On the day Brian Mulroney announced his intention to step down as prime minister after almost nine years in office, he appealed for a verdict for future generations.
“History will be the final judge of our efforts and legacy,” he said.
Thirty years later, in one of his last public speeches, Mr. Mulroney delivered his own verdict on his own political history – a verdict on another embattled prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Currently in his 9th year in office, cited in the House of Commons Last week, in commemoration of Mulroney’s passing, he said:
“I’ve learned over the years that history doesn’t care about the trash of trivia and rumors and gossip floating around on Parliament Hill,” Mulroney said. “History is only interested in the big-ticket items that shaped Canada’s future.”
In 1993, Mulroney was forced to appeal to a supposedly distant opinion. Because the opinions at the time were so unforgiving. But Mulroney, asked to honor two American presidents, said he knows better than anyone what history remembers and why things like this happened, especially in moments like this. It should have been.
By the time he resigned, his government had endured its fair share of controversy (tuna gate, gucci gate, and various other scandals that I hardly remember now). Two of his attempts to amend the constitution failed.The latter is rejected by referendum. The economy was in recession for two years, his landmark trade deal was viewed with skepticism by many, and he introduced a hugely unpopular new tax, the GST.
The same day Mulroney announced his intention to resign, his office released a 34-page list of the government’s accomplishments. The people didn’t want to read it.
“Mulroney had no choice but to resign,” pollster Angus Reid wrote at the time. “Last year, he set new polling records on nearly every measure of public disapproval and resentment.”
Reed said Progressive Conservatives now have a primary mission: “lock Brian Mulroney’s ghost in the closet and throw away the key.”
Reid’s analysis may have been astute at that moment. However, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada still suffered a crushing defeat in subsequent elections, winning just two seats. Less than a decade after Mulroney led his party to 211 seats and 50 percent of the popular vote in the 1984 election. This breakthrough saw the entry of the populist Reform Party and the separatist Bloc Québécois.
In his eulogy for Brian Mulroney, Wayne Gretzky fondly recalls phone conversations with his father and the prime minister during the Canada Cup.
In a survey of historians published in 2016, Mulroney was ranked 8th of Canada’s 23 Prime Ministers. This study was conducted just a few years after the incident. oliphant committee And detailed scoring suggests that questions about Mulroney’s personal conduct still weighed heavily on his legacy—for “personal integrity,” historians place Mulroney in the same league as John A. Macdonald. I rated it even lower than that.
In fact, it seems disrespectful to John A., who deserves to be remembered as the author of this book. The first and biggest scandal in Canadian political history. (Of all prime ministers who served for at least four years, the largely forgotten second prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie, tied for the highest score for personal integrity. This is perhaps due to his reputation for personal integrity.) suggests that it is that important.)
However, Mulroney received the highest rating in the category of “leaving an important policy legacy.” And it is on this basis that most observers and contemporaries have remembered him over the past three weeks.
“He’ll take care of that.”
“He was prime minister and he would cherish that,” Jean Charest, a cabinet minister under Mulroney, said at Saturday’s state funeral, recalling Mulroney’s rise to high office. Ta.
Justin Trudeau said Mulroney’s premiership was about “getting the important things right.”
Canada’s 18th Prime Minister’s record includes introducing innovative policies. Free trade with the US. He is remembered and admired for his opposition to catastrophe. apartheid south africa.and his government made great strides Protecting and restoring the climate and atmosphere. A thorough explanation of what his government has done in nine years would run at least 34 pages.
Former Quebec Premier and Progressive Conservative leader Jean Charest paid tribute to the late prime minister, saying, “Thanks to Brian Mulroney, we live in one of the greatest countries in the world.”
In recent weeks, conservatives have taken particular interest in Mulroney’s efforts to rein in government spending and curb inflation, including through the privatization of a number of Crown corporations. But it was Charest’s job to remind those gathered at Montreal’s Notre Dame Cathedral that the goods and services tax and the reliable financial resources it provides the federal government still exist.
“I can’t think of a more unpopular economic policy than the introduction of GST,” Charest said. “Yet I can’t think of a more popular economic policy for the prime minister or the government that followed Brian Mulroney.”
Today’s conservatives may ignore that part. But 30 years after Mulroney’s memory had to be sealed, it’s not hard to imagine Conservative Party leader Pierre Poièvre citing Mulroney on his next election campaign.
And even if questions remain about how he ruled, these past few weeks have also reinforced the value of human kindness and the truism that people remember how you made them feel. I have proven that.
Brian Mulroney was a “truly great father” who said his family was the most important thing in the world, his daughter Caroline Mulroney said in a eulogy at his state funeral.
Caroline Mulroney said her father called people “thousands of times” when he felt particularly emotional, and it seems he wasn’t exaggerating. In fact, Trudeau later said he had just learned that Mulroney regularly called and spoke to her mother, Margaret. This fact is all the more remarkable considering that Mulroney and Trudeau’s father were at loggerheads over constitutional reform.
On the importance of being Prime Minister
Days after Mulroney announced his resignation, political strategist and wordsmith Dalton Camp wrote in the Toronto Star: “Being prime minister is a tarnished, overrated and misunderstood profession that invites ingratitude.” , it is a profession that invites mistrust.”
“Otherwise, that’s life,” Camp concluded.
Anthony Wilson-Smith, former editor of Maclean’s magazine, said this, recalling the man he interviewed and later got to know. I have written Last month, we reported that “Mulroney has spent much of her life working on everything – her emotions, her ambitions, her accomplishments – on a grand scale.”
As we celebrate this man and his accomplishments, meaningful dissent in big thing It happened on Mulroney’s watch. History will take them all into account.
Family and friends are grieving the death of a loved one. But the deaths of prime ministers, particularly Mulroney’s record and character, are a reminder that with big governments comes the opportunity to do big things.
Residents, similarly challenged and privileged, face immense challenges and problems and have a unique opportunity to do something about both. Between the trivia and the garbage, all the noise of politics in a democracy, there is much that is important, consequential, and worth taking seriously.
Prime Ministers have an opportunity to build a better country every day.
“We live in a country that he helped build,” Charest told the congregation Saturday.
That may apply to everyone who has held the job. But history will tell whether it was successful or not.
