Ministers, representatives of organizations serving children, ladies and gentlemen. I couldn't help but think as this ceremony opened how much Jim Grant would have loved these opening ceremonies. Children singing and dancing, an audience entranced by their smiles, their innocence, their energy. His presence permeates this room and this conference as a sort of friendly angel sharing our optimism that the work we begin this morning will help achieve the loft ideals and profound changes to which Jim Grant dedicated his life. This Congress is about children and about your role in helping them live healthy and productive lives. It is about strategies and goals, about keeping commitments and moving ahead. It should also be about the reordering of national and international priorities.
For the creation of an international movement to help children mirroring the efforts of the environmental movement which focused our energies so effectively on protecting our planet. As we meet in Vancouver this week to honor a man who made dreams come true we should accept that now is the time and this is the group to meet that challenge. We can change the perceptions and priorities which still condemned to poverty and to death so many millions of the children we celebrate as our future. The World Summit for Children in 1990 in which Canada was proud to play a leading role focused the world's attention on the issues and on the possibilities. More to the point it committed us all to make the world a child friendly place. It is fitting that this meeting in this spectacular Canadian city should serve as a renewal of our commitment to meet the promises made so publicly by the world's leaders to all the world's children just five years ago. This week we will see the often gruesome reality of children's lives, poverty, malnutrition, disease, ignorance, war. But we will also see proof of the progress that can be made if we have the will. That is why this Congress is so important. It will help us refocus our commitment and help us share in the plans and the action which people in this room are undertaking or are ready to undertake to help the world's children.
I know that this moment is set aside to remember Jim Grant but I am certain that none of you would object if I also recognized and thanked Dr. Wah Jun Tze whose energy and vision have brought us all here today. Two years ago when Maureen and I having met a man to whom you can't say no traveled to Beijing with Jun and Theresa and that so many of the Canadian health care professionals who have been the backbone of the Global Child Health Society. I saw first hand how one persons dedication can make a profound difference. You rarely see Jun on official stages. I hesitate to say he is the consonant back room man but he is and he is also the perfect symbol of the grass roots man. He is where his constituency is and his constituency is children. On your behalf I thank Jun Tze this morning. I thank you Jun for all you have given for the world's children and for providing us this opportunity to join you this week in the very best tradition of the late Jim Grant.
It is my privilege now to call to the podium the Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States of America, Canada's great neighbor and a country that has provided so much leadership to the world. We are delighted that the Secretary of Health and Human Services Mrs. Donna Shalala is here and I would ask her to come forward to the podium.