Mulroney’s contested legacy

Born and raised in Baie Commeau, Québec, a mill town five hours northeast of Quebec City, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney seemed to embody the diversity of Canada in his own person. His parents were Irish Canadians but he grew up speaking both French and English. In his youth he was inspired to work within the Conservative Party by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker’s rhetorical eloquence. In the 1960s and 70s, Mulroney served as a labour lawyer and successfully ended a strike at Montreal’s newspaper, La Presse. As part of the Cliche Commission investigating organized crime in the province’s unions, Mulroney became well known in Québec, entering federal politics in the 1970s.

Becoming leader of the federal Progressive Conservatives in 1983, Mulroney put together an unprecedented coalition of often fractious groups within the party, cruising to victory the following year. For the first time since Diefenbaker’s 1958 majority government, Mulroney brought Québec into the Conservative Party, winning 58 of the province’s 75 seats in the Commons. But rather than forming an enduring national base for his party, he succeeded only in stitching together a precarious patchwork that began to pull apart during his second term.

Mulroney had brought Québec onside by promising to reopen the constitutional question. When Pierre Trudeau patriated the constitution in 1982, Québec, then governed by the separatist Parti Québécois, refused to sign on to the package. Had the province been left out of the constitution? Mulroney thought so. Thus began an intensive effort to negotiate a new arrangement with the provincial premiers to enshrine Québec’s distinct place in Confederation. The subsequent Meech Lake Accord failed in 1990, because not every province by then had ratified it.

Mulroney tried again with the Charlottetown Accord, which failed in a national referendum in 1992. By then many anglophone Canadians had soured on giving Québec a special status and had tired of the constitutional wranglings.

Wins & losses

Yet Mulroney did make significant contributions to Canada. He negotiated a free-trade agreement with the United States – something that had eluded his predecessors. Not all Canadians were enthusiastic about the deal: would Niagara’s wineries survive if they had to compete with California and upstate New York? Would domestic industries make it in a much larger market? Not everyone benefited, but many businesses found that this larger market allowed them to take advantage of economies of scale and thus better compete with their American counterparts. And, yes, the Niagara wineries are doing fine, as a visit to any one of them will reveal.

Along with the Free Trade Agreement, and eventually the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mulroney improved Canada’s general relationship with the U.S. after a somewhat frosty period under Pierre Trudeau and President Ronald Reagan. We all remember the so-called Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in 1985 which saw Mulroney and Reagan singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, in celebration of their common heritage.

Yet linking Canada’s fortunes to those of the U.S. hurt Canada in the early 1990s with the Bank of Canada effectively forced to follow the lead of the Federal Reserve Board to this country’s detriment during a deep recession. This eroded support for Mulroney’s economic policies.

In the end, Mulroney’s support for the highly unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST) is what did his party in. By this time, his ratings in the public opinion polls had reached historic lows. The Québec wing of his parliamentary caucus had largely abandoned him by the early 90s and formed the Bloc Québécois. The western provinces thought he had squandered his historic mandate placating Québec and ignoring their own interests; this led to the formation of the Reform Party in 1987.

It is easy for us to criticize our political leaders. But exercising public office is a difficult balancing act in the best of times, with officials undertaking to pursue policies minimally acceptable to the greatest number of people. To be sure, God has tasked our leaders with doing public justice, yet the content of that justice needs to be worked out through difficult negotiations among the interested parties. No one reaches perfection in this effort, and disagreements will remain. While he still has his critics, Mulroney nevertheless served his country to the best of his ability.