirations – not their fears and insecurities.

It can be a party of solutions relevant to life in our century…combining the vision of our founders with solutions that matter to Canadians.

Ensemble, nous pouvons continuer de motiver nos membres, d’ouvrir les bras et d’accueillir des jeunes gens talentueux.

Together we can campaign not only to save Medicare, but expand it.

Together we can win more seats.

Critics will say we are tilting at windmills, well, I say we can build them.

Together.