Mulroney << muhl ROO nee >>, Brian (1939-2024), served as prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Mulroney had been chosen leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1983. Before 1983, Mulroney had been a lawyer and business executive and had never been elected to a public office. But he led the Conservatives to a landslide victory in the election of 1984 and succeeded John N. Turner as prime minister. Mulroney remained in office after the general election of 1988. In 1993, he resigned as prime minister and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. He was succeeded by Kim Campbell, the minister of national defence.
During college and law school in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, Mulroney had held many leadership positions in Progressive Conservative student groups. After graduating, he practiced law and served on party committees. In 1977, Mulroney became president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada. He held that position until he became Progressive Conservative Party leader.
Mulroney’s friends knew him to be charming and persuasive. Associates rated him as an able negotiator who at times was tough and cautious.
As prime minister, Mulroney faced the challenges of keeping the province of Quebec a part of Canada and of leading the country through an economic recession. His efforts to amend the Canadian constitution to satisfy Quebec separatists failed. His economic proposals, including the introduction of a new federal sales tax, lost him popularity. However, Mulroney achieved a major goal in 1988 when he signed a free-trade agreement with the United States. In 1992, he signed a pact that extended the agreement to include Mexico.
Early life
Boyhood.
Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939, in Baie-Comeau, Quebec. His full name was Martin Brian Mulroney, but he preferred to be called Brian Mulroney. He was the third oldest of the six children of Benedict M. Mulroney and Irene O’Shea Mulroney. Brian’s father was an electrician for a paper company in Baie-Comeau.
Brian became an excellent tennis player as a teenager and won the Baie-Comeau Junior Tennis Championship. He attended local schools until he was 13 years old. Then his parents sent him to St. Thomas College, a boys’ school in Chatham, New Brunswick.
College education.
In 1955, at the age of 16, Mulroney entered St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He earned honors in political science and developed an interest in politics. Mulroney’s parents had supported the Liberal Party. But Brian came to admire Robert L. Stanfield, leader of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative Party, and joined the Conservative club at the university. He was elected president of the club in 1958. In 1959, he received a B.A. degree.
Mulroney then enrolled at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to study law. Later in 1959, he was elected executive vice president of the Progressive Conservative Student Federation of Canada. In 1960, he transferred to Laval University Law School in Ste.-Foy (now part of Quebec City), Quebec. In 1961, he became leader of the Progressive Conservative club at Laval. Mulroney received his law degree in 1963.
Early business career
Young lawyer.
After graduating from law school, Mulroney joined the Montreal law firm of Ogilvy, Renault. He specialized in labor law. His involvement with the Progressive Conservative Party continued to grow. He served on its policy committee from 1966 to 1971 and on the finance committee of the Quebec Progressive Conservative Party from 1966 to 1974.
On May 26, 1973, Mulroney married Mila Pivnicki (1953-…) of Montreal. The Mulroneys had four children, Caroline (1974-…), Benedict (1976-…), Robert Mark (1979-…), and Daniel (1985-…).
In May 1974, Mulroney was appointed to the Cliche Royal Commission, which was established to investigate violence in Quebec’s construction industry. He frequently appeared on the evening television news and began to gain national prominence.
First bid for leadership.
In 1975, Progressive Conservative leader Robert L. Stanfield announced his intention to retire. Mulroney’s work on the Cliche commission had impressed influential members of the Progressive Conservative Party, and they urged him to become a candidate for the leadership. Mulroney accepted the challenge and ran a strong campaign. The party met to choose its new leader in February 1976. Mulroney finished third in the voting.
Business executive.
In June 1976, Mulroney joined the Iron Ore Company of Canada as executive vice president of corporate affairs. He had done some legal work for the Quebec-based company and was chosen for his new job by the company’s president, William Bennett. In 1977, Bennett retired, and Mulroney succeeded him as president. The firm had long been troubled by labor strikes and was deeply in debt. Mulroney settled the labor disputes and led the company to record profits.
During the early 1980’s, decreased demands for steel led to a sharp drop in iron ore prices. Iron ore is used to make steel, and the Iron Ore Company suffered large losses. As a result, the company closed its mine in Schefferville, Quebec, in 1982. Mulroney arranged a compensation and relocation program for the 285 employees who lost their jobs.
Career in government
Election as party leader.
Joe Clark of Alberta had led the Progressive Conservative Party to power in the general election of 1979. But the Liberals regained control in a general election the next year. Opposition to Clark’s leadership then began to grow.
Early in 1983, Clark resigned and called a party convention for June to select a new leader. Mulroney became a major candidate for the leadership even though he had never won election to a public office. His supporters felt that his Quebec connections would help strengthen the party’s prospects in that province, a traditional stronghold of the Liberal Party. Quebec had about a fourth of Canada’s population.
Clark tried to regain his position at the convention, but Mulroney’s fresh appeal and Quebec background helped carry him to victory. Mulroney was the first Progressive Conservative leader ever to win that position without any experience in an elected office. Two months later, he easily won election to the Canadian House of Commons from a district in Nova Scotia.
The 1984 election.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau retired in 1984. He was succeeded in late June 1984 by John N. Turner, a Toronto lawyer who had held several Cabinet positions in the governments headed by Lester B. Pearson and Trudeau. Turner called a general election for Sept. 4, 1984.
At the time of the campaign, Canada’s economy was slowly recovering from a recession. The unemployment rate was still high, standing at 11 percent of the labor force. Mulroney promised that a new Conservative government would create jobs and increase industrial productivity and foreign investment. In the election, he led the Progressive Conservative Party to a huge victory. The party won 211 of the 282 seats in the House of Commons. It captured 58 of Quebec’s 75 seats, the most the Conservatives had ever won there. Mulroney took office as prime minister on September 17.
Prime minister.
Mulroney faced many problems during the early part of his term. The economy grew only slightly, unemployment remained high, and the federal budget deficit rose sharply. Mistakes and blunders by the Cabinet also hurt Mulroney’s image. By May 1986, five ministers had resigned under severe public criticism. The next month, Mulroney moved half his ministers into new jobs. He also retired two, fired four, and added eight other ministers.
The Meech Lake Accord.
In 1987, Mulroney helped bring about an agreement that was partly designed to win Quebec’s acceptance of the Canadian constitution. Quebec had earlier refused to accept the constitution because the document did not recognize the province as a distinct society in Canada. On June 3, 1987, Mulroney and Canada’s 10 provincial heads of government signed a constitutional agreement that proposed such recognition. The agreement, called the Meech Lake Accord, also included other constitutional changes and was sent to the provincial legislatures for ratification. However, the accord was never ratified.
Many opponents of the Meech Lake Accord believed that it would have granted Quebec’s provincial government too much power over the rights of individuals in Quebec, especially over the rights of the English-speaking minority in the mostly French-speaking province. Eight of the 10 provinces ratified the accord, but Manitoba and Newfoundland withheld their support. As a result, many Quebecers began to demand increased independence for Quebec from the rest of Canada.
Free trade and the 1988 election.
On Jan. 2, 1988, Mulroney and United States President Ronald Reagan signed a major trade pact between Canada and the United States. The agreement called for the elimination of all tariffs and many other trade barriers by 1999. However, the Liberal Party opposed the agreement and blocked its ratification in the Canadian Senate.
John N. Turner, the Liberal Party leader, demanded that Mulroney call a general election to let Canadians express their approval or disapproval of the agreement. The Liberal senators promised to ratify the pact if the Progressive Conservatives won the election.
Mulroney called a general election for Nov. 21, 1988. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority of the seats in the House of Commons, and Mulroney continued as prime minister. After the general election, the Canadian Senate approved the free trade agreement, and the pact went into effect on Jan. 1, 1989.
Other economic developments.
In April 1989, the Mulroney government proposed a federal budget designed to reduce Canada’s large budget deficit. The new budget called for tax increases and spending cuts.
To help raise revenue, Mulroney’s government proposed a controversial new federal sales tax. The tax, called the goods and services tax (GST), applied to almost all goods and services sold in Canada. It replaced a tax that had covered fewer purchases. Most Canadians opposed the new tax, but it went into effect in 1991.
In April 1990, Canada was struck by a recession that ended seven years of economic growth. By March 1991, 10.5 percent of Canadian workers were unemployed. Mulroney’s government was criticized for not doing enough to end the recession. By mid-1991, support for Mulroney dropped sharply.
In 1992, Mulroney signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This pact built on the Canada-United States free trade agreement by calling for the gradual elimination of tariffs and certain other trade barriers between those two countries and Mexico. NAFTA took effect in 1994. It was replaced by another regional trade agreement in 2020.
The Persian Gulf War of 1991.
The Mulroney government authorized the participation of the Canadian Armed Forces in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Canadian pilots flew bombing missions over Iraq and Kuwait from their station in Qatar, a country near Saudi Arabia.
The constitutional crisis.
After the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, Quebec’s ruling Liberal Party adopted a platform demanding sole authority in the province over such matters as agriculture, energy, and trade. It also demanded a role in forming Canada’s foreign policy. It announced that it would ask Quebecers to vote on the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada if the Canadian government did not agree to its demands by the fall of 1992. Mulroney supported more independence for Quebec but strongly opposed separation. In 1991, he appointed former prime minister Joe Clark minister for constitutional affairs. In this post, Clark worked to preserve Canada’s national unity.
In September 1991, Mulroney introduced a new plan to revise the constitution. The plan provided for recognition of Quebec as a distinct society, the replacement of Canada’s appointed Senate with an elected one, and self-government for Canada’s Indigenous (native) peoples. It also proposed the transfer of some federal powers to the provinces. A parliamentary committee soon met to discuss and gather public opinion on the plan.
In August 1992, Clark and 10 provincial heads of government agreed to a set of constitutional amendments based on Mulroney’s plan. The agreement became known as the Charlottetown accord. To go into effect, the amendments required ratification by the provinces. In addition, Mulroney called for a nationwide vote on the amendments. The vote was held in October, and most Canadians, including majorities in Quebec and each of five other provinces, voted against the accord.
In February 1993, Mulroney announced his resignation as prime minister and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. He said he had lost enthusiasm for governing. He called a party convention to be held in June to choose his replacement. Defence Minister Kim Campbell won the party leadership, and she was sworn in as prime minister on June 25. Mulroney returned to private life and the practice of law. In 2007, he wrote Memoirs: 1939-1993. Mulroney died on Feb. 29, 2024.
