Brian Mulroney

Prime minister of Canada (1984–93)

• Born: March 20, 1939
• Place of Birth: Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Canada
• Died: February 29, 2024
• Place of Death: Palm Beach, Florida

Mulroney served as prime minister of Canada, won two general elections for the Progressive Conservative Party, and negotiated a significant free trade agreement with the United States.

Early Life

Brian Mulroney (muhl-ROH-nee) was born Martin Brian Mulroney in the remote company town of Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Canada. His parents, who strongly believed in education, allowed him to leave Baie-Comeau to attend St. Thomas High School, a Catholic boarding school operated by St. Thomas University, in Chatham, New Brunswick, and then St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. While at the university, he became active in Progressive Conservative Party politics and made a name for himself as a sound organizer and tireless, bold worker. In fact, to the astonishment of fellow students, Mulroney became friends with the prime minister, John Diefenbaker. Following graduation, he returned to Quebec to study law at Laval University. During his university days, he established a wide network of loyal friends who were to serve him well later in his career. He was also fluently bilingual, and his knowledge of colloquial French was to be of enormous value in advancing his political career.

On leaving Laval University, he joined the large and prestigious Montreal law firm of Ogilvy, Renault. Beginning in 1966, he represented management’s side in its troublesome dealings with longshoremen on the Montreal waterfront. It was during this period that he established a reputation as a skilled negotiator and deal maker and learned the advantage of conciliation instead of confrontation, something that would serve him well when he became prime minister. In 1973, he married Mila Pivnicki, a Yugoslavian by birth, who also served as his close political confidant and a valuable campaigner; they had four children, Nicolas, Mark, Caroline, and Ben.

The following year, he was invited to serve on the Cliche Commission, a royal inquiry into corruption and violence in the Quebec construction industry. This helped transform him into a public figure. By this time, Mulroney was well established in Progressive Conservative circles as an organizer and fund-raiser in Quebec, and in 1976 he was encouraged to run for the party leadership despite the fact that he had never been elected to public office. His campaign, perhaps a trifle showy, alienated large numbers of delegates, and he lost to Joe Clark. Following this depressing defeat, he became vice president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada in 1976; the following year, he was named president of the company, which finally made his future financially secure. He was successful as president and was noted for establishing harmonious relations with labor. These relations were tested when he eventually had to close operations and shut down the company town of Shefferville, Quebec, which he managed to do without damage to his political career.

Life’s Work

In June 1983, Mulroney made another run for the party leadership. This time, his well-organized and low-key campaign defeated Joe Clark. During the leadership contest, Mulroney emphasized his Quebec connection and claimed that he alone could revive Conservative fortunes in his native French-speaking province. In August, he won a by-election in Central Nova, Nova Scotia, which meant that he could lead the Conservatives from the House of Commons. In a general election held in November 1984, Mulroney ran a smooth and well-funded campaign against the disorganized Liberal Party and won in one of the largest landslides in Canadian history; he captured 211 seats, including 57 out of 75 seats in Quebec, placing Mulroney at the head of the first Conservative majority government in twenty-six years and making him the nation’s eighteenth prime minister.

Mulroney soon ran into trouble in office. His government was seen as launching an assault on the costly but popular Canadian social welfare program. His government was also perceived as racked by cronyism and incompetence, as evidenced by the resignations of six cabinet ministers during his first two years in office. On the positive side, he abolished the National Energy Program, which was widely hated in western Canada. He also abolished the Federal Investment Review Agency, creating in its place Investment Canada, whose purpose, unlike that of its predecessor, was to ease and facilitate foreign investment in the country. Such investment more than doubled following that initiative. Additionally, Mulroney privatized twenty-three of the sixty-one state-owned corporations, including Air Canada.

To solve Canada’s outstanding domestic constitutional issue—the failure of Quebec to accede to the new constitution adopted in 1982—he brokered an agreement with the ten provincial premiers, called the Meech Lake Accord, to grant Quebec a number of concessions, including recognizing Quebec as a “distinct society” and giving it a veto over future constitutional amendments. To become effective, it had to be ratified by the provincial legislatures by June 1990. In foreign policy, he pushed for better relations with the United States, a country he personally admired, and established a close, friendly relationship with President Ronald Reagan. He also began a vigorous anti-apartheid campaign against the racist regime in South Africa.

Although his treaty with the United States on limiting acid rain was widely applauded, perhaps his greatest accomplishment was a free trade agreement, also with the United States. Initially, Mulroney had been opposed to the idea; yet Canada was alarmed by the increasingly protectionist-minded US Congress of the 1980s. Canada was heavily dependent on the US market, which accounted for more than 75 percent of Canadian exports. Serious negotiations concluded in the autumn of 1987, and the lengthy text was initialed by Mulroney and Reagan on January 2, 1988. The pact called for the gradual elimination of tariff barriers and unfettered access to financial and service industries of both countries and established a dispute settlement mechanism. The pact deeply divided Canadians in almost equal numbers. Many Canadians, believing that their smaller economy might be unable to compete with the economic powerhouse to the south, feared job losses and the eventual surrender of their political sovereignty as well as their cultural identity. It became the major issue in the general election of 1988, which Mulroney won, thanks in large measure to strong support from the business community and the province of Quebec, where the Conservatives actually increased their number of seats. (This election made Mulroney the member of parliament for Charlevoix, which included his hometown, Baie-Comeau.) However, his majority in the Commons was reduced in size: the Progressive Conservatives took 166 seats, the Liberals won 101, and the New Democratic Party won 40 seats. Following the election, the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was passed by Parliament and became law. In the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in effect expanded the provisions of the FTA to include Mexico.

Almost immediately after the election, Mulroney’s popularity began to dive. A highly unpopular goods and services tax was passed, which was essentially a national sales tax of 7 percent. His government also cut budgets for costly but popular pan-Canadian institutions, including VIA railways, Canada Post, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Unemployment crept up past the 11 percent level, and the economy slipped into recession.

The government won some support when it clearly signaled its concern about environmental issues by signing conventions on biodiversity and climate change at the United Nations Conference on the Environment, passing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and Canadian Environmental Protection Act, placing a moratorium on cod fishing, and creating three new national parks. For such measures, Mulroney would later receive considerable praise from environmentalists. However, his foreign policy measures tended to overshadow these achievements. He appeared to be too accommodating to the United States in foreign policy—he supported the United States in its invasion of Panama, the drug war against Latin America cartels, and the Gulf War and joined the Organization of American States, a body perceived to be dominated by the United States. All this gave the appearance of a prime minister who poorly defended Canadian institutions and the country’s economy while being servile to the national interests of the United States.

Further adding to Mulroney’s woes was the failure of all the provinces to approve the Meech Lake Accord, which, by the time it died, had simultaneously alienated much of English-speaking Canada and Quebec. Mulroney tried hard to repair the damage. He negotiated a new agreement (the Charlottetown Accord) with the provincial premiers and other leaders, which once again recognized Quebec as a distinct society and gave it a veto over future constitutional amendments but also added concessions favorable to other Canadian provinces and to aboriginal people to make it more acceptable to the country. However, in provincial referendums held on October 26, 1992, only four provinces approved it, while six voted it down, including Quebec, which felt the concessions did not go far enough. The total national vote showed that 54 percent had voted against it. The accord died because most Canadians felt it had made excessive concessions to Quebec and would have seriously weakened the federal government and because the unpopular Mulroney had been too closely identified with it.

By 1993, public opinion polls showed that Mulroney had the lowest popular approval rating of any prime minister in Canadian history, and he announced his intention to resign on February 24 of that year. He was eventually replaced by Kim Campbell, a former minister of justice and minister of defense, who became the first female prime minister in Canadian history. In the election of 1993, Campbell, who initially was popular but lost much of her support because of blunders, inexperience, and the Mulroney legacy, suffered a stunning defeat: Her party won only 2 seats, while the Liberals captured 177. Although Campbell was technically the loser, most political observers felt the election had actually been a referendum on the Mulroney years.

Mulroney returned to the law firm Ogilvy, Renault after leaving office, offered his services as an international business consultant, became chair in 1998 of the international edition of Forbes magazine, and eventually was elected to the boards of several corporations, such as Quebecor World, Archer Daniels Midland Company, and Barrick Gold Corporation. Controversy and allegations of misdoing during his second term persisted. The government accused him of accepting bribes in return for government contracts with the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The government could not substantiate the claims, and Mulroney sued, winning a $2 million settlement in 1997. Controversy notwithstanding, he received Canada’s highest civilian distinction, the Companion of the Order of Canada, in 1998. The citation praised his trade agreements, fiscal reform, and environmental record. Still, he remained among the most unpopular prime ministers in Canadian history, and the award prompted protests through the country.

Mulroney stayed influential, however. In 2003 he was a key supporter of the reunited conservatives, who had split largely because of his unpopular tenure as prime minister, in the Conservative Party of Canada. He advised Stephen Harper on his successful campaign to become prime minister in 2006. He represented Canada at the state funerals for President Ronald Reagan in 2004 and for President Gerald R. Ford two years later.

Mulroney’s honors include an academic building named after him at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick in 2001 and honorary doctorates from the University of Western Ontario, Laval University, and Boston College. He was elected as a grand officer to the Ordre National du Québec and in 2006 received the Order of King Yaroslav the Wise of the First Class from the president of the Ukraine for his role in winning that nation its independence. Also in 2006 a panel of Canadian environmental groups sponsored by Corporate Knights magazine presented an award to him for being the greenest of all Canada’s prime ministers. In 2007 the Fraser Institute gave him its Founder’s Award in honor of the Free Trade Agreement.

Mulroney encountered controversy again years after his resignation, in 2007, when he admitted to receiving cash payments from German arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, totaling as much as $300,000, which he claimed was reimbursement for lobbying on behalf of a German company that wished to build a factory in Canada. Though Mulroney maintained the dealings were legal, an inquiry into the matter in 2010 deemed the relationship "inappropriate." Despite the controversy, Mulroney continued to hold senior positions at several major companies and remained a respected figure among Conservatives in Canada.

Mulroney died on February 29, 2024. He was eighty-four years old.

Significance

During his public career, Mulroney aroused fierce emotions in people. His critics claim that he lacked a national vision, possessed no grand ideas, and had no personal ideology to guide him but was merely carried along by his personal ambition. He was accused of not adequately defending the interests of Canada’s national government and being too willing to surrender power to the provinces, particularly Alberta and Quebec, to stop constitutional bickering. These critics further claim that he never did solve the country’s economic problems, presiding instead over a growing public debt and rising unemployment. In foreign policy, he was charged with slavishly following the United States and, in the process, jeopardizing the country’s fragile cultural and economic independence. In the end, his policies disrupted the once-proud Progressive Conservative Party, dooming it temporarily to the margins of Canadian politics.

Mulroney’s defenders assert that he honorably and courageously tried to resolve the country’s vexing constitutional crisis but could not overcome the reluctance of Canada’s anglophone population to compromise with their French-speaking fellow citizens in Quebec. He also tried to modernize the Canadian economy and put Canada in step with the economic forces of the age: globalization, free trade, and a reduction of government interference in the economy. Supporters also claim that he did not share many of his fellow Canadians’ biases against the United States but believed that their southern neighbor was on the right side of many issues, including the struggle against totalitarian communism, Middle Eastern aggression, and drugs. Much of the bad press that Mulroney received sprang from the intellectual and media elites who resented his pro-business, pro-United States, and pro-Quebec policies. Thus, there was little consensus on the Mulroney legacy in Canada when he left office.

Bibliography

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