Ottawa, Ontario, Sunday, July 2, 2017

Thank you for your warm welcome!

Isn’t it great to be here on Parliament Hill?!

Can you feel the energy in the air?

It feels like change. It feels like hope. It feels like the Canada we desire and the one we deserve.

A place of peace, respect, equality, fairness and creativity.

How do we build that Canada?!

You are the answer to this question!

Young people like you who are working today for a greater country tomorrow. You’re giving back to your communities, making lives better for the people around you.

You are moving the dial from “me” to “we.”

And you are doing it with great passion and greater compassion!

We live in a great country.

But I believe that we can make our country, our communities even better!

Inspiring change is never easy. It requires us to take chances, to take risks. 

And if something doesn’t work, we have to be strong enough to pick ourselves up and try again. That is what Canada is about, what you are about!

I have two questions for you:

What do you want your Canada to be?

And what will you do to get us there?

To put it another way, this is one of the biggest birthday parties Canada has ever seen! So what will your gift, your legacy, be?

I can’t wait to see the answer, because I’ve learned to never, ever, ever bet against our country’s young people.

You are not the future, you are the now!

What you say matters!

What you do matters!

And I know that you will do great things for Canada!

Here you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your peers, with others who want to make a difference.

Talk to the person standing beside you and find out what they’ve done, what their dreams are.

Together, we can achieve so much.

And our collective pledge for Canada should be to look to the future of our nation and to improve the lives of those around us in any way we can.

To tell us about their pledge for the future of Canada, please welcome to the stage the co-founders of WE, Marc and Craig Kielburger!