Ontario legislature honours Mulroney
Political leaders of all stripes remember former prime minister as a seminal Canadian figure
Crusader against apartheid in South Africa, champion of the environment countering acid rain pollution, tax reformer and free trader.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney was remembered at Queen’s Park Wednesday as a seminal Canadian figure.
Political leaders of all stripes paid tribute to Mulroney, who died Friday at 84, for his nine years as prime minister between 1984 and 1993.
“Prime minister Mulroney had a massive impact on Ontario and Canada — his vision, his leadership profoundly shaped our nation,” said Premier Doug Ford, who counts Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney, the late prime minister’s eldest child, as a key member of his cabinet.
“He championed economic and tax reforms to build a stronger economy. He’s the reason that today we do over $1.2 trillion in twoway trade with the United States every year,” said the premier.
Ford hailed Mulroney for influencing world leaders like British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. president Ronald Reagan “to play a leading role in ending South Africa’s racist apartheid system and in the international response to the Ethiopian famine.”
NDP Leader Marit Stiles touted Mulroney’s lead on economic sanctions against the all-white South African regime that oppressed the Black majority and his calls for the release of imprisoned anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela.
Mandela visited Canada four months after he was freed from prison in 1990 to thank Mulroney.
“While there’s no question that the fight for liberation in South Africa was won by South Africans, by people organizing and resisting, sanctions were an absolutely critical factor in applying international pressure to the apartheid state,” said Stiles, whose parents were aid workers in Africa.
“Personally, I saw another side to that role that Canada played, because Canada also used, under prime minister Mulroney, our international development heft to support the front-line states in their resistance against apartheid as well,” she said.
Liberal leader John Fraser said it was Mulroney’s battle against then Grit leader John Turner over free trade with the U.S. “that got me off the couch in 1988 to go and knock on doors in Ottawa South.
“That was the spark that led me here some 25 years later,” said Fraser, who had opposed the Progressive
Conservative prime minister’s push for more open trade stateside.
“Since then, I’ve come closer to his position on free trade and that’s the thing about political legacies — our victories, our mistakes, our missed opportunities are always looked at through the lens of the present,” he said.
“There is a legacy that is more important — and that is the mark that you leave on people’s hearts.”
Green Leader Mike Schreiner praised Mulroney for his work to curb acid rain, which was such an environmental threat decades ago.
“I want to highlight prime minister Mulroney’s game-changing work on environmental issues,” said Schreiner.
“Securing a treaty on acid rain with the U.S. made our lakes and rivers cleaner, (and) making Canada the first industrialized country to ratify the convention on biological diversity is even more relevant today,” he said.
“International co-operation can help us fight existential threats.”
Mulroney will lie in state on Parliament Hill before a state funeral March 23 in Montreal.