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 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 Conservative 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.
Life since being Prime Minister
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. 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, but reserved the right to continue its investigation. More details about the affair have subsequently emerged. At the time he was pursuing the lawsuit, Mulroney was meeting in hotel rooms in three cities to accept $300,000 in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber. Schreiber was a middleman who had represented Airbus and is currently wanted for questioning by German authorities for a tax evasion inquiry based on commissions he earned on those deals. 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.
In 1998, he was accorded Canada's highest civilian honour when he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
Though for many years, Conservative politicians distances themself from Mulroney due to his unpopularlity with the Canadian electorate. Due in part to his popularity among Conservative grassroots, due to his electoral success, he began to re-emerge in the late 1990s and went on to be an enthusiatic supporter of the merger of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance in late 2003.
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.
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. Mulroney's speech received several large standing ovations from all of the delegates and many agree that Mulroney, along with Preston Manning, has become one of the CPC's premiere elder statesmen. For all that, Mulroney still remains a polarizing figure in many Canadian political circles.
Though his surgery was initially reported to have gone on without incident, he later developed pancreatis 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
He was replaced as Prime Minister and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party by Defence Minister Kim Campbell. Mulroney's singular unpopularity may have played a role in the stunning electoral defeat suffered by the Campbell government in the 1993 election.
The Canadian political right fragmented during Mulroney's tenure, as Western conservatives left the Progressive Conservative party for the new Reform Party, and Quebec conservatives left to join the separatist Bloc Québécois. This fragmentation also contributed to the defeat of the Progressive Conservative Party, and left it a marginal force in the House of Commons.
Many Canadian small-c conservatives found fault with Mulroney in a variety of areas, from his opposition to capital punishment and outlawing abortion to his tax increases and his failure to curtail expansion of "big government" programmes and political patronage. 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.
In his book called "A Secret Trial" by William Kaplan (a historian and former law professor) and published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2004. Mulroney's sworn testimony at the Airbus trial about his "peripheral" relationship to Schreiber is called evasive, incomplete and misleading. But Kaplan concludes that Mulroney's testimony does not rise to the level of perjury. He adds that no evidence has ever emerged that Mulroney was involed in the decision to purchase Airbus airplanes. To this day, many questions about the Airbus affair remain unanswered.
Like many former national leaders, Mulroney is greatly concerned with how he will be viewed by history. He makes the case that his once unpopular 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. While at one time few conservative politicians would have wanted to be associated with him, many now regard him as an experienced elder statesman. His political advice and personal endorsement has been sought by many Tories, including the new Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper and high-profile MP Belinda Stronach. Many have suggested that Mulroney played an influential behind-the-scenes role in the lead-up to the December 2003 merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance. Mulroney actively encouraged the newly elected PC Party leader Peter MacKay to seek meaningful talks regarding the creation of a new political vessel to reinvigorate and reconstitute the fractured Canadian conservative movement. While many other living historical Tory leaders such as Joe Clark, Jean Charest and Kim Campbell remain opposed or ambivalent in attitude to the new Conservative Party, Mulroney has openly spoken in favour of and has actively supported the CPC as a keynote speaker at several lucrative party fundraising dinners.
|- style="text-align: center;" | width="30%" |Preceded by:
Erik Nielsen | width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons
1983-1984 | width="30%" |Succeeded by:
John Turner
|- style="text-align: center;" | width="30%" |Preceded by:
Erik Nielsen | width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Progressive Conservative Leaders
1983-1993 | width="30%" |Succeeded by:
Kim Campbell
|- style="text-align: center;" | width="30%" |Preceded by:
Elmer M. MacKay , PC | width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Members of Parliament from Central Nova
1983-1984 | width="30%" |Succeeded by:
Elmer M. MacKay , PC
|- style="text-align: center;" | width="30%" |Preceded by:
André Maltais , Liberal | width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Members of Parliament from Manicouagan
1984-1988 | width="30%" |Succeeded by:
Charles A. Langlois , PC
|- style="text-align: center;" | width="30%" |Preceded by:
Charles Hamelin , PC | width="40%" style="text-align: center;" |Members of Parliament from Charlevoix
1988-1993 | width="30%" |Succeeded by:
Gérard Asselin, Bloc Québécois
Last updated: 08-21-2005 03:53:50
Last updated: 09-12-2005 02:39:13
