Leaders’ tributes carry underlying meaning
Tributes to fallen comrades tend to bring out the best in politicians — and provide one of the increasingly rare times it isn’t awful to watch the proceedings in the House of Commons. This week’s speeches to the legacy of former prime minister Brian Mulroney provided a shining example.
But it wasn’t a total pause in the tumultuous politics of our time. When Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre and other leaders stood up to speak in Parliament in Mulroney’s honour on Monday, they also opened up a window into their own political souls at this juncture in Canadian politics.
Take Trudeau, for instance, who is currently struggling with the same kind of visceral unpopularity that Mulroney faced after nearly a decade in power. The parallel was clearly on the prime minister’s mind — evoked more than once during his remarks.
Trudeau talked of Mulroney’s own words last year at St. Francis Xavier University, in which he spoke of legacies measured by “big ticket items.”
He hailed him this way: “Brian Mulroney knew how to win, and he certainly enjoyed it. However, he knew as well as anyone that there would be attacks and criticisms that stung,” said Trudeau, noting that his family had seen this up close. “However, on the big things, they also know full well that he would not let himself succumb to temporary pressure. He was motivated by service and those things, those big things, have stood the test of history, four decades and counting.”
Translation: As you judge Mulroney, please judge Trudeau some day. Today’s much-maligned carbon tax could be the good and services tax of yesteryear, widely hated, but still with us.
It has been 24 years since a prime minister last laid in state in Ottawa — Trudeau’s own father, Pierre Trudeau, and that memory also naturally nudged its way into the son’s tribute, recalling how he had spoken about his dad with Mulroney at the St. F.X. event.
“We talked about wisdom he and my dad both shared, that leadership fundamentally is about getting the big things right.”
Poilievre, meanwhile, in what may have been one of the best speeches I’ve witnessed from this Conservative leader, also gave a glimpse into what is driving his politics right now.
For Poilievre, Mulroney was a populist hero, because of his humble upbringing as an electrician’s son.
“A modest, Irish working-class upbringing taught him the value of work, family, neighbourhood, loyalty and merit. For me, this part of his legacy is personal. I was born to a teenage mother, incidentally she was from a working-class Irish family.”
He talked, too, of how Mulroney advised him that his spouse would be his greatest strength — something Poilievre strives to display often with his wife, Anaida.
Though much has been said about how the current Conservative party is a far cry from Mulroney’s brand of progressive conservatism — an issue that came up in other tributes on Monday — Poilievre tried hard to present himself as a carrier of at least some of Mulroney’s mantle. He hailed the Mulroney policies, for example, that foreshadowed Poilievre’s own crusades on affordability and inflation. And without saying so directly, Poilievre clearly didn’t mind planting the thought that the best Conservative leaders come around after the country is fed up with a Trudeau in power.
“He inherited a desperate, divided country with a public debt that led to inflation, unemployment and interest rate hikes.”
Tributes are also a way to administer subtle digs at political foes, holding up one politician as everything one’s opponent is not. In that vein, Trudeau made pointed mention of how Mulroney put his loyalty to country above partisanship, while Poilievre talked of politics built on “meritocracy, not aristocracy” — a reference, obviously, to the Trudeau family business.
The speeches from NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May were less freighted with underlying messages, but they, too, used Mulroney’s memory to dwell on what is top of mind for them today.
May’s emotional speech focused, unsurprisingly, on the environment and how Mulroney blazed trails, long before it was fashionable to be green. Singh fixed his sights on Mulroney’s record on diversity and human rights. Intriguingly, he talked of Mulroney’s willingness to change his mind — on the very same day the NDP was in the midst of intense negotiations about what it was willing to change in a controversial House motion on the Middle East. (The NDP did eventually withdraw a call to declare Palestine a state.)
All of the leaders speaking on Monday were under a lot of pressure. Mulroney was one of the great eulogizers, using these occasions to paint history in broad, colourful strokes, and to situate the struggles of the past as relevant and significant to current events. Often, you would realize that when he was talking about others, he was also talking about himself.
By that measure, the tributes to him on Monday were pure Mulroney. He probably would have enjoyed that.