11 September 2007
Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the Australian Parliament and made the following statement regarding the sixth anniversary of 9/11:
“September 11, 2001 was truly a day that shook the world. Six years on, the horrific images from that morning still evoke anger, sorrow and – as intended – terror. The buildings may have been American, but the targets were every one of us: every country and every person who chooses tolerance over hatred, pluralism over extremism, democracy over tyranny.
We have been struck again and again in London, Madrid, India and many other places including, of course, Bali. Canadians mourned your losses, and we redoubled our resolve to stand with you, because two dozen of our citizens died in New York on 9/11. And seventy Canadian soldiers and one of our diplomats have fallen in Afghanistan – as well as a Canadian carpenter, murdered by the Taliban after he built a school for the children of a remote Afghan village.
So both our countries have been bloodied by terror. And both of us are doing our part to confront and defeat it. In Afghanistan and elsewhere, both our countries are committed to working together.
As Prime Minister Howard said in his address to our Parliament last year “not only for the betterment of Australia and Canada, but for the betterment of all the peoples of the world.” The cause is noble and necessary.
Because, as 9/11 showed, if we abandon our fellow human beings to lives of poverty, brutality and ignorance, in today’s global village their misery will eventually and inevitably become ours. And, friends, we should underestimate neither our capacity to influence events nor to influence others.”
