A leader who mattered in the world
Champion of the anti-apartheid movement
The passing of Brian Mulroney on Thursday was a moment that caused me to reflect on the role that individuals can play in shaping the events of their times, and to not merely be carried along by them.
For me personally, he was a political opponent, of course. But he was never an enemy, political or otherwise. He was an enormous personality who used his time in office to make some very big bets that he believed were right for Canada.
In the great election of 1988, he risked his government on convincing Canadians that free trade would work in their favour. I believe that history has proven him right. When NAFTA was under threat decades later, it was a Team Canada effort that succeeded in saving it, renewing it as the USMCA.
Mulroney also took the unpopular step of reforming Canada’s tax system by introducing the GST. Although it was much reviled (and criticized by my party), the GST enabled us to balance the budget and build the fiscal strength to weather the global recession that struck in 2008.
Importantly, he used the force of his powerful personality to become a close confidant of two U.S. presidents, ultimately delivering eulogies at the funerals of both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Those friendships ensured that Canada mattered to the United States, enabling not only free trade but the binational treaty on acid rain that was so important to Canadians, as well as managing many other issues in the Canada-u.s. relationship, small and large.
His influence with Reagan was highlighted to me one day, when I was foreign affairs minister, by my then-counterpart U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had previously served as Reagan’s national security adviser.
“I would have the president fully briefed on why Canada’s Arctic sovereignty claims were misguided,” Powell recalled to me. “Brian would come to the White House and bring rolls of maps that he would show the president, and convince him of his case!”
Despite his ideological and personal alignment with Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Mulroney was an international champion of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and spoke forcefully in support of human rights more generally. This was a prime minister that mattered both at home and abroad.
On a personal level, Brian was unfailingly gracious and often kind to me, as I know he was to many of my colleagues. If I were in an audience where he was speaking, especially in my hometown of Ottawa, he would always point me out with a kind word. When I was a rookie MP, I would ask him a question in question period and he would answer it — not dismiss it or pass it off to someone else. When Boris Yeltsin addressed Parliament in 1992, the prime minister took his elbow and brought him across the floor and introduced me to the Russian president. I never knew why.
His passing is an opportunity to remember that political adversaries need not be enemies. Civilized debate and political discourse is not a weakness; it is a sign of strength in a democracy. The heated and tense debates among Mulroney, John Turner and Ed Broadbent look in hindsight, to me at least, to be different in nature from the bitterly divided and often vacuous debates we see in our politics today. The inherent civility of those “happy warriors” gave evidence of their mutual commitment to the country and people they served.
No political leader gets everything right. Certainly hubris and political aims sometimes result in sub-optimal outcomes. Mulroney was no exception. But his urge to serve Canada and risk his political success to do big things made Brian Mulroney one of Canada’s most memorable and consequential prime ministers.
Rest in peace, sir. Your friends and opponents alike hold you in high regard.
HE WAS AN ENORMOUS PERSONALITY.