SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Sukh Dhaliwal (Surrey—Newton, Lib.)

Mar/19/24 7:43:44 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, a remarkable individual who served in the chamber for over a decade but who served this country his entire life. In January 1984, I immigrated to Canada. It was later that year that I witnessed my first Canadian federal election, in which the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney was first elected as the 18th Prime Minister of Canada. It was very coincidental that on September 17, 1984, I celebrated my birthday in Canada for the first time. That is the day Brian Mulroney took the office of Prime Minister. It was very inspiring to see a fellow born in a middle-class working family become the Prime Minister of Canada. That can happen only here in Canada. I was later recruited by the Right Hon. Paul Martin, in 1990, to support him in his leadership race. From 1984 to 1993, Prime Minister Mulroney won two majority governments and steered Canada through several important policy decisions, including the end of the Cold War, the introduction of the GST and the free trade agreement with the United States. Prime Minister Mulroney was instrumental in establishing the North American Free Trade Agreement, which played a pivotal role in the economic strength of our entire nation. He will be remembered for his engaging personality, which was key to strengthening the important relationship between Canada and the United States at a time when there was a rising tide of American protectionism. Long after he had formally retired from public life, Mr. Mulroney continued to apply his energy and efforts to protecting Canada’s economic and geopolitical interests. In 2017, I had the opportunity to sit as a member on the Standing Committee on International Trade, and we carefully studied the ongoing negotiations of a revised NAFTA agreement. When then president Donald Trump was preparing to rip up NAFTA and impose import restrictions that would have hampered Canadian manufacturing, it was Mr. Mulroney who stepped up to help. He had thorough knowledge of the U.S. political scene and understood the movement that was transforming American politics. Mr. Mulroney knew many of the key players personally and applied both his knowledge and his contacts in ways that helped Canada. He was a former Progressive Conservative prime minister offering aid to a Liberal government. Mr. Mulroney simply did not care about the domestic political considerations, as he was all-in for our country. Today, I had the privilege and opportunity to pay tribute to Mr. Mulroney at the official lying-in-state here in Ottawa. I am saddened by the loss of a man who cared deeply about Canadians. Mr. Mulroney’s principles helped shape this nation and the world for the better. On behalf of my constituents in Surrey—Newton, I would like to convey my sincere, heartfelt condolences to Mr. Mulroney’s family, including his wife, Mila, and children, Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas. I also want to wish Mila good health and strength, and the very best to his children so they can continue to follow the trail he blazed for all of us to keep us proud. May Prime Minister Mulroney rest in peace, and God bless his soul.

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC)

Mar/19/24 9:03:43 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I rise to remark on the life of the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, in the hope of looking at his life as a way for us to look toward the future. I was a young, grade 11, student at Centre Wellington District High School in Wellington County in 1988 when I joined the Conservative Party. There was an election that would take place later that fall. That spring I joined the party to campaign for my local member of Parliament at the time, who has become a very good friend, the Hon. Perrin Beatty. That was my first step into the life of politics. I clearly remember why I joined the party. I clearly remember why I helped campaign for Perrin Beatty in 1988 as a young high school student. It was because I believed in the vision that Brian Mulroney outlined for this country. It was the free trade election that many have referenced in the House. It was a big shift in Canadian policy, the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States. In fact it was arguably the biggest shift in foreign policy in Canada in a century, since the reciprocity election of, I believe, 1911, when then prime minister Laurier argued for free trade and the Conservatives of the day argued against it and in favour of what was called the national policy. Canadians at that time decided against free trade and decided to implement a series of tariff barriers to protect domestic industry and shield it from foreign competition. Brian Mulroney, after listening to experts in 1986 and 1987, decided that it was time to spend some political capital and convince Canadians to do away with the over 100-year-old policy that Sir John A. Macdonald had implemented, the national policy, in order to ensure our future prosperity. That is exactly what he did. The 1988 free trade election was arguably one of our only recent modern elections that has been about foreign policy, because it essentially was about Canada's relationship with the United States. I joined the party at that time as a young teenager, a high school student, because I believed in his vision, in his confidence in what this country was and could be. When we look at the track record of the Mulroney government, we see a remarkable record. It implemented the last series of big tax reforms that we have seen. We all know about the 1971 tax reforms that were the result of the Carter commission, but many of us have forgotten the reforms of 1987 and 1988 and, subsequently, of the early 1990s. The Mulroney government took 10 federal tax brackets and reduced them to three. It eliminated a punitive 13.5% manufacturers sales tax and replaced it with a value-added goods and services tax that expert economists had been arguing for since the early 1970s, all in an effort to unleash the productive capacity of the Canadian economy. It implemented monetary policy reform at the Bank of Canada under the leadership of then governor John Crow by implementing inflation targeting of 2%, which is with us to this day. It also privatized and deregulated many industries, unleashing productivity, growth and job creation in those industries. On top of doing all of that, it actually, over its term in government, brought the budget to an operating surplus. The reason that is significant in today's context is that it was the Mulroney government that was the last government in this country to meet our NATO 2% defence spending commitment. It was also the last time we came close to meeting the overseas development assistance goal of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid to the world's most vulnerable and poorest. It was also the government that was ambitious in its foreign policy when it came to the environment. It was the government that helped put in place the Montreal Protocol, which banned substances that contained chlorine and bromine, that came into effect in 1989 and that effectively helped close off the ozone hole, which continues to be repaired to this day as a result of that protocol. It was the government that implemented what we now call the acid rain treaty, which was known as the air quality agreement, that convinced Republican President Ronald Reagan to sign on to such an agreement, as well as his successor George Bush, in order to de-acidify the freshwater lakes in much of Canada, particularly throughout the Canadian Shield, many of which had become dead lakes because they had become so acidic they no longer could support the native flora and fauna as they once did. It was the government that introduced the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which is something near and dear to my heart as an Ontario MP, that touches on four of the five Great Lakes, Great Lakes that hold one-fifth of all the surface freshwater on the planet. It was a government that accomplished those foreign policy goals in the environment, in defence and in overseas development assistance, all the while bringing the Government of Canada's operating budget to a surplus during the nine years it was in power. On top of all that, the late Prime Minister Mulroney led the charge in the Commonwealth to stand up against an apartheid regime in South Africa. He was a leader in joining with allies on so many other initiatives. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the late prime minister Brian Mulroney was to instill in this country a confidence about who we are and what we could be. He was the prime minister who said to Canadian businesses that they can compete with the best in the world and that they do not need a tariff wall to protect them from competition, because he knew Canada, Canadians and Canadian businesses, and he knew they were excellent. He knew they could compete with the best in the world. He instilled in our academic researchers that same kind of confidence with the initiatives he undertook to fund post-secondary education and research. He instilled in all parts of the country this idea that Canada had boundless potential and that it was only limited by our own limited horizons about what we could be. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to instill in a new generation of Canadians, who would later follow him to serve in the House and who hopefully will come to serve in subsequent Parliaments, the idea that we can be the best in the world, that we can compete with the best in the world and that we can strive for and can achieve excellence. I want to thank Mr. Mulroney for his contributions to this country. I want to particularly thank his family, Mila, Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas, for the sacrifices they made over so many years and for allowing Mr. Mulroney, a father and a husband, to donate and to contribute so much to this country we call home.

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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Greg McLean (Calgary Centre, CPC)

Mar/19/24 9:21:27 p.m.
Watch

Madam Chair, it is my sad honour to rise today in Canada's highest democratic institution to pay respects to a great man, the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, Canada's 18th Prime Minister. A great man has passed. Time waits for no one. We honour him and reflect on his life and all that he has done. For many of his great accomplishments, we, a generation of Canadians, are the beneficiaries. First and foremost, in service to his country here and elsewhere, he helped build and strengthen our nation. Dividing us was not his path. He built us up. I recall serving his government here over three decades ago, and I will recount to members on all sides of the House what Ottawa and eastern Ontario looked like before Brian Mulroney's time as our prime minister. Buildings had been boarded up. Architectural landmarks, like the Elgin Hotel, were closed and poised for demolition. Neighbouring towns in eastern Ontario were lobbying for government jobs, because the unemployment rate was so high and people had little hope. Opening a prison meant that at least some people would get jobs. The unemployment in the area reached 12.5%. Such was the economic malaise this region faced in 1984. To paint a clearer picture of the country at that time, government spending was out of control. The latest budget posted a massive $37-billion deficit, which is about $98 billion in today's inflated dollars, a record at the time. Inflation had only recently fallen from 12.5% with the introduction of wage and price controls imposed primarily on employees by the federal government. The Canadian dollar had fallen in value by 25% over the previous decade. Our armed forces were underfunded and demoralized, and our international commitments went unmet. We were a nation desperately in need of leadership. Nature abhors a vacuum. Just when this country most needed a leader, a determined man stepped forward. Martin Brian Mulroney, the son of a hard-working electrician in Baie-Comeau, in Quebec, a labour lawyer and well-known business leader in Montreal, had become the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada a year earlier. He showed that he had bold plans for the country, and Canadians rewarded him with the largest majority government in Canadian history in the 1984 election. He was ambitious, he did not shy away from complex problems, and he did not worry about doing too much, because he had a lot of work to do. One of the people who worked for him at the start of his time in government told me that they worked hard because he worked hard, and they felt that, if they did not succeed, the country was at stake. His leadership saw successes, and it saw failures. No one likes to fail, least of all those who possess ambition to do great things. Failures feel personal, but in the end they are overwhelmed by the successes. This is one of the marks of true leadership. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” That is a quote from Nelson Mandela, a man whose life Brian Mulroney would change. I recall the 1988 election, when he was campaigning on free trade. His opponent, the Right Hon. John Turner, had landed a blow during the English-language debate, and polls suddenly shifted against our direction. Undaunted, Brian Mulroney took up the fight the next day and led the campaign across the nation. He said that the fight of John Turner's life was to tear up that document, but he fight of his life was to build a country. Canadians reward leadership. Let us celebrate the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney's life by acknowledging his successes: restarting Canada's economy; privatizing Crown corporations; rebuilding Canada's armed forces; building trade alliances that once made North America the largest trading bloc in the world; reforming a broken tax system; healing divisions in Canada's federation; indigenous advancement with the forming of Nunavut as Canada's third territory; striking environmental treaties to address acid rain in North America and to end worldwide emissions associated with the world's thinning ozone layer; leading the world in confronting South Africa's apartheid system, resulting in the freedom of one of the world's great statesmen, Nelson Mandela; standing shoulder to shoulder with Canada's allies as the world changed; and earning Canada's position on the international stage and joining our peers in organizations like the G7. Take on no small tasks, so to say. His ministers and his caucus followed him and emulated his ambition and his work ethic. Those of us who had the privilege of working for him and his ministers felt that compelling requirement to do our utmost to get it right. Leadership is about inspiration, and the generation of Canadians whom Brian Mulroney inspired watched and learned. For a while emulating that example led this country to greatness in many ways. Most Canadians knew him as a politician, and politics is a team sport. Our team has to win in order for us to move forward. Nevertheless, his treatment of all those contributing to Canada's public life was magnanimous. His was an example from which we have much to learn. Let us look at the legacy of political, economic and social leaders in Canada over the decades that followed the political leadership of Brian Mulroney. So many people had a connection with him. These relationships were special to him. His kindness was legendary. I remember seeing him at the funeral of the Hon. Jean Corbeil, one of the ministers I served. I remember the people he brought with him. Brian Mulroney said they deserved to be there because he was the leader of a special team. Two years ago I was talking with a friend, someone who has helped me on my political path. We were comparing the qualities of leaders in Canada, and I referred to the qualities of the former prime minister. My friend retorted, “Come on; that was Mulroney,” as if it was an example that illustrates itself, kind of like drafting Wayne Gretzky in a hockey pool. He was a man who came a long way from his roots in a Quebec mill town to lead a country, and lead us well, and to change the world in a very positive way. Today, we lament with his family and friends, but we are lucky to have had him in our midst. Now, we wish him a safe final journey in eternal rest, from a very grateful nation. Rest in peace, Martin Brian Mulroney.

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