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The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney, PC,CC (born March 20, 1939), was the eighteenth Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993.
Born in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, Brian Mulroney became Prime Minister after his Progressive Conservative Party won the most parliamentary seats in Canadian history. He was the only Prime Minister of Canada who never held a Ministerial position other than Prime Minister.
Background
The son of a paper mill electrician, he received his high school education at a Catholic boarding school in Chatham, New Brunswick, and graduated from Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where he was a nationally ranked debater. He then obtained a law degree from Laval University in Quebec City. After graduation, he joined a Montreal law firm, and on May 26, 1973, he married Mila Pivnicki, the daughter of Yugoslav immigrants. The Mulroneys have four children: Nicolas, Mark, Ben and Caroline.
Although Brian Mulroney had not yet held public office, he had worked for the Progressive Conservative Party for years. In 1976, he ran for election as Conservative leader at the party's leadership convention but lost to Joe Clark. Following this, Mulroney took the job of Executive Vice President of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a joint subsidiary of three major U.S. steel corporations. In 1977, he was appointed company President.
By mid-1983, Joe Clark's leadership of the Progressive Conservative party was being questioned. Mulroney organized to defeat Clark at the party's leadership review. When Clark received an endorsement by less than 67 percent of delegates at the party convention, Clark resigned from the leadership, resulting in the 1983 leadership convention. Brian Mulroney was again a candidate, and he campaigned more shrewdly than he had done seven years before. He was elected party leader on June 11, 1983, beating Clark on the fourth ballot. He attracted broad support from the many factions of the party, especially from representatives of his native Québec. After winning a by-election in the riding of Central Nova, Mulroney entered the Canadian House of Commons in Ottawa on August 28, 1983.
When Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau retired in June 1984, the Liberal Party chose John Turner as its new leader. Turner called a general election for September. The Conservatives led in every province, emerging as a national party for the first time since the 1958 election.
Arms of the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney Prime Minister
 The Mulroneys with President and Mrs. Reagan in Quebec, Canada, March 18, 1985, the day after the famous Shamrock Summit, when the two leaders sang "When Irish Eyes are Smiling." During his tenure as Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney's close relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan resulted in the ratification of a free-trade treaty with the United States under which all tariffs between the two countries would be eliminated by 1998. Critics noted that Mulroney had originally professed opposition to free trade during the 1983 leadership race. This agreement was very controversial, and was the central issue of the 1988 election, in which Mulroney's party was re-elected with a strong majority in Parliament (43% of the popular vote). This trade liberalization was expanded in 1992 through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Another major undertaking by Mulroney's government was the divisive issue of national unity. Mulroney wanted to include Québec in a new agreement with the rest of Canada. Quebec was the only province that did not sign the new Canadian constitution negotiated by Pierre Trudeau in 1982. Such a new agreement was promised to Québec by Canada in response to the 1980 referendum on Québec sovereignty. Additionally, for years, many people of the province of Québec had believed that their French-speaking culture merited a distinct status within Canada, and a widespread movement to secede from Canada had developed in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1987, Mulroney orchestrated the Meech Lake Accord, a series of constitutional amendments designed to satisfy Québec's demand for recognition as a "distinct society" within Canada. However, many English-Canadians objected to the accord, and it was not ratified by the provincial governments of Manitoba and Newfoundland before the 1990 ratification deadline. This failure sparked a revival of Quebec separatism, and led to another round of meetings in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, in 1991 and 1992. These negotiations culminated in the Charlottetown Accord, which outlined extensive changes to the constitution, including recognition of Québec as a distinct society. However, the agreement was defeated in a national referendum in October 1992.
Though Mulroney had retained a parliamentary majority in the 1988 elections, widespread public resentment of a new Goods and Services Tax (GST) introduced in 1991, and his inability to resolve the Quebec situation caused Mulroney's popularity to decline considerably, and he resigned in 1993.
Legacy
He was replaced as Prime Minister and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party by Defence Minister Kim Campbell. Mulroney's singular unpopularity may have played a role in the stunning electoral defeat suffered by the Campbell government in the 1993 election.
The Canadian political right fragmented during Mulroney's tenure, as Western conservatives left the Progressive Conservative party for the new Reform Party, and Quebec conservatives left to join the separatist Bloc Québécois. This fragmentation also contributed to the defeat of the Progressive Conservative Party, and left it a marginal force in the House of Commons.
Many Canadian small-c conservatives found fault with Mulroney in a variety of areas, from his opposition to capital punishment and outlawing abortion to his tax increases and his failure to curtail expansion of "big government" programmes and political patronage. The Canadian right was not reunited until the December 2003 merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance (successor to the Reform Party) to form the new Conservative Party of Canada.
In 1997, Mulroney settled a defamation lawsuit he had brought against the government of Canada. At issue were allegations that Mulroney had accepted bribes in the so-called "Airbus affair" concerning government contracts. Mulroney was re-imbursed for $2 million in legal fees. The government said the allegations could not be substantiated, but reserved the right to continue its investigation. More details about the affair have subsequently emerged. At the time he was pursuing the lawsuit, Mulroney was meeting in hotel rooms in three cities to accept $300,000 in cash from Karlheinz Schreiber. Schreiber was a middleman who had represented had Airbus, and is wanted in Germany for fraud and corruption. It is unclear what services Mulroney performed for Schreiber to earn the money. Mulroney maintains he is "as clean as a whistle" and points out that he declared the money and paid tax on it.
In his book " A Secret Trial" published by McGill-Queens University Press in 2004, William Kaplan (a historian and former law professor) calls Mulroney's sworn testimony about his "peripheral" relationship to Schreiber evasive, incomplete and misleading. But Kaplan concludes that Mulroney's testimony does not rise to the level of perjury. He adds that no evidence has ever emerged that Mulroney was involed in the decision to purchase Airbus airplanes. It is known that Schreiber had millions of dollars in "grease money" available to him for the purpose of paying bribes. To this day, many questions about the Airbus affair remain unanswered.
Like many former national leaders, Mulroney is greatly concerned with how he will be viewed by history. He makes the case that his once unpopular policies on the economy and free trade were not reversed by subsequent governments. Mulroney regards this as vindication -- and an increasing number of neutral observers agree. While at one time few conservative politicians would have wanted to be associated with him, many now regard him as an experienced elder statesman. His political advice and personal endorsement has been sought by some, including the new Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper. For all that, Mulroney remains a polarizing figure. In 1998, he was accorded Canada's highest civilian honour when he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Since leaving office, Mulroney has pursued a lucrative career as a lawyer and international business consultant.
Preceded by:
Elmer M. MacKay, PC
| Members of Parliament from Central Nova
| Followed by:
Elmer M. MacKay, PC
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Preceded by:
André Maltais, Liberal
| Members of Parliament from Manicouagan
| Followed by:
Charles A. Langlois, PC
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Preceded by:
Charles Hamelin, PC
| Members of Parliament from Charlevoix
| Followed by:
Gérard Asselin, Bloc Québécois
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