My Lords, Members of Parliament, Mesdames Et Messieurs
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1 My Lords, Members of Parliament, Mesdames et Messieurs, Distingués invités, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, Bienvenue à St John’s Smith Square. Mon nom est Pierre Boulanger, délégué général du Québec à Londres. Je suis ravi de vous accueillir ici ce soir, et ce pour deux raisons en particulier. La première, c’est que je suis entré en fonctions à Londres il y deux mois. Cette soirée me donne ainsi l’occasion de faire la connaissance d’un très grand nombre d’amis du Québec. La seconde, c’est que 2008 n’est pas une année comme les autres. C’est celle du 400ème anniversaire de la fondation de notre capitale nationale, Québec, date empreinte d’une signification toute particulière pour les Québécoises et les Québécois. Welcome to St John’s Smith Square. My name is Pierre Boulanger, Québec’s Agent- General in London. I am delighted to welcome you here tonight, for two reasons in particular. The first is that I took up my post of Agent-General two months ago. This evening will thus give me the opportunity to make the acquaintance of a great many friends of Québec. The second reason is that 2008 is a year like no other. We are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the foundation of our national capital, Québec City, a particularly meaningful milestone for all Quebecers. 2 At the heart of the foundation of Québec City, is Samuel de Champlain. Born around 1570 in the pays de Saintonge in France, he was a tireless explorer who started travelling to the Caribbean and South America in 1599 and to North America in 1603. Although he is an emblematic figure of French North America, very little is known about him. The best insights into Champlain are given in his Carnets de Voyages in which, as early as 1603, he had already spotted the potential of what was to become Québec City today. In fact, Champlain was rather taken by it, as he will tell you himself: Tout le reste est pays uny et beau dont les terres, si elles estoient cultivées, seroient bonnes comme les nostres. We came to anchor at Québec, which is a narrow part of the said river of Canada, some three hundred paces broad. At these narrows on the north side is a very high mountain, which slopes down on both sides: all the rest is a level and beautiful country, where there is good land covered with trees, such as oaks, cypresses, birches, fir-trees and aspens and also wild fruit-bearing trees, and vines; so that in my opinion, if this soil were tilled, it would be as good as ours. Champlain went back to North America in 1608 on his ship the Don the Dieu. It was on 3rd July that he founded une habitation, a settlement, which became Québec City: Arrivay à Quebecq le 3 juillet : je ne peux trouver de lieu plus commode pour y faire nostre habitation. From the island of Orléans to Québec is one league, and I arrived there on July the third. On arrival I looked for a place suitable for our settlement, but I could not find any more suitable or better situated than the point of Québec, so called by the natives, which was covered with nut-trees. I at once employed a part of our workmen in cutting them down to make a site for our settlement. Champlain developed good relationships with the native populations. As early as 1603, he signed alliances with native chiefs. It was also then that he started referring to the place as Quebecq, from the Algonquin gepèg, which means “Where the river narrows”. In fact, the importance of relationships between peoples and civilizations is at the heart of this year’s celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Québec City, the 3 main theme of which is “Encounters” — encounters between past and present, between the mountain and the mighty St Lawrence, between the old world and the new, between Europeans and the First Nations, between the French and the English. Indeed, with its 500 000 inhabitants, Québec today is a prosperous city, looking confidently towards the future. It ranks second economically after Montréal and boasts strong high technology sectors, including IT, life sciences, optoelectronics and food sciences. It is also a walled city which has preserved its unique French and British architectures and became a UNESCO World heritage site in 1985, the only city North of Mexico to be granted this honour. This is what will be celebrated tomorrow in Québec City, in the whole of Québec and all over Canada, in Québec’s representations abroad, as well as in London tonight….. ….. in London where there has been a Québec Government Office since 1962. As some of you may know, we have a very large territory that covers not only the United Kingdom, but also Ireland and the Nordic countries. As a matter of fact, there are strong historical links between Québec and the United Kingdom, dating back to the English Conquest of 1759. And what about the nineteenth century, as far back as 1872, when the Québec Government had representatives managing immigration to the Province of Québec in newly-formed Canada? Over the centuries, and now more than ever, there has been an ongoing and close relationship between the United Kingdom and Québec. There are regular visits to and from Québec by ministers and senior officials interested in policy issues of mutual interest. Our office enjoys close relationships with Scotland and Wales. In 2007, an exhibition from the McCord Museum, Scots in Québec, was held at 4 the Scottish Parliament and highlighted the Scottish influence in Québec. It was successfully shown at Canada House at the beginning of this year, when it was opened by our Premier Jean Charest. There are also numerous exchanges between Wales and Québec, with a particular focus on language policy and culture. This Office also enjoys a fruitful relationship with the British Council, in the field of education in particular, with successful language assistants’ and Teachers’ Professional Development Programmes. At higher education level, there is a solid core of Québec specialists in the United Kingdom, as testified by the recent creation of a London Québec Network of young academics, and we have a close working relationship with the British Association of Canadian Studies. In April this year, an international conference on Québec, Louisiana and the heritage of North America also took place at the British Library. But now let’s turn to Culture, in which Québec’s reputation is outstanding thanks to the excellence of its products and to their supremely innovative character. In the United Kingdom, Québec artists are appreciated and well-known, especially in the fields of performance arts, music, cinema and the visual arts. The Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Eloize, Arcade Fire, La La La Human Steps, the films of Denys Arcand, are familiar names, and yes, even our very own Céline Dion too! We are particularly fortunate, this year, to welcome Robert Lepage to London, with a new adaptation of Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera House opening next week, then at the Barbican in September for his play Lipsynch. Indeed, Québec is very well represented on the British cultural scene, since it boasted, last year, approximately 350 cultural activities in the United Kingdom, a third of them in London. To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the 5 founding of Québec City, this Office has developed an extensive programme of cultural events over its territory, including, for instance, the Our Cities celebrate season, which showcased Québec artists in Aldeburgh, Brighton, Bristol, Cheltenham, Manchester, Birmingham and London, and a Wales Celebrates season. Also contributing to the buoyancy of these exchanges is the British Council, with whom our cooperation extends to the cultural field. But most of all, just as the United Kingdom values its creative industries, Québec aims at opening markets for its cultural products, and we tirelessly work to reach this goal. Culture is Culture, but Culture is also Business. And business is what the Québec Government Office in London is very much about. In terms of investment, the United Kingdom is the main foreign investor in Québec after the United States. There are 147 subsidiaries of British companies in Québec, such as BOC Canada, Imperial Tobacco Canada, Standard Life Canada and Rolls Royce Canada, which employ more than 27 000 people. According to Statistics Canada, Quebec was the number one province in Canada for British investment in 2006, with no less than $673 million, almost three times as much as French investment in Quebec. In this regard, the Invest Québec Bureau, housed in the Québec Government Office since 2004, plays a key role in promoting Québec on all our territory. In the trade sector, the figures testify to the crucial contribution of our London Office to Québec’s economic development and prosperity. In fact, the United Kingdom is Québec’s main economic partner after the United States, ahead of France and Germany. In 2007, Québec exports to the UK totalled 1.7bn $ and might reach unprecedented 6 heights this year, with an increase of 40% during the first semester of 2008 as compared with the same period in 2007. Thanks to the diverse range of Québec’s export products, along with solid relationships between Québec and British firms, Québec and the United Kingdom enjoy an exceptional and lasting trade relationship. Our star products are known for their high added value, such as electronic games and wireless telephony, for their innovative and creative character, as in the case of our fashion collections, and for their adaptability and sustainability, such as our timber framed houses, for instance.