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It can be said that Jacques is more ready to live in such a situation than society is ready to provide protected work, suitable living arrangements, and, above all, supportive counseling. Undeniably, Jacques is a human being with considerable limitations, intellectual and physical, but they are not so severe nor are they as serious an obstacle to living in the community as is commonly assumed of persons with Down's Syndrome. But to me he is also a symbol of the value and effectiveness of organizations such as yours, and it is indeed appropriate that the office where he works so effectively is that of the International League of Societies for the Mentally Handicapped, an organization with which you are affiliated by virtue of your membership in the Canadian Association for the Mentally Retarded.

I hope many of you are aware that the Declaration of Rights for Mentally Retarded Persons, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1971 and reprinted in your program, was initially adopted three years earlier, in 1968, by the Jerusalem Congress of the International League of Societies for the Mentally Handicapped, based on the findings of an International Symposium on Legal and Legislative Problems in Mental Retardation held in Stockholm in 1967 (ILSMH, 1967).

The strength of the League lies in the fact that it brings together from some 60 countries parent organizations concerned with mental retardation, and it is on their combined wisdom, energy, resourcefulness and commitment that I pin my hopes for a brighter future which indeed will assure to all retarded citizens their basic human rights -- not as a myth but as a reality.