carbon-copy Americans, friendly and strong as our ties are with them. We have our own values, our own attitudes to life that are not British, nor French, nor American. We have only to travel in Britain or France or the United States to see the truth of this statement.
The existence of a Canadian community is manifest too in our common institutions: the Parliament of Canada, a common conception of public order, a single market depending on a united Canada, common commercial and financial institutions, the national railways and Air Canada, the C.B.C. and other national institutions. We now have in common our own flag and national anthem. We often take these manifestations of Canadianism for granted; but we will not permit them to be destroyed.
The existence of a Canadian community is to be found, too, in the concern that individual Canadians feel for one another. Caring for the less privileged, and the disadvantaged, no longer is a matter for the local community alone; for haphazard municipal or charitable relief. Canadians across the nation now contribute to sustain the income of their fellow citizens, wherever they may live, through old age security pensions, unemployment insurance payments, and family allowances. They contribute to finance equalization payments which enable the governments of lower income provinces to provide adequate levels of health, welfare, education and other public services to their people. Individual Canadians contribute, too, toward national programmes designed to increase the economic well-being of areas and regions that are poorer than their own. This is the sort of thing that happens when there is a sense of community. And the greater the sense of general community the greater the willingness of individuals to contribute to the welfare of others who are not members of the local or regional community.
The existence of a Canadian community is to be found even in — sometimes despite — an increasingly interdependent world. Over the years Canadian statesmen have insisted upon their right to negotiate as Canadians and to represent their country as Canadians. As individuals, the Canadian people have come to stand for freedom and equality, and many have paid dearly for it. Canada as a nation has brought its own particular contribution to world affairs — to the United Nations and to other international bodies and groupings. We have contributed to the peace of the world, as Canadians, and to the welfare of the poorer nations, as Canadians.
These are some of the things that Canada is. What of its potential? Its potential is to be found in its rich resources, human, natural and technological. The growth of our economy — already one of the richest in the world — will be limited only as we are limited, in energy, resourcefulness,
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