Thank you very much for the very singular honor that you have done me by inviting me to speak at your International Convention.

You know, the Boilermakers have been around for 125 years. They are an immense part of what takes place in Canada in the construction industry, and they have led from the front for as long as there's been a Canadian Building Trades. We have benefited from the inspired leadership of Richard Albright, who was chairman of our board, the Ed Sullivan of Canada, basically, for the last 17 years. And you know, he did such a good job, that the executive board felt that we needed another Boilermaker, so Joe Maloney is now the chairman of the Executive Board. We have benefited from Richard, from Sandy, (Sandy MacDonald); we have benefited from what you have brought to the table as trade unionists.

Let me bring you the greetings of the Canadian Executive Board of the Building Trades and the 450,000 men and women that make their living in the construction, fabrication, and maintenance industries. There is a string of International Conventions being held here in Las Vegas over the course of this summer. It is an opportunity for us to come to terms with the way forward. The discussions that we take, the decisions that we make, will determine our future. The choices that face us are, in some cases, hard choices. We don't need to shrink now from doing the right thing.

I'm going to give you some snapshots of some Canadian issues. On the slide you'll see something saying, “Caution, politicians at work.” It is your president, George W. Bush, shaking hands with our president, Stephen Harper. Stephen just got newly elected on the 24th of January of this year. It is a new federal government and it is cut from the exact same neo-conservative stamp as George Bush.

The balance of power for that government is held by the Bloc Québécois who are the separatists from Quebec. Most Canadians think that our prime minister takes all of his orders from George W. Bush. There is a very real challenge for us in political action.

Under the liberal government, which had been a fairly moderate, read Democrat, a Kennedy Democrat sort of thing if you are looking for the conversion factor into U.S. We had made some pretty good strides, and we had become a force to be reckoned with in the political business in Ottawa. There is a challenge now to maintain it under the conservative government, read Republican, for the conversion factor and read Newt Gingrich for being a moderate compared to most of these guys.