The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The following are excerpts from Prime Minister Paul Martin's speech at the Calgary Stampede on Saturday. * * * "During the course of the election, and in the months before, I spent a fair bit of time in Alberta. On the final day of the campaign, I flew from Nova Scotia to British Columbia and back to Montreal, dipping my feet in the East's ocean and in the West's ocean. It was a 24-hour sprint to the finish. But for me, traveling right across this vast land, touching the Atlantic Ocean and touching the Pacific Ocean on the same day, was important. It was important to showcase the unique and diverse elements of our unique and diverse nation. It was important to celebrate the remarkable privilege we have as Canadians to move about this country and experience its many wonders. It was important to emphasize all that we share despite the distances between our coasts. I said something during that final day that I want to repeat now. I am totally dedicated to governing for this whole country ? for every region, for every province, for every Canadian. And let me tell you: That pledge is not contingent on the number of seats the Liberal Party has in this or any other province." * * * "... I know that many people here at this breakfast and across Alberta continue to suffer because of the effects of BSE on the beef industry and the fact that the U.S. border remains closed. I have raised this topic with President Bush. I have raised with Congress. I have raised it more than once and I will raise it again. In fact, I raised it with a group of prominent U.S. businesspeople when I was down in Idaho a week ago. Let me assure you: I won't have a meeting or even a conversation with an American official in which I am silent on this." * * * "The role of PM and of the deputy prime minister is to work hard to help build a stronger Canada, a more united Canada, a Canada in which every region and every province feels that its vision of the future and its values are an essential and valued part of the country we share ? because, in fact, every province is an essential and valued part of the country we share." * * * "Seeing a challenge and embracing it, working hard to transform opportunity into success. Those qualities are manifest in the rich history of Calgary and Alberta. And they are abundant today in this city and this province. It doesn't take long to see it, to measure it. Sometimes that success is measured is collective progress over a period of years, and sometimes, especially on these Stampede grounds, it's measured in individual survival on a bull over a period of eight long seconds."
