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[ Applause ]
>>By the authority vested in me by the Senate
of York University I hereby confer on you the Degree
of Doctor of Laws honoris causa admitto te ad gradum.
[ Applause ]
Wonderful.
[ Applause ]
>>Chancellor; President; Faculty and Staff; Honoured Guests;
Graduates and Parents; Ladies and Gentlemen.
The greatest honour bestowed on me today is the pleasure
of looking around at each of you,
and sharing this unique moment in your life.
Under every cap and gown I see I know there is a distinctive
story, your individual route to this day, supported by family
and friends who celebrate with you.
You are part of a unique graduating class;
every class shares a particular time and space,
a set of experiences that will never be repeated.
I am truly honored to receive an honorary degree
from York University today.
Thank you to all of the University community
for making these ceremonies so memorable for all of us.
And I think my remarks today will catch a theme
from the Chancellor and the President.
Each of us has a bundle of things...in our hearts,
in our heads, in relationships, in backpacks and briefcases,
on hard drives...that we carry with us all the time,
that are unique to us and deeply influence the choices we make
in our lives.
I'd like to touch on 3 of them
which is what they say lawyers always do; we pick three.
I'm pretty confident they're already in your life's bundle,
but now, a time when you are looking forward, is a good time
to pull them out and I think take another look.
The first one to pull out of the bundle is empathy.
Empathy is the act of trying to understand someone
that we ourselves are not;
something that is outside of our own lives.
A colloquial form of empathy is "to walk in another's shoes,"
and that is a very good start.
But empathy is more than having an experience;
it is about taking the meaning from that experience.
To have empathy does not mean that we must accept, agree,
or adopt a passion, a position, or an idea.
It does mean that we can use the understanding we have reached;
we can take it into account, we can make choices
that will result in the greatest good for the greatest number.
It is very hard if not impossible to be fair,
to ensure justice, without first being informed.
Our own experience and views are too narrow a frame for choices
that affect others too.
This applies no less to institutions and to governments,
than it does to citizens.
The second one to pull from the bundle is engagement,
both in the not for profit sector,
and in our democratic system.
Interestingly when asked about what keeps Canadians
from volunteering more, many say it is
because they have not been asked.
So today I am asking you to try volunteering
if you have not already done so.
Volunteering, like education, will add quality to your life
and it will influence your views of life in Canada.
Pick an organization that has an interest close to your heart.
Go with a friend, pick something straightforward to do,
and keep sampling until you find projects
and people that suit you.
You know, that's what we did when we came out of University.
It sounds very grand now,
but it had a very simple personal beginning.
Stories show that less than half of Canadians volunteer.
We can do better, and reap the benefits individually
and collectively.
The third one to pull from the bundle...you probably saw this
one coming...is equality, equity if you prefer, fairness,
generosity, openness; they are all related concepts.
Equality...and I'm talking about the Canadian version
of equality...is at one and the same time the most abstract
and the most practical of concepts.
It means that, to the greatest extent possible,
we should each have available to us the basics for a decent life.
Equality means that what some of us will need to achieve
that is different from what others need.
Equality means that public and private institutions have a role
to play in distribution of benefits.
Difference is both the challenge and the answer to equality,
but we need mechanisms in which we have confidence that will,
and that we can see will balance interests.
I remember how I felt
when I started my first full-time job after University.
Of course you're going to chuckle to know that that's
in 1980, before most of you were born.
Apart from relief and apprehension,
the overwhelming feeling I had was of being on a frontier.
For the very first time, women were a significant part
of law school graduating classes (about a third),
and were competing successfully for positions
in legal institutions, particularly law firms.
We knew that the institutions of law
and law itself would be changed
by our presence and by our activism.
This shift was not, of course, confined to law,
and it continues today.
And one of my great wishes for you is
that you too will change the places that you join.
I now understand that every class is on a frontier,
that you are on a frontier; on a border between the old
and the new, the settled and the unsettled,
the seen and the unseen.
You are crossing one of life's littorals,
moving from the safer shore through ever shifting waves
and out onto the open sea.
It is an exhilarating process.
Education, we know, is transformative of individuals
and inexorably of cultures and societies.
This is why education is so sought after and so contested.
There are those who seek to restrict access to it,
who are today successfully restricting access to it,
particularly for girls.
Education and human rights are essential
to development into democracy.
I hope that you will do whatever you can to support full access
for education around the world for girls and for boys.
I hope that you will insist that it be education
like yours; open and tolerant.
Human rights needs an identifiable, on-going,
cross-party constituency in Canada; a constituency
of citizens that can collaborate across groups and grounds,
that has very strong links to environmental issues,
and that is prepared to be a political force to keep
in the political fray, to be at the table where choices
about public goods are made.
You can see before you today two great benefits you have;
education, and wonderful peers with whom to collaborate in ways
that work for your generation.
You do have to do it your way.
With empathy and engagement you will take equality and fairness
to its next stage of development and influence.
York's motto which has already been stated catches the spirit
of this quest; Tentanda Via, the way must be tried.
Congratulations; all best wishes for today and the future.
Take on the world and have fun.
[ Applause ]