Thank you Peter Van Loan, for your kind introduction and all the work you do.

I 'm also pleased to welcome Ambassador Witschel, of the Federal Republic of Germa ny, Wladyslaw Lizon, President of the Polish Canadian Congress and Alide Forstma nis, chair of the group Tribute to Liberty. We are here today to commemorate and to celebrate the beginning of communism's e nd and the triumph of the principles of freedom and democracy. In the lobby of this building, the Government Conference Centre, where talks rel ating to German reunification were held in 1990, there is a piece of the Berlin Wall. The significance of this day is that the Wall of which this slab was once a part , could no longer contain the yearnings of a people demanding to be free. Of course, it did not happen all at once. But, the point of no return was reach ed 20 years ago today, on November 9, 1989. That is when, with the world watchi ng, thousands of Germans from the east poured across a border that would soon ce ase to exist. They chose with their feet the principles long upheld by Canada and our allies: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Border guards at first uncertain in the face of so many, became unwilling, and q uickly unable, to stop them. The life had gone out of the communist system. It was a day of joy in Germany, and of relief in Europe. No more would a people be kept apart. No more would E uropeans fear that the division of their continent would lead to nuclear war. N o more would the state seek to deny the dreams, to suppress and to torment, its own citizens. This piece of concrete is a tangible reminder of that. It reminds us that life in East Germany, the so-called \354German Democratic Republic,\356 so impoverish ed the soul, that the Communist government required a wall to prevent its own ci tizens from leaving. It stands here now, not as a barrier but as a tombstone for the regime that buil t it. Once, however, there were 160 kilometres of concrete like this around Wes t Berlin, to keep East Germans from entering. It was topped with barbed wire, a nd protected by guard towers. It shielded a wide area of raked sand \361 a kill zone \361 in which guards were under orders to shoot to kill so-called \354traitors,\356 anyone who might try to escape across it. And, what happened when somebody tried? Not long after the wall went up, a young man named Peter Fechter decided he woul d no longer live as just a creature of the state. With all the burning passion of youth he determined to cross the wall and live as a free man, like the people he could see, and hear, just metres away over the concrete and barbed wire, in West Berlin. A city of light, it must have seemed to him. There he would find no commissars, no secret police, no torturers. And surely the job of a border guard was just to check passports, not really to stop people from leaving. For, my friends, thousands of people tried everything to get out of East Germany , and the other hostage nations of the East Bloc. Nobody jumped this wall to ge

t in. So, Fechter and a friend hid near the wall, in a carpenter's shop. The wall was only two metres high at the time - half the height it would eventually reach as the Communists became increasingly desperate - to hold back their restless pe ople. Freedom looked so possible, so close. Choosing their moment carefully, Fechter and his friend ran. Shots were fired. His friend made it over. Fechter did not. Hit in the pelvis, he fell back. And there, at the foot of the wall, his govern ment allowed him to bleed to death. No doctor came, no commissar took charge, n o border guard dared walk a few short metres, to give first aid. In agony from his wounds, Fechter took an hour to die. Peter Fechter was just one of almost 200 people thought to have perished along t he wall over the years, in their bid for liberty. And just one among countless hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans who lost their lives in those terribl e decades in purges and prisons yearning for the free and democratic society in which we as Canadians have always lived. Peter Fechter was only 18. I tell his story to remind us all of what was overthrown that day. The wall cam e down. This wall the Communists built was more than a physical division. It s ymbolized another, darker view of life. Beyond the wall, people lived in freedo m, exercised democracy, experienced justice. On the Communist side, there was n o freedom. Individuals did not matter. Justice and law were only what best served the inte rests of the state. People belonged to the state, and served it. It was the di fference between whether the people choose who governs them, or the government c hooses the people - by choosing who will live and who will not. The difference between a system that is good, and a system that was evil. We should acknowledge communism for what it was. Not a flawed or inefficient sy stem but, like its totalitarian cousin fascism, the antithesis of our highest va lues. One of the two great twentieth-century threats to the very existence of o ur civilization. An evil to be understood, so that it may never again be repeat ed. It is profoundly wrong to condemn whole populations based on class, just as it i s to condemn them based on race. And it is profoundly evil to seek to resolve p olitical debates through the annihilation of the other side, whether it is calle d a \354final solution,\356 an \354end of history,\356 or any other such euphemi sm. This evil comes in many forms, and seems to reinvent itself with each generation : the promise of a perfect society, if only those unworthy are first eliminated. The inferior races. The class enemies. The infidels.

This is an evil that Canada has always resisted. As Conservatives and Liberals (and others) we are opponents, but we are not each other's enemies, but each other's fellow citizens. We battle with ballots, not with bullets. One side wins, and accepts the rights - and the responsibilities - of government. The other lives in opposition, and in freedom, to fight another day. And so it has been, for over 140 years, and we are all better for it. But we have done more than just experienced and lived under freedom and democrac y. Our forebears have fought and died that we may enjoy them. That is why a mi llion Canadians joined in the fight against fascism. It is why more still went to Korea. It is why our young men and women today risk their lives to stop the spread of t errorism from, and to bring peace and stability to, Afghanistan. And it is why, through four decades, tens of thousands of Canadian service men a nd women confronted Communism in Europe, at the Wall, and at the Iron Curtain, u ntil the great day came twenty years ago today, that made this no longer necessa ry. Friends, the Berlin Wall divided a nation. But its fall united a continent in a hopeful future. Today we reflect with pride on the part Canada played in that downfall, and we celebrate the triumph of ideas that liberate the human spirit o ver those that bound it in chains; the free and democratic ideals of Canada and its allies. I am pleased to announce that this section of the Wall will be relocated to the Canadian War Museum, as an important relic of the Cold War. There, it will hono ur the men and women of the Canadian Forces who served during that confrontation . It will also complement the memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism , planned for the capital region by Tribute to Liberty. Alide, I want to congratulate you and your bipartisan group on getting this done . It shall stand as a reminder that all political systems are not the same, tha t our democracy and our freedoms are to be cherished, exercised and protected. This is our history and our inheritance. May it always be so.