I speak about Canada as a great place to do business, about our respective challenges in a world of change, and about the opportunities for doing more business together.

But I am on different ground this evening. Tonight I am in Friuli. And while I am a Canadian, the blood in my veins is part Friulano. So I can't help but address you this evening as a native son.

Canada is the greatest immigrant society in the world, with 18 percent of Canadians born somewhere else. It is our great strength, this vast inclusive society of different peoples, from all corners of the globe.

But Canadians never forget where they came from.

Forty and fifty years ago, Friulani left Italy to make new lives in Toronto or Montréal. They looked across the sea to a new land for their children's sake and for themselves.

For Friuli, this was a loss. For Canada, it was a valuable addition.

Today there are 100 000 Friulani in Toronto alone. The ones who went when they were infants, or like me were born after their parents left in search of a job, are now at the very centre of Canadian life. Those kids may be bankers, lawyers, professors, industrialists -- and yes, even politicians. But they still think and feel like Friulani.

And when they marry a French-Irish Canadian as I did, or -- their parents say "God forbid" -- a Calabrese, it just increases the numbers of Friulani nel mondo.

In being here tonight I honour my parents, my family and all those with ancestors from this land who, like me, come back to say, "Thank you."

Your prosperity today is plain to see. You are part of a region that has achieved a standard of living that is the highest in Europe. But the environment is changing. Undoubtedly, the greater European economic integration that will come with monetary union will create new competitive pressures. So does globalization.

The fact is that trade in Europe, and world trade, are both expanding dramatically.

This is good news -- export-oriented industries create jobs. But success will only go to the economies that are the most agile, are the fastest to adapt and have the least cumbersome structural baggage.

Friuli is already well positioned in one essential respect. Your small-enterprise sector, working in clusters or networks with others, is a model of efficiency and mobility. Its adaptation to knowledge-based industries -- a key growth sector for both Italy and Canada -- should be relatively direct. But in general, Italy lags behind in Internet use, and more emphasis is needed on developing computer skills and expanding access to informatics systems.

If upgrading the quality of the labour force is the first requirement for confronting the challenges of a changing world economy, the second is recognizing that producers have to be present in the marketplace.

The old way of relying on straight exports to keep your place in the market is no longer good enough. Technology is now too advanced to deal with a market from afar.

An economy geared to small-enterprise production, such as Italy's, is mobile enough to re-gear itself to new products with the speed globalization requires, but is disadvantaged because the small companies cannot actually be present in key markets. Only partnerships will provide the necessary presence in global markets.

That's why my remarks at the opening of this speech about the human connections we have to Friuli are of practical, as well as sentimental, consequence. Let me tell you how.

The biggest market in the world for Europe is North America. The NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] is a combined market of close to 400 million consumers with a combined GDP [gross domestic product] of around $11 trillion.

The biggest trade relationship between any two countries in the world is between the United States and Canada: over $1 billion of goods every day. Since January 1, 1998, all Canadian exports to the United States enter duty free.

What's the point? There are three.

Globalization requires that companies set up facilities in key foreign markets, or establish partnerships, in order to gain markets and keep them.

Europe's biggest market is North America.

The best way to get access to North America is through Canada.

Why? Because costs in almost all aspects of doing business are lower in Canada than in the United States, or for that matter than in Europe.

If you're looking for partners for the North American market, why not look first to the daughters and sons of those people who went out from here 40 years ago, who are now young entrepreneurs with degrees in business and banking?

Canadians and Italians are comfortable with each other. But do they really know each other?

In fact, they don't. We both have outdated notions of one another. For example, how many Canadians know that Italy is the world's fifth-largest economy? How many Italians recognize Canada as the seventh-largest?

Do Italians realize that the world's third-largest aircraft manufacturer is Bombardier? Or that the world's fourth-largest telecommunications producer is Nortel -- both Canadian companies?

For Canadians, we must recognize Italy's efforts to deregulate, to privatize and to get its fiscal house in order.

For Italians, it is important to understand the "fiscal miracle" that has enabled Canada to deliver our first balanced budget in 30 years -- and the only balanced budget of any G-7 nation.

It means learning that economic growth in Canada is the highest in the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] and that we have achieved that growth with virtually no inflation.

Next week, the Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien, will be coming to Italy for a six-day visit. But this is not just another visit by another head of government. Its character reflects the family connection involved, because accompanying the PM will be 15 members of our Parliament who are themselves of Italian origin and who will fan out across Italy to the towns where they or their parents were born.

There will also be some 70 business leaders chosen from key sectors such as aerospace, telecommunications and information technology, and also from smaller businesses, looking specifically to forge partnerships and alliances in Italy.

Part of this trip is meant to update our understanding of one another and to intensify our economic relations. But there is another purpose, and that is to strengthen the Atlantic vocation of our two countries.

While Canada has certainly devoted great effort to expanding trade with the United States, Asia and Latin America, Europe has been and will remain a very important partner for Canada -- politically, culturally and economically.

There is a danger, friends, that with the end of the Cold War, people could think that the two sides of the Atlantic now need each other less. We can get so captured by events in our respective continents and regions that we lose sight of our larger transatlantic community, and particularly of its economic opportunities.

This is why Canada has been actively in favour of liberalizing trade between NAFTA and the EU [European Union]. That idea has recently caught on, with the EU proposing greater transatlantic links.

These links make sense. Economic sense. Security sense. And because they're right for our common family.

I close tonight with a challenge to you. The Friuli that our parents left is now flourishing. The second and third generation of Friulani-Canadians, and Italian-Canadians in general, are now an important presence in Canada. Given the extraordinary human bonds between the places, can we build up the economic bridges to match our human connections?

As you know, Friulani arrived in Canada with little more than what they could carry. Italian-Canadians today are proud inheritors of their legacy. Today we live in relative prosperity because many of them struggled through abject poverty.

Can we do any less for our children and grandchildren? Can we, who started with so much, do less than those who started with so little?

Of course not. And that's why we need to expand trade with old friends like Italy. Our people-to-people ties are assets we must use and they are legacies we must honour. So let us build for our children, as our parents built for us.

Thank you.

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