Former PM Mulroney remembered for being a divisive figure
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is dead at the age of 84, his daughter Caroline said in a social media post. The country’s 18th prime minister died peacefully and surrounded by family, she said in a post on X.
Mulroney’s family said last summer he was improving daily after a heart procedure that followed treatment for prostate cancer in early 2023.
There was no in-between with Martin Brian Mulroney.
Canadians loved him: In 1984, they handed the youthful charmer a blank cheque and the largest majority mandate in history so he could change the country.
Canadians hated him: When he announced his departure from politics in 1993, his charm was dismissed as blarney, his youth faded into a lugubrious middle-age.
He entered the job with massive support; he left with the lowest approval rating in the history of polling.
Voters pleaded for reforms when they elected him. When he tried to deliver that change — be it free trade, tax reform or a new Constitution — they reacted with wariness at best and hostility more often.
Even after leaving office, he couldn’t shake the suspicions that dogged him, especially allegations that swirled around an Air Canada purchase of Airbus jets in 1988. In 1997, he won an out-of-court settlement with the then-Liberal government in a libel suit over an RCMP investigation of the Airbus matter.
Before becoming the first Quebecer to lead the Conservatives in the 20th century, Mulroney was the Boy from Baie-Comeau. Born March 20, 1939, in the isolated smelting town on Quebec’s North Shore, his Baie-Comeau years had a profound influence on him.
The economy will likely bear Mulroney’s longest-lasting imprints.
Free trade fundamentally restructured the country’s economic relationship with the United States and forced Canadian business to make painful adjustments. He changed the way Canadians are taxed by bringing in the Goods and Services Tax.