Mulroney unites Tories of all stripes
Former PM’s passing sparks conversation about leadership style and what today’s parties can learn
MONTREAL It might be the only gathering of its kind in more than three decades that could have achieved the feat of uniting every kind of small-c and big-C Conservative.
The state funeral for Brian Mulroney drew three generations of Conservative prime ministers, premiers and political aides under one roof at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal on Saturday, the backdrop for many of them to reflect on Mulroney’s impact on the modern Conservative movement.
Most have tales of times the former prime minister called them personally.
All had views on his legacy as a prime minister, laying Conservative claim to Mulroney’s agenda of free trad, and achievements on the world stage such as fighting apartheid, and securing environmental agreements to fight acid rain and ozone-depleting emissions.
Yet when it came to describing what kind of role model Mulroney is for how Conservatives should campaign to win now, their analyses differed.
Jean Charest, a former Quebec premier and once Mulroney’s youngest cabinet minister, eulogized Mulroney’s governing achievements at his funeral. But Charest also underscored at the end that “the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney treated his political opponents with respect. He did not view them as enemies. They were opponents. But most importantly they were also Canadian patriots.”
It was a postscript tinged with personal meaning.
Charest was recruited to lead the federalist forces in Quebec under the provincial Liberal banner. And when he tried to return to the national stage and run for the federal Conservative leadership two years ago, his rival Pierre Poilievre dismissed and undermined him as a “Liberal” not a true Conservative.
Splits in the federal Conservative party, in the post-Mulroney era, run deep and in many directions.
Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives split into the PCs who claimed to be moderate and the more hardline Reform Party with roots in the west (in Quebec, the party lost members to the Bloc Québécois). The Reform Party morphed into the Canadian Alliance until political imperatives of a divided right drove Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay to merge the PCs and Alliance into a united Conservative Party.
Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, once a Reform Party member, and a key Conservative party cabinet minister under Harper, said in an interview with the Star that Mulroney “had the magnanimity to end up supporting the newly united party.”
“He didn’t hold a spirit of bitterness toward the Reformers and others who had split off. And I think that’s ultimately a sign of what a statesman he was, that he saw the interests of the country were in having a competitive political system, which meant a united Conservative Party. And he supported that in the end. So you’ll see a lot of former Reformers like me here, partly out of that respect.”
Kenney said it is important not to overstate the past as some kind of kinder, gentler political model. Mulroney’s Canada and today’s political environment are not comparable, he said, adding Mulroney didn’t have to govern in a time of social media.
“Let’s not romanticize it,” he added, saying debate over “free trade was deeply divisive and nasty. And, if we see a lot of nastiness in our politics today, amplified by social media, 1988 was pretty darn nasty.”
“The personal, animosity toward him from many of his opponents was off the charts. So I think sometimes we tend to idealize the past,” Kenney said, adding it wasn’t so idyllic back then when “his leftwing opponents were burning him in effigy across the country.”
MacKay, who with Harper cofounded the Conservative party of today, arrived at the Mulroney funeral with his father, Elmer.
The elder MacKay, who once vacated his Nova Scotia seat so Mulroney could run to enter the House of Commons, said Mulroney was “a man of great political acumen and unmatched personal skills.”
The son agreed. MacKay added that everyone who led the party after Mulroney and sought his advice on issues of the day “speaks to the man and speaks to his knowledge, his breadth of influence and impact. And I think the Conservative party today, would do well to emulate some of those leadership qualities and skills.” MacKay hastened to add: “I know Mr. Poilievre appreciated any advice that he received from Mr. Mulroney.”
That’s when his father jumped back in to say, “Brian was a moderate. That’s what he was.”
Still, Mulroney endured tough media scrutiny in an era long before social media as he tried to advance his once controversial agenda.
Outside his funeral, Poilievre — who infrequently speaks to reporters in Ottawa — scrummed repeatedly, taking far more questions than usual, praising Mulroney’s policy legacy, saying he was inspired by Mulroney’s rise from modest working-class roots to become prime minister, and his loyalty to his family.
Poilievre was five years old when
‘‘ Brian Mulroney treated his political opponents with respect. He did not view them as enemies.
JEAN CHAREST FORMER QUEBEC PREMIER
Mulroney swept Canada in September 1984, but was an active young worker in the Canadian Alliance, later running and winning his riding in 2004 after the party’s merger. Poilievre said he valued Mulroney’s guidance when he took over the party in September 2022, and used to call Mulroney “every six or seven weeks.” Mulroney shared “tricks of the trade.”
“He was a master of keeping his team united. He went through very difficult times because often his policies — though they were right — were not popular at the time. He had to get 150-200 caucus members to stick with him as they were facing hardship in their constituencies, and he laid on the Irish charm” every week at Wednesday caucus meetings, said Poilievre.
“I think that warmth and that personal care for every single person he knew was the reason he kept people so united.”
When Poilievre was asked, however, about whether there were lessons in decency when it comes to dealing with political opponents, Poilievre said the lesson is “mixed.”
Mulroney, Poilievre observed, was “a fighting Irishman when he took to the centre stage in politics and he ran a very vigorous and aggressive campaign in 1984. And people might forget that now but that’s probably why he won such a grand majority.”
Scott Brison, a Progressive Conservative who left after the merger to join the Liberals, said Mulroney’s leadership style offered lessons for Liberals and Conservatives alike.
His funeral, said Brison, was a reminder “of a kind of politics that many people from the generation of Progressive Conservatives and business-friendly Liberals miss: Politics that wasn’t about rigid ideology, but was uniting people around big ideas, that were progressive socially, that were economically innovative and from which we have benefited now for decades.”
“That vision is missing in the political landscape today from any political party,” he said. As a result, Brison argued, politics no longer attracts top-level business leaders or others who are willing to serve at a time when “we need to get the best people to run the country, not just running companies.”
Goldy Hyder, a former staffer in Joe Clark’s PC government who now heads the Business Council of Canada, said Mulroney “has given the modern movement, and movements to come, the recipe for success.
“When you win two back-to-back majorities to the size and scale that he has, including the largest ever, it would be important for leaders of this party today and tomorrow and to be more like Brian Mulroney than anyone else.”