Mulroney did ‘good job’ as prime minister: poll
Approval crosses party lines, age groups
Most Canadians approve of Brian Mulroney’s performance as prime minister, with a striking 83 per cent of those polled in the days after his passing saying Mulroney did a “good job” as the 18th leader of the country.
More than 80 per cent in every age group had a positive view of Mulroney’s handling of key policy priorities.
“Perhaps even more notable, at least three-quarters of every major political party expressed a positive feeling about Mr. Mulroney’s record,” according to pollster Spark Insights.
Respondents were asked how they viewed Mulroney’s handling of five policy challenges: the Canada-u.s. free trade deal, the Acid Rain Treaty, Mulroney’s sustained efforts to end apartheid, the introduction of the highly unpopular Goods and Services Tax and his attempts at constitutional reform first with the Meech Lake and then the Charlottetown accords.
“Brian Mulroney was colourful and some of his major policy initiatives were pretty controversial,” Spark Advocacy’s chief strategy officer Bruce Anderson said in a release.
“But he maintained a conviction that his effort to push policies that were of doubtful popularity in the moment was the right thing to do and over time might also win more public acceptance.”
The online poll of 1,700 Canadians was conducted between March 12 and 15.
Mulroney died on Feb. 29 at age 84.
When he took office in 1984, Mulroney captured the largest majority in Canadian history, wining 211 of 282 seats.
By 1992, his approval rating had dipped to 12 per cent, the lowest ever recorded at the time for a prime minister. He resigned in 1993 and was replaced by Kim Campbell.
Among his most-quoted quips: “If your only objective is to be popular, you’re going to be popular, but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing.”
Anderson, a longtime political strategist and pollster, did a lot of polling in the day on free trade, the GST, and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords.
“I know how controversial those policy ideas were at the time,” he said an interview.
Political battle lines were drawn.
“Canadians weren’t sure that free trade was going to work out . ... The GST was as unpopular a tax idea for a good long while as any tax idea that I’ve seen,” Anderson said.
Today, “people are looking back (at Mulroney) and saying, on the balance of things, we think he tried to do useful things for the country.”
Overall, 87 per cent of Liberals polled viewed Mulroney’s record as positive. His performance had the support of 90 per cent of Bloc Québécois supporters, and 85 per cent of Conservatives.
Public support for a Canada-u.s. trade deal was close to a 50-50 split at the time it was negotiated. In the Spark Advocacy poll, 85 per cent saw Mulroney’s negotiation of the trade deal in a positive light.
On the federal goods and services tax, an extraordinarily controversial tax reform when it took effect in 1991, 63 per cent of those polled viewed the Mulroney policy in a positive light.
More than 80 per cent had positive feelings on the late prime minister’s efforts to fight apartheid and acid rain.
Even the youngest age group, 18 to 29, felt Mulroney did a good job (85 per cent) overall on the policy package.
Anderson thinks it’s a reflection of two things.
Young people don’t feel the same “kind of energy” about the GST “as people did for whom it was a new thing.” Their recollection of Meech or Charlottetown might be dim, but “you don’t have much doubt about whether free trade is a good idea or a bad idea for Canada,” or that fighting acid rain and apartheid were good ideas, Anderson said.
“Even if you didn’t know much you would look at those things and say they were probably good.”
Another influencing factor? Mulroney didn’t intervene that often in politics after he resigned, “but when he did, he tried to say useful things for the country,” Anderson said. “He didn’t sound like the kind of trenchant partisan that we see in politics so often these days.
“He sounded more statesman like. And I think that filters into these responses for younger people.”
During the free trade debate in the late 1980s, “Canadians didn’t feel necessarily all that confident that if we opened ourselves up to a free-trade agreement to the United States that we would win more than we lost . ... Or that it would even be equally good for both sides,” Anderson said.
There were fears of being swamped by American culture, he said, or that Canada lacked the scale or competitiveness.
“In hindsight I think it is the case that most people say it has been a good policy for Canada . ... (Mulroney) made a really important change in terms of the functioning of our economy on free trade.”
The free trade deal later became the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The poll wasn’t about what people felt about the person, but what people felt about Mulroney’s policy legacy.
But, “obviously, if they didn’t like him as a person, we wouldn’t see numbers like this,” Anderson said.
“The rear window view of Canadians is that he made some important policy differences for the country, and he persevered in his belief that they would be good for the country,” he said.
“He liked popularity for sure, but he was prepared to live with unpopularity as he pursued these ideas.”