Honourable senators, I rise today to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations.

United Nations Day is celebrated every October 24, the date that the Charter of the United Nations came into force, after it was ratified by a majority of signatory national legislatures.

The House of Commons of Canada ratified the Charter on October 19, 1945. On June 25 of that same year, the Charter was unanimously adopted by the representatives of the 50 states who had met at the San Francisco Conference two months earlier. Canada was among these states, and our diplomats were instrumental in the drafting of the Charter.

The UN has faced many challenges, from war, genocide and both peacekeeping successes and failures, to internal conflicts and calls for major reforms.

Now, through the vital World Health Organization, the UN is also dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic that has killed more than 1 million people worldwide and greatly damaged the entire global economy.

So it’s not a very happy birthday, colleagues.

The United Nations was created at the end of World War II to prevent more devastating conflicts and to prevent more suffering. But in its duty to maintain international peace and security, it not only works to prevent conflicts and stop them when they do happen, but also works proactively to lay the groundwork for peace.

In 75 years, the UN and its various agencies and leaders have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 12 times, including this very year when the prize went to the World Food Programme. Still, whether the UN has lived up to its lofty ideals set out in its founding document has been up for debate pretty much from the start.

On October 16, 1945, when Canada’s then-Acting Secretary of State for External Affairs, Louis St-Laurent, introduced the motion in the other place to adopt the Charter, he said, “I do not think anyone would contend that, it is an ideal document . . . ” because there were “. . . so many national interests to be reconciled . . . .”

Despite the compromises of the Charter and the flaws of the UN itself, especially related to the Security Council, the world needs the United Nations now more than ever.

As its second Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, who met his untimely end in the service of the organization said: “The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”

While this year has been hellish for millions of people around the world, 2020 — and other years — would have been even worse without the UN.

Dear colleagues, the United Nations is not perfect, but it is the best organization we have. Its 193 members, including Canada, must continue to support the organization and give it the means to take action.