From the CBC:
“Brian Mulroney, one of
Canada's most consequential prime ministers, is dead at 84”
Brian Mulroney — who, as Canada's
18th prime minister, steered the country through a tumultuous period in
national and world affairs — has died. He was 84. His daughter Caroline
Mulroney shared the news Thursday afternoon on social media. "On behalf of
my mother and our family, it is with great sadness we announce the passing of
my father, The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, Canada's 18th Prime Minister.
He died peacefully, surrounded by family," she said on X, formerly Twitter.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
remembered Mulroney as someone who "had the courage to do big
things." "He was committed to this country — loved it with all his
heart — and served it many, many years and many different ways," Trudeau
told reporters on Thursday night. "He was an extraordinary statesman and
he will be deeply deeply missed." Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre
said Mulroney was one of Canada's "greatest-ever statesmen." The
Opposition leader said he often sought advice from Mulroney, saying that the
former prime minister had an "incredibly encyclopedic mind." "He
loved to have conversation.
He was a brilliant
conversationalist and a wonderful storyteller," Poilievre told reporters
late Thursday. Mulroney was one of Canada's most controversial prime ministers.
Unafraid to tackle the most challenging issues of his era, Mulroney pursued
politics in a way that earned him devoted supporters — and equally passionate
critics. Mulroney was a gifted public speaker and a skilled politician. As
prime minister, he brokered a free trade deal with the U.S. and pushed for
constitutional reforms to secure Quebec's signature on Canada's supreme law —
an effort that ultimately failed. He introduced a national sales tax to raise
funds against ballooning budget deficits, privatized some Crown corporations
and stood strongly against racial apartheid in South Africa during one of the
most eventful tenures of any Canadian prime minister. "Whether one agrees
with our solutions or not, none will accuse us of having chosen to evade our
responsibilities by side-stepping the most controversial issues of our
time," Mulroney said in his February 1993 resignation address. "I've
done the very best for my country and my party."
A fateful friendship Mulroney
was born to working class Irish-Canadian parents in the forestry town of
Baie-Comeau in 1939. His father was a paper mill electrician in this
hardscrabble outpost in Quebec's northeast. Mulroney grew up with a
bicultural world view in an isolated community split between French and English
speakers — an upbringing that would prove to be politically useful later.
Mulroney became interested in
Conservative politics through a fateful friendship with Lowell Murray, a future
senator and cabinet minister in his government. Murray convinced his
charismatic classmate to join the Progressive Conservative campus club at St.
Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. A lawyer by training, Mulroney
made a name for himself in his home province as an anti-corruption crusader.
After violence erupted at the James Bay hydroelectric dam construction site,
Mulroney was brought in to investigate Mafia ties as the lead member of the
Cliche commission reviewing the bungled project. Following a failed Progressive
Conservative leadership bid in 1976, Mulroney took the reins of the party after
organizing opposition to then-leader Joe Clark at the 1983 leadership
convention. Mulroney — who had never previously held elected office — unseated
the former prime minister from the leadership on the strength of his support
among delegates from Quebec. With the Liberals faltering in the polls, Mulroney
led the PCs to a majority victory in the 1984 campaign — one of the largest
election landslides in Canadian history. While Pierre Elliott Trudeau had been
replaced by John Turner as Liberal leader by the time the 1984 campaign began,
the election was widely seen as a referendum on Trudeau's sometimes turbulent
time in office. Mulroney would win again in 1988 after voters backed his plan
to sign a free trade agreement with the U.S. — easily the most consequential
policy of the Mulroney era.
'Irish Eyes are Smiling' Mulroney
was elected to office in 1984 promising to "refurbish" the
Canada-U.S. relationship after years of tension. He fended off claims from the
Turner-led Liberal Party that a free trade deal with the U.S. would diminish
Canada's sovereignty and turn the country into a ''51st state.'' During a
widely watched televised leaders' debate in 1988, Turner accused Mulroney of
selling out Canada. "You don't have a monopoly on patriotism — and I
resent the fact, your implication that only you are a Canadian," Mulroney
fired back. Mulroney would be re-elected with another majority
government — the first time a conservative prime minister had won two
consecutive majorities since Sir John A. Macdonald. Trade between the
two countries grew dramatically after the free trade deal was ratified and the
economies became even more intertwined after nearly 100 years of protectionism
came to an end. "Our message is clear here and around the world —
Canada is open for business again," Mulroney said at the 1985
"Shamrock Summit" alongside U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
The two men, both of Irish
extraction, famously sang lines from the folk song When Irish Eyes are Smiling
at that Quebec City meeting. The musical interlude was celebrated by some as a
sign of thawing relations between the two countries — and derided by others as
a sign of Canada kowtowing to its powerful neighbour. Mulroney improved
Canada's relationship with the U.S and pushed Reagan to sign the acid rain
treaty to curb sulfur dioxide emissions that were destroying waterways. He also
signed a North American air defence modernization agreement to better protect
the continent from a ballistic missile attack.
Former U.S. president George H.W.
Bush considered Mulroney a close personal friend — Mulroney was Bush's last
guest at Camp David, the presidential retreat — and often sought his counsel on
Cold War-related matters as an alliance of western nations negotiated an end to
the Soviet Union with Mikhail Gorbachev. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would
tap Mulroney's deep U.S. connections in 2017-18 as the NAFTA renegotiation
efforts started to go sideways. Mulroney, who owned a home in Palm Beach, Fla.
— not far from then-president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago — was a useful
intermediary between Trudeau's Liberal government and the Republican
administration.
A delicate dance with Quebec
and a failed accord During his time in federal politics, Mulroney assembled
an electoral coalition of western populists, Quebec nationalists and
traditional Tories — an alliance that succeeded in keeping the Liberals out of
power for nearly 10 years. Mulroney's first landslide majority win — the
PCs captured 211 of 282 seats in the Commons in the 1984 vote — gave him the
leeway to make fundamental reforms to the Canadian state. Under Mulroney's
leadership, dozens of Crown corporations were sold to private interests,
including Air Canada. He also scrapped Trudeau's much-maligned National Energy
Program, a decision welcomed by many westerners. That electoral
coalition eventually would collapse after the emergence of the Bloc Québécois
and the Reform Party — groups that capitalized on regional grievances that grew
even more stark during Mulroney's time in office. Mulroney — who
stressed the importance of Quebec to a successful conservative movement during
his party leadership bid — trounced his Liberal opponents in the province with
a promise to bring Quebec onside with the Constitution.
In 1981-82, the separatist Quebec
government led by René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois refused to sign
Trudeau's repatriated Constitution Act, fearing the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms would centralize power in Ottawa and dilute provincial influence. In
an attempt to heal those wounds, Mulroney brokered the 1987 Meech Lake
constitutional accord with Quebec — then led by federalist Liberal Premier
Robert Bourassa — and the other provinces. The accord would have recognized
Quebec as a "distinct society" within Canada and would have extended
greater powers to the provinces to nominate people for federal institutions
like the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada. The accord also would have
bolstered the provinces' role in the immigration system and made changes to how
social programs were to be funded — allowing provinces to opt out of some
programs and accept federal funding to create their own. While initially
popular with voters — many English Canadians believed this overture to Quebec
would silence separatism and prevent a repeat of the 1980 sovereignty
referendum — the deal crumbled after Trudeau emerged from retirement to oppose
it. The former PM accused Mulroney of conceding too much to the provinces and
argued the accord would "render the Canadian state totally impotent."
Many in English Canada also grew leery of recognizing Quebec as a
"distinct society." Ultimately, the provinces failed to ratify the
deal by its deadline, with Newfoundland and Labrador and Manitoba as notable
holdouts. "It's a sad day for Canada. This was all about Canada, about the
unity of our country," Mulroney said of the accord's defeat. Lucien
Bouchard, Mulroney's Quebec lieutenant and a former colleague at the Cliche
anti-corruption commission, angrily left the PC government after the accord
failed and formed the Bloc, a party devoted to Quebec's interests. Bouchard,
widely respected in Quebec, torpedoed Mulroney's support in that province. Another
Mulroney-led attempt at constitutional reform, the Charlottetown Accord of
1992, was later defeated in a national referendum.
A deeply unpopular tax Amid
the constitutional fracas and after the introduction of the deeply unpopular
Goods and Services Tax (GST), Mulroney's popularity declined dramatically. He
posted record-low approval ratings at the end of his second term.
After negotiating the free trade
deal with the U.S., Mulroney sought to reform the existing manufacturers' sales
tax (MST) system that, he said, put Canada's exporters at a disadvantage. That
13.5 per cent tax was largely invisible to the consumer, while the
consumption-based GST that would replace it — a 7 per cent levy on all goods
and services purchased in Canada — was to be paid directly at the cash
register. With the Queen's approval, Mulroney stacked the Senate with
supporters to get the deeply unpopular bill through the Liberal-dominated upper
house.
Looking back at the legacy of
Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister who is remembered for the humanity of
his politics and his willingness to tackle big issues, as well as major — and
divisive — moves on taxes and trade. "It is clearly not popular, but we're
doing it because it's right for Canada. It must be done," Mulroney said of
the tax in 1990. In the 1993 election campaign following Mulroney's departure
from the federal scene, then Liberal leader Jean Chretien — hoping to
capitalize on voter frustration — made "Axe the Tax" his campaign
mantra. Chretien easily beat Mulroney's successor, Kim Campbell, but never
followed through on his promise to scrap the tax as it raked in billions of
dollars in government revenue — money used to pay down Canada's substantial
national debt. "Quite frankly, it's interesting to me to sit back many
years later, having had to endure the abuse and recriminations and the
pounding, and to see that it's turned out well for Canada. That's all I
wanted," Mulroney said in 2010.
A break with allies on
apartheid While often associated with two other leading conservative
figures of the era — Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher
— Mulroney broke ranks with some of his closest allies on one issue: apartheid
and sanctions against the South African white minority regime. Reagan
and Thatcher were both vehemently anti-communist. They feared that South
African black leaders like Nelson Mandela were Marxists intent on turning the
country away from liberal democracy. Mulroney, who had long admired John
Diefenbaker's anti-apartheid stance decades ago, saw the state's system of
racist repression as fundamentally unjust. After his election, Mulroney
launched an aggressive Canadian push within the Commonwealth for sanctions to
pressure the South African government to dismantle its racist caste system and
release Mandela from prison, where he had been locked up for a quarter century.
Upon his release, Mandela spoke with Mulroney by phone to thank him for his
advocacy. "We regard you as one of our great friends because of the solid
support we have received from you and Canada over the years," Mandela told
Mulroney, according to the prime minister's book, Memoirs. "When I was in
jail, having friends like you in Canada gave me more joy and support than I can
say."
^ This is sad to hear. ^
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brian-mulroney-passes-away-1.7130287
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