It is my honour and privilege to declare open this 32nd Session of the Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the very first session to conduct its business in this new Headquarters complex provided for us by the Government of Canada.
On behalf of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization and our new Secretary General, Mr. Renato Cláudio Costa Pereira, I warmly welcome three distinguished guests who have honoured this gathering by their presence: the Honourable David Collenette, Minister of Transport of Canada, representing the Government of Canada; the Honourable Sylvain Simard, Minister of International Relations of Quebec, representing the Government of Quebec; and His Worship Pierre Bourque, Mayor of the City of Montreal, representing the City of Montreal.
At the same time, I extend a very warm welcome to all of you who have journeyed to Montreal from every part of the world to join in the important work of this Assembly. And I especially welcome into this family of nations the States which have joined this Organization since the last session of the Assembly in 1995.
As we work together here on tasks for the next three years and beyond, there is the potential to have this meeting be seen as truly the first ordinary session of the Assembly of the 21st Century and, indeed, for the new Millennium. I am proud to tell you that ICAO, your Organization, is ready to meet the challenges of the new century. We are a dynamic entity, one that has changed and will continue to adapt (as you will learn in more detail during this session), just as our world has changed and will continue to change.
Among ICAO’s many tasks, our endless work to achieve the greatest possible safety in civil aviation has no equal. Much of our work at this meeting will concern safety, security, and air navigation topics, including especially the ongoing efforts to achieve global implementation of the ICAO Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) systems. Air transport, legal, technical co-operation, budgetary and other matters will also be on our agenda. And all of this work, as it continues over the next three years and beyond, will require every form of your ongoing support.
I referred earlier to our Member States collectively as a family. We are indeed a family! We are a large family! We are a still growing family! We are a family living together in a small place, a tiny planet, one where distances continue to shrink dramatically as air transport and communications facilities grow, one where more and more interactions cross national boundary lines. We are truly a global family living in a global neighbourhood, impacted increasingly by the phenomenon we have come to call globalization. And because of all this, we have grown to be more and more dependent upon each other. Truly, we live in an age of ever growing interdependence!
In this regard, perhaps the greatest challenge you face, as representatives of your governments, and your governments face as well, is that of not only recognizing this large and ever growing interdependence but of acknowledging and giving the unprecedented co-operation among States that interdependence demands, a degree much greater than that required in the last half of this century. Recently, Mikhail Gorbachev, who now heads the Moscow-based International Foundation for Socioeconomic and Political Studies, wrote about needed changes of attitude in today’s complex and problem-ridden world, one in which we are simultaneously becoming more globalized and at the same time experiencing rising nationalism. He quoted from a 1963 speech by John F. Kennedy who called peace “a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived”. President Kennedy went on to speak of peace as “the product of many nations”, and to call for a re-examination of attitudes and national approaches to its achievement.
In this light, I see the ever growing interdependence of peoples and of nations as also a topic about which too many people are unaware and which is all too often misunderstood. And I see the principal approach to bringing political and economic policies and actions into line with this ever growing interdependence as that of unprecedented co-operation among States, allowing often nationalistic and unilateral approaches, and even regional policies, to yield to greater respect for the good of others and for the common good of our global community.
There are no doubt many who will see any such new approach of expanding co-operation among States to an unprecedented degree as impractical, or, at best, merely visionary. Yes, as a practical matter, we do live on a planet where conflicts abound, conflicts rooted in cultural, ethnic, religious, ideological, political or territorial differences. Yes, we inhabit an Earth on which the disparities between the wealthy developed countries and developing countries continue to grow. Yes, we are in a setting in which international co-operation to end certain conflicts is often difficult or sometimes impossible to achieve. And yes, this new approach is no doubt visionary. Yet we would not be assembled here today were it not for the vision of those who heeded the call to come together in Chicago, in the midst of a terrible world war, to make a then virtually non-existent civil aviation industry into the instrument for peace, understanding, and development that it is today. We, too, inspired by a new vision for the 21st Century, can begin to adapt our attitudes and actions to the demands of rising global interdependence.
Adaptation can and must come in several ways. I shall cite five examples.
First, a mere 465 days from now, many of the world’s electronic computers will be struck by the “Millennium Bug”, the now well known “Year 2000 (Y2K)” problem. In civil aviation, myriad computer systems – for navigation, at airports, of airlines – have the potential for chaotic disruptions. Even those systems which, with foresight, have been corrected, may be impacted to the extent they interact with or depend upon uncorrected systems. Computers indeed provide a vivid example of our interdependence.
Your Organization, in co-ordination and co-operation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is striving to maximize awareness of this problem and to inspire corrective actions by the tens of thousands of aviation entities in our Member States. This is indeed a problem calling for many local actions to preserve our global civil aviation system. Every State and aviation entity that has not yet done so must begin now to identify and attack the often hidden problems known to exist. And everyone involved, recognizing the interdependence of these systems, their users and their beneficiaries, should co-operate with each other in a global effort to make all aware of what each has done and to help each other wherever possible.
Second, there are numerous actions which could improve the safety and security of navigation by air. These actions in a global context could collectively enhance our interdependent world systems. For example, greater efforts could be made to notify compliance with or differences to the Annexes to the Convention, to implement the new ICAO CNS/ATM systems, to use the ICAO safety oversight audit system recommended by the Conference of Directors General of Civil Aviation held last November, to fulfil our environmental responsibilities, etc.
Third, while the world’s air transport industry has recently enjoyed overall good health, that health could be enhanced in no small way if many more States would accept the International Air Services Transit Agreement. They could re-examine their approaches to this Agreement to give greater recognition to the benefits their acceptances could provide to the global air transport system in an era of globalization and interdependence.
My fourth example is linked both to the greater acceptance of the International Air Services Transit Agreement and to the broadened implementation of the CNS/ATM systems, along with the enhanced possibilities they open up for international civil aviation. I wish to emphasize the increasing importance and urgency that exists for all States to establish equitable, fair, and transparent cost recovery mechanisms for navigation in their airspace, in accordance with ICAO policy.
My fifth and final example of adaptation of attitudes and actions to the demands of rising global interdependence involves your ongoing relationship to ICAO itself. Carrying out the myriad and diverse tasks assigned to this Organization by you, the Member States acting collectively, requires your ongoing political and moral support. We have received this support, and we who work each day for ICAO are most grateful for it. But it also requires the financial support of all of you. As an Organization that relies almost exclusively upon the financial support of its Members, we are all very interdependent. It truly saddens me, and saddens me deeply, to know that at this session a number of Member States now have their voting rights suspended. This is because they did not meet their financial obligation to this Organization equivalent to the preceding three years or more and either have not concluded with the Council an agreement that provides for the settlement of their outstanding obligations or have not complied with the terms of their agreement. I would like, however, to express my gratitude to States who have already entered into an agreement and call on all those who have not yet done so to settle their arrears to your Organization as early as possible .
A related aspect of this ongoing financial support is that of the significant problems that your Organization encounters not only due to non-payment, but also due to the contributions being paid late in the year they fall due. Payments made late in the year can produce cash surpluses at year’s end, but this is at a real cost to your Organization’s ability to do the many tasks you want it to do, in a timely and complete way.
In an even more immediate way, here and now and for the remainder of this Assembly, each of you could take into perhaps greater account the good of others and the global common good. You could co-operate to the maximum extent possible on issues we will together attempt to resolve, to give greater weight to the global common good. And when you return to your home countries you could begin to build attitudes and approaches that recognize the need for much greater international co-operation to adapt to the demands of our growing global interdependence.
I believe that we can do it!
We can truly recognize our global interdependence!
We can begin to respond to it more effectively by our deeds!
We can build upon 20th Century concepts of international co-operation and begin to expand such co-operation to the level which our ever growing interdependence virtually demands of us in the 21st Century!
By such actions we can truly confirm this session as the first ICAO Assembly of the 21st Century!
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