Speaking notes for the Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, at the Paul Yuzyk Award ceremony

Toronto, Ontario
June 12, 2009

As delivered

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Thank you so much, Marci, being our gracious master of ceremonies this evening. Your Eminence, Your Grace, Reverend Fathers and Sisters, parliamentary colleagues, members of the Yuzyk family and our honoured recipient tonight, The honourable John Yaremko, it is a pleasure to join you tonight for this important milestone in Canada’s multiculturalism.

I am delighted to be here with you this evening to mark an important day for Canadian multiculturalism.

Tonight we celebrate the first recipient of the Paul Yuzyk Award. This new award is named after the man who is perhaps best remembered as the father of multiculturalism, a great Canadian, the late Senator Paul Yuzyk.

Born, as we have heard, in Saskatchewan to parents who had come from Ukraine to make a new future in Canada, he was a gifted athlete and student. He overcame the hard time of the great depression as well, as we heard form Vera, the prejudice that he came up against in his community. He became a scholar and volunteered to serve in the Canadian Army during the Second World War, where his teaching skills were put to good use in training NCOs for reconnaissance missions.

He then pursued his academic career as a professor of history and Slavic studies at the University of Manitoba and at the University of Ottawa. For his work as a pioneer thinker and community activist, he was called to the Senate by Her Majesty in 1963 on the advice of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, another great westerner.

The award he receives tonight bears the name of a well‑known Manitoba academic and community activist who was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.

In 1963, when the Pearson government created the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, Senator Yuzyk argued for a broader view that reflected the totality of Canada’s history and diversity, as did tonight’s award recipient. He argued that reducing Canada to two founding cultures ignored the stories of one-third of Canadians who, like himself, and like John Diefenbaker, had neither British or French ancestry.

In a key speech in the Senate in 1964, he said that, “A great and dynamic nation must be dedicated to great and high ideas and principles which have come from the past. Without the founding peoples and their contributions, there would be no Canada today.” So while he said that we should not have a national identity based exclusively on the notion of the two founding cultures, but nor should we ignore them and their central contribution to Canada’s diversity today.

French Canadians, he said, have much to teach about the preservation of culture and pride in that culture. French Canadians were, he said, “More conscientious of the meaning of life without the French presence,” he said, “there would be no Canada.” He added that, “The imperishable gift of the British to the Canadian way of life is the parliamentary system of government and evolutionary democracy under the Crown safeguarding the authority of and equality before the law, liberty, justice, fair play, equal opportunity for all, and the dignity of the individual. Through our parliament we have achieved independence, sovereignty, and prestige throughout the world.” the kind of unifying values and institutions to which Rudyard referred.

But Senator Yuzyk argued that Canadians needed to learn about the one-third of people whose heritage was neither British, nor French, nor Aboriginal. The people from backgrounds all over the world, many of whom are represented in this hall tonight. He was building on the tradition of Watson Kirconnel, the conservative scholar who was among the first to recognize the value and potential of the literature and culture of Eastern Central European Canadians who had fled Communist tyranny in the aftermath of the Second World War.

As Senator Yuzyk put it, we have inherited from the past, “…a pluralistic and multicultural society with a Christian foundation evolving on a democratic basis.” In a life full of activity, he served as director of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, and as Chair of the Canadian Folk Arts Council.

Inspired by Senator Yuzyk’s pioneering work, it was Conservative Secretary of State David Crombie who introduced the Multiculturalism Act in 1988, when it became law, and it was r. Gerry Weiner who then served as the first full-tier minister of Multiculturalism and Citizenship in 1991.

All of this is a compelling tradition, one that this government is proud to inherit, and one that we intend to perpetuate. And this award tonight, which will be, we hope, become a long standing annual tradition to recognize excellence in the contribution to Canada’s pluralism and our tradition of pluralism and our tradition of unity and diversity, is one way of recalling the true historical routes of Canada’s particular and successful approach to multiculturalism.

That is why, to honour the legacy of Senator Yuzyk, our government has created the Paul Yuzyk Award. Starting tonight, it will be presented each year to an individual or organization who has demonstrated excellence in promoting multiculturalism either throughout a lifetime, as is the case in tonight’s recipient, or through outstanding achievement.

Starting tonight, this award will be presented every year to honour an individual or an organization for excellence in promoting multiculturalism in Canada.

This year, we honour another great Canadian of Ukrainian descent, John Yaremko for lifetime achievement. Mr. Yaremko was one of the first champions of multiculturalism in Canada, along with Paul Yuzyk, right here in the heart of multicultural Toronto. A graduate of the Osgoode Hall Law School, Mr. Yaremko served as a member of the legislature from 1951 to 1975 and as a minister in the cabinets of premiers Leslie Frost, John Robarts, and William Davis.

I understand he was elected as the youngest member of the legislature at the time. He was the youngest cabinet minister appointed to the Ontario Cabinet, he was the first Ontarian of Ukrainian origin elected to Queen’s Park and appointed to the cabinet and he was the longest serving member of the provincial parliament to date, in the history of this province.

John, that’s quite a record. He was the province’s first Solicitor General and first Minister of Citizenship as well of Minister of Transport, Minister of Social and Family Services and Minister of Public Welfare. But Mr. Yaremko was not only a servant of the people at Queen’s Park and in government, he was motivated by a profound sense of community service and care and compassion for others. He has been a passionate advocate of human rights, community services, cultural diversity, and long term care. This commitment has helped numerous community organizations including the Bellwood Centre for Community Living, the Ukrainian-Canadian Care Centre, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Canadian Opera Company, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the University of Toronto where he established the John and Mary Yaremko Program in Multiculturalism and Human Rights at the Faculty of Law, and indeed, he was an important contributor to the foundation of this beautiful Toronto establishment, Roy Thompson Hall. He tells me he did not quite contribute as much as Roy Thompson, but he did his part.

We honour Mr. Yaremko tonight in particular for one of the great contributions of the Canadian mosaic, namely because of his visionary efforts as a Minister in the Ontario Government to help a large group of people to find refuge from tyranny and protection in this free country, I’m talking about the Hungarians who fled Communist tyranny in 1956. Following the democratic uprising in Hungary, as you know, the armed forces of the Soviet Union invaded the country, occupied Budapest forcing 200,000 people to flee and seek asylum overseas. And John at the time saw the tragedy of these people, stuck on the border, and even though he was not a federal Minister of Immigration, even though he was a minister in the Ontario government, he knew something had to be done. He flew all the way over to Europe to visit the refugees and he came back to Ottawa and convinced the federal government to create a special program which rapidly worked to resettle 40,000 Hungarians seeking freedom here in Canada, and they and their families are forever grateful to you, John for your great work.

For his efforts, he was awarded the Hungarian government’s Officers Cross of the Order of Merit, and I had the great honour of being present at the very moving awards ceremony. And John, let me tell you, two weeks from today, I’m going to be in Budapest to celebrate on behalf of Canada to represent Canada at the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism in Hungary. And sir, when I am there, I will remember you and your contribution to the freedom of the Hungarian people, and the people of the captive nations of Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen, when Canada offers refuge to people seeking its protection, many of these people go on to contribute to the success of our country, and we are richer for their presence among us.

We are also richer for being blessed with people such as Mr. Yaremko, whose life work has been to reinforce our Canadian values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

And so I commend Mr. Yaremko up to the present moment when we are privileged to have him here in our midst. I am so deeply honoured to be here as we honour a man who personifies the ideal of Paul Yuzyk, and who represents Canada at its best.

So thank you very much and congratulations, John Yaremko.