Brian Mulroney

The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney, PC, CC (born March 20, 1939), was the eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993.

Born in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister after his Progressive Conservative Party won the most parliamentary seats in Canadian history. Mulroney was unique in Canadian politics in that he had never been a career politician. A longtime businessman, he had become leader of the Progressive Conservative Party without any political experience, running as an outsider. He was thus the only Prime Minister of Canada who never held a Ministerial position other than Prime Minister.

Background

The son of a paper mill electrician, he received his high school education at a Catholic boarding school in Chatham, New Brunswick, and graduated from Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where he was a nationally ranked debater. He then obtained a law degree from Laval University in Quebec City. After graduation, he joined a Montreal law firm, and on May 26, 1973, he married Mila Pivnicki, the daughter of Yugoslav (Serbian) immigrants. The Mulroneys have four children: Nicolas, Mark, Ben and Caroline.

Although Brian Mulroney had not yet held public office, he had worked for the Progressive Conservative Party for years. In 1976, he ran for election as PC leader at the party's leadership convention but lost to Joe Clark. Following this, Mulroney took the job of Executive Vice President of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a joint subsidiary of three major U.S. steel corporations. In 1977, he was appointed company President.

By mid-1983, Joe Clark's leadership of the Progressive Conservative party was being questioned. Mulroney organized to defeat Clark at the party's leadership review. When Clark received an endorsement by less than 67 percent of delegates at the party convention, Clark resigned from the leadership, resulting in the 1983 leadership convention. Brian Mulroney was again a candidate, and he campaigned more shrewdly than he had done seven years before. He was elected party leader on June 11, 1983, beating Clark on the fourth ballot. He attracted broad support from the many factions of the party, especially from representatives of his native Québec. After winning a by-election in the riding of Central Nova, Mulroney entered the Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa on August 28, 1983.

When Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau retired in June 1984, the Liberal Party chose John Turner as its new leader. Turner called a general election for September. The Conservatives led in every province, emerging as a national party for the first time since the 1958 election.

Prime Minister

During his tenure as Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney's close relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan resulted in the ratification of a free-trade treaty with the United States under which all tariffs between the two countries would be eliminated by 1998. Critics noted that Mulroney had originally professed opposition to free trade during the 1983 leadership race. This agreement was very controversial, and was the central issue of the 1988 election, in which Mulroney's party was re-elected with a strong majority in Parliament (43% of the popular vote). This trade liberalization was expanded in 1992 through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Another major undertaking by Mulroney's government was the divisive issue of national unity. Mulroney wanted to include Québec in a new agreement with the rest of Canada. Quebec was the only province that did not sign the new Canadian constitution negotiated by Pierre Trudeau in 1982. Such a new agreement was promised to Québec by Canada in response to the 1980 referendum on Québec sovereignty. Additionally, for years, many people of the province of Québec had believed that their French-speaking culture merited a distinct status within Canada, and a widespread movement to secede from Canada had developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1987, Mulroney orchestrated the Meech Lake Accord, a series of constitutional amendments designed to satisfy Québec's demand for recognition as a "distinct society" within Canada. However, many English-Canadians objected to the accord, and it was not ratified by the provincial governments of Manitoba and Newfoundland before the 1990 ratification deadline. This failure sparked a revival of Quebec separatism, and led to another round of meetings in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in 1991 and 1992. These negotiations culminated in the Charlottetown Accord, which outlined extensive changes to the constitution, including recognition of Québec as a distinct society. However, the agreement was defeated in a national referendum in October 1992.

Though Mulroney had retained a parliamentary majority in the 1988 elections, widespread public resentment of a new Goods and Services Tax (GST) introduced in 1991, and his inability to resolve the Quebec situation caused Mulroney's popularity to decline considerably, and he resigned in 1993.

After Politics

Since leaving office, Mulroney has pursued a lucrative career as a lawyer and international business consultant.

In 1997, Mulroney settled a defamation lawsuit he had brought against the government of Canada, originally for $50 million. At issue were allegations that Mulroney had accepted bribes in the so-called "Airbus affair" concerning government contracts. Mulroney was re-imbursed for $2 million in legal fees. The government said the allegations could not be substantiated.

William Kaplan, a historian and former law professor, discusses payments from German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber to Mulroney in his 2004 book "A Secret trial," published by McGill-Queens University Press. Schreiber paid Brian Mulroney $100,000 in cash not long after Mulroney stepped down as prime minister — and another $200,000 in cash over the next two years. Schreiber himself received millions of dollars in commissions related to the sale of Airbus Jets to Air Canada, which in turn touched off one of the biggest scandals in German political history. Shreiber is currently fighting extradition to Germany to face charges of fraud.

It is unclear what services Mulroney performed for Schreiber to earn the money; Mulroney maintains he is "as clean as a whistle" and points out that he declared the money and paid tax on it. Despite the payments, Mulroney had previously sworn under oath that he had only a "peripheral" relationship to Schreiber. Kaplan calls the testimony evasive, incomplete and misleading — but concludes that it does not rise to the level of perjury. He adds that no evidence has ever emerged that Mulroney was involved in the decision to purchase Airbus airplanes. To this day, many questions about the Airbus affair remain unanswered.

In 1998, Mulroney was accorded Canada's highest civilian honour when he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In January 2004, Mulroney delivered a keynote speech in Washington, D.C. celebrating the tenth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In June 2004, Mulroney presented a moving eulogy for former U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the latter's state funeral.

In February 2005, Mulroney was diagnosed with a lesion on one of his lungs. In his youth, Mulroney had been a heavy smoker. He underwent successful surgery and was recovered well enough to tape a speech for the 2900 delegates attending the new Conservative Party of Canada's inaugural Policy Convention in Montreal in March though he could not attend in person. Though his surgery was initially reported to have gone on without incident, he later developed pancreatitis and he remained in hospital for several weeks. It was not until April 19 that his son, Ben Mulroney, announced he was recovering and would soon be released.

Legacy

Like many former national leaders, Mulroney is greatly concerned with how he will be viewed by history. He makes the case that his once controversial policies on the economy and free trade were not reversed by subsequent governments. Mulroney regards this as vindication — and an increasing number of neutral observers agree.

Mulroney's extreme unpopularity at the time of his resignation led many Conservative politicians to distance themselves from him for some years. Mulroney began to re-emerge in the late 1990s as something of an elder statesman. But that perception is not universally shared. Many Canadians still regard Mulroney as a polarizing figure.

Social conservatives also found fault with Mulroney in a variety of areas. These include his opposition to capital punishment and outlawing abortion, his tax increases and his failure to curtail expansion of "big government" programmes and political patronage.

The initially unflattering view of Mulroney's legacy began when he was replaced as Prime Minister and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party by Defence Minister Kim Campbell. She suffered a stunning electoral defeat in the 1993 election. Many blamed Mulroney. The Canadian political right had fragmented during Mulroney's tenure. Western conservatives left the Progressive Conservative party for the new Reform Party, and Quebec conservatives left to join the separatist Bloc Québécois. This fragmentation contributed to the defeat of the Progressive Conservative Party, and left it a marginal force in the House of Commons. The Canadian right was not reunited until the December 2003 merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance (successor to the Reform Party) to form the new Conservative Party of Canada.

Mulroney played an influential role by supporting the merger at a time when former Progressive Conservative leaders such as Joe Clark, Jean Charest and Kim Campbell either opposed it or expressed ambivalence.

Mulroney had also been attacked for his relationship with the U.S. by Jean Chrétien, who had a good relationship with Bill Clinton. Chrétien attacked Mulroney for his friendships with both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Quote

"Real leadership is often the antithesis of popularity." [1]