Good evening.

Deborah, John – thank you for your leadership tonight, for your hard work, and for the decades you have both dedicated to Canada’s success.

I am delighted to be here with all of you, at the Royal Ontario Museum.

A beautiful building. A great institution.

An institution, I would note, that was founded by a banker, a Canadian banker who returned home from New York, no less!

Sir Edmund Walker saw great museums as “shop windows” through which Canadians and visitors to Canada could grasp this nation’s true potential.

He had an ambitious vision for this institution, and an ambitious vision for our country.

And while he was a very capable financier, he understood that great things require a great team.

So, he partnered with the provincial government. He worked with the University of Toronto. He persuaded other business leaders to join him. He brought on philanthropists, scientists, and citizens to work toward a common goal.

To say that those great Canadians succeeded does an injustice to their legacy. Their work changed this city, this province, and our nation.

If you seek their monument, you will only find it around you.

Today, once again, Canadians are coming together. Once again, our ambition is catching up with our potential.

Something has changed, over the past year, in our country.

Canadians know what I am talking about. We feel it. Everywhere.

Canadians are standing united, buying Canadian; confidently choosing a Canadian future.

The federal, provincial, and territorial governments are working together to build one Canadian economy by removing internal trade barriers and rapidly developing critical national infrastructure.

I would like to salute the premiers here this evening for being here and for what they have been doing over the past 18 months.

The federal government and the provinces and territories have been working in full partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis – as allies in developing projects and owners in the projects that will shape our future.

Canadian businesses and pension funds are now putting more Canadian capital behind that Canadian ambition. In the last week alone, a number of them have announced plans already to put hundreds of billions of additional capital to work in Canada.

The federal government, along with the provinces and territories, are looking to match that level of ambition abroad.

Over the past year, we have signed 20 trade and security partnership agreements spanning four continents. Our most recent trade agreement, with the United Arab Emirates, was finalised in a record-breaking 47 days.

As this room knows, it is not just about trade, it is also about investment. So we are shifting how we approach investment into Canada.

We are relaunching Invest in Canada under the leadership of our new Chief Executive Officer Gurinder Grewal and a new board chaired by Dominic Barton. Invest in Canada now has a clear mission: to bring the world’s capital here to support Canadian projects, Canadian businesses, and Canadian workers.

Canadian workers who are turning our ambition into reality. Because our economic transformation is happening on construction sites and is being built by the builders and unions themselves.

These are all acts of solidarity. Some very large and some very small, but they are being repeated millions of times – proving that together we can give ourselves far more than anyone could ever take away.

And these acts of solidarity are making a statement to the world: That this is a new, powerful, confident, and united Canada.

We are masters in our own home.

In Canada, we know that we are strongest when we stand together: when we look out for one another and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind.

That spirit of solidarity and generosity is at the heart of who we are as a country.

As with this fundamental Canadian insight: unity does not require uniformity. We believe our differences are strengths to be nurtured, not risks to be managed.

Look around this room.

We come from different regions: East Coast, West Coast, the Prairies, Québec, the Far North, and Ontario. Federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments. Business and labour. Canadians from every background and every generation.

We will not always agree. We don’t need to always agree.

But we agree on something fundamental: Where we are going.

There is a new consensus from Iqaluit to Victoria to Québec City and St. Johns. And that consensus is that Canada is taking control of our future.

We will build more. We will trade more with each other. We will trade more with the world. And we will create more sustainable prosperity here at home.

Tomorrow, something remarkable will happen.

The world’s largest investors, managing over $120 trillion dollars of assets, will come to “peer into our shop window” because the world is looking at Canada differently.

And I suggest we should look at ourselves differently too.

It is not about who we aren’t, but who we are. Not about what is lost, but what we have. And what we can create.

We are kind, generous, hardworking, and ambitious people.

We have what the world wants. The energy, the resources, the talent, the technology, and the capital.

And our greatest strength is something that cannot be found on any balance sheet: trust.

When we look out for one another, when we work together, when we are united, there is nothing Canadians cannot do.

This is our country. This is our future. We are building it together.

That’s Team Canada. That is Canada strong.

Thank you very much.