MacLaren, Roy

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 2002
ROY MACLAREN
to be Doctor of Laws

The Honorable Roy MacLaren has done it all: business leader, civil servant, author, Member of Parliament, Federal Minister, successively, of State(Finance), National Revenue and International Trade, and, most recently, High Commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the years 1996 to 2000. Roy MacLaren has done all of these things and much more with a B.A. from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. from Cambridge, and a Master of Divinity from the University of Toronto. And he continues to do, as a Director of Brascan, Canadian Tire, and Algoma Central among others In Canada, as well as Standard Life and British Petroleum among others in the United Kingdom. He is currently Chair of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Canada·lndia Business Council and the Canada-Europe Round Table.

During his years with the Canadian Foreign Service, Roy MacLaren served In Hanoi, Saigon, and Prague, and with the United Nations In New York and Geneva. In opposition and in government, he has been a strong voice for Canada's need to be involved in the wider world. He brought his Party around to free trade with the United States and negotiated the final stages of Canada's participation In the North American Free Trade Agreement during his years as Minister of International Trade. While a fierce proponent of international free trade, he has always been at pains to point out the difficulties faced by developing nations in fitting into the global system, and therefore the need for fairness on the part of the developed nations in accommodating their entry.

Roy MacLaren is no stranger to UNB Saint John. In 1996 he was the guest speaker at the Learning with Leaders dinner sponsored by the Faculty of Business. When a group of UNB Saint John Business students visited London In 1998 he met with them at a reception at the London School of Economics. He was there for the students, despite a hectic schedule that day, because he had made an earlier commitment to do so.

And Roy MacLaren is no stranger to Saint John or New Brunswick, for there are family roots here through the late Hon. D.L. MacLaren, former Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick and Mayor of the City of Saint John. It's no wonder that in recent years he has quietly taken an active interest in New Brunswick and, in particular, the City of Saint John, In their efforts to attract investment to this area.

Like Roy MacLaren, we at this University, and especially this Campus, recognize the importance of Canada and Canadians being a vital part of the wider world, and increasingly know that the need to be connected to and comfortable with other societies and other peoples grows more urgent as the pace of change accelerates and the transactional world diminishes. We can only hope as we plunge into this challenging endeavour in internationalizing our students and our university that we emerge with some measure of the success that has attended the long and distinguished career of Roy MacLaren as Canada's man on the international scene.