We, the workers at the City of North Vancouver, District of North Vancouver, the Northlands Golf Course, City of North Vancouver Public Library, District of North Vancouver Public Library, North Shore Neighbourhood House, North Vancouver Recreation and Culture Commission, North Vancouver Museum and Archives, and the Village of Lions Bay, with gratitude and respect do through our elected union leaders acknowledge that we live and work on the traditional territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.  With this acknowledgement, we thank those Indigenous people who still live on and care for these lands and we honour those who have passed.  We ask for their guidance on this day, where the work we do, needs to be guided by respect, understanding and contemplation. May this be shown in the way we conduct ourselves and in the decisions we make.

We are many stories of many peoples, many identities, representing the diversity of humanity.  We are the inheritors of the working class struggle for a more equal society, and we honour and thank all our predecessors for their sacrifices and generosity.  We acknowledge that our society and its prosperity is also a product of ideas and contributions of Western civilization, built on Greco-Roman philosophy and reason, British liberalism & ideas of scientific enlightenment, French notions of liberty, fraternity and equality, Judeo-Christian charity, and knowledge of the European academy of Plato.  We continue to grow by the contributions of many other nations and peoples who increase and add to our experience. 

In 2022, we celebrate 150 years since trade unions were made legal in Canada, and look forward to an even better future.  We are an affiliate of the Canadian Labour Congress, the BC Federation of Labour, and through CUPE National, Public Services International and the International Labour Organization.

We thank our management partners, our elected leaders, and all those who work to make life better.  As builders, we recognize how hard it is to build, and how easy it is to tear down.  We do not view the world as an “us vs. them” and we demand our members perform with integrity and add value to their employers and to our communities and value and respect the contributions of managers and excluded staff whose work is often thankless and challenging. 

As Canadians, we are never inward looking, and are always broad-minded and open-hearted, recognizing our commonality with all human beings.  To build a better world one brick at a time requires the help of as many hands as possible, and that metaphoric mission has no space for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or any form of discrimination on the basis of traits of accidents of birth, physical appearance or inalinable characteristics.