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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 291

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 19, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24
Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)
  • Mar/19/24 7:57:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, first, let me add my deepest condolences to Mila, Caroline, Ben, Nicolas, Mark and the 16 Mulroney grandchildren on behalf of my own family, the people of Calgary Rocky Ridge, and on behalf of myself, a Mulroney-era Conservative activist. My formative years are bound up in the years when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, and it was during that time that I first became a Conservative political activist, which is something I have not stopped since that time. It is impossible to measure the impact of Brian Mulroney's life and legacy without first saying a few words about Canada in 1984. In 1984, Canada was broken. It was, quite literally, broke. Canada was kiting interest payments on the national debt like an insolvent debtor using one credit card to pay the interest on another. Interest payments from the previous government's debt were 38% of government expenditure. Foreign investment was explicitly discouraged as a matter of national policy, and that was in favour of hundreds of money-losing taxpayer-funded Crown corporations. Canada was not trusted by our most important allies, and the disastrous national energy program had destroyed the Alberta economy. Inflation, interest rates and unemployment were in the double digits. That was the state of the country that Brian Mulroney was elected to lead. What followed was a series of reforms and policy reversals that saved this country from the downward spiral that had been set in motion by the government that had come before it. Brian Mulroney became prime minister during a dangerous final peak in the Cold War when the increasingly unstable Soviet Union was led by the government of Konstantin Chernenko, who was the third, old, sick, hardline communist leader, who in his many years was running a dangerous, potentially apocalyptic arms race with the west. It was during this critical, frightening time that Brian Mulroney firmly replanted Canada in the western camp with countries that shared Canada's values, like democracy, pluralism and the rule of law. This was in sharp contrast to a previous prime minister who seemed more comfortable sucking up to dictators of the Soviet bloc, like Honecker, Ceausescu and Castro rather than leaders of the free world. It was perhaps in global affairs where Brian Mulroney's star shone the brightest. He reopened Canada to business, and before the end of his first Parliament, he negotiated the free trade deal with the United States, ushering in the era of prosperity that followed. He convinced Ronald Reagan to expend Reagan's own domestic political capital so that Canada could have an acid rain treaty. He was an indispensable ally in forcing an end to the hateful apartheid system in South Africa. By the time of his retirement, he was a global leader with easy and productive relationships with the giants of his time: François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Reagan, Bush and Thatcher. All of those people took his calls any time. However, he did not just spend his time on the phone talking with world leaders. He always remained grounded to his family, his friends, his caucus and his party, and his use of the telephone was truly legendary. I was a very young political activist in that time. People knew that if there was a pressing issue, even right down to local electoral district politics, he was always a phone call away, not because he was a micromanager, not because he wanted to stick his leadership's nose into business, but because he cared so much and just wanted to help, and he made himself available to people. His humanity, his compassion and his good humour inspired intense loyalty. I have been told by many who were in his caucus in those years that even when his government was at 12% in the polls, MPs could not wait for Wednesday morning to get together and to share in the camaraderie and the team work at that time and to hear his pep talk. However, all the changes and reforms that Brian Mulroney undertook in his time were met with intense, vitriolic, bitter resistance. The Liberals and the NDP of the time viciously opposed free trade. They accused Brian Mulroney of outright disloyalty to Canada. He was accused of selling out Canada to the Americans, repeatedly, by his opponents on the left. For some western Canadians, the changes that he brought did not come quick enough. He could not undo the damage of the previous government quickly enough for some, despite fiscal reform, abolishing the national energy program and mass privatization of state-owned enterprises. Many Quebeckers turned their backs on Brian Mulroney over the failure of the Meech Lake accord. People now have forgotten the depths of the deeply personal and bitter opposition that Mulroney faced, especially during his second Parliament, from 1988 to 1993. Nobody would have blamed Brian Mulroney if he gave up on national affairs, but that was not his way. He could have just walked away. He could have stopped being a presence in the lives of so many political activists and stopped making all those phone calls, but he did not do that. His determination in forging a better Canada was matched by his equanimity in the face of tremendous setbacks in opposition. I am so glad that he lived long enough to see the undeniable proof of his legacy as a great world leader and a transformational Canadian prime minister whose legacy endures. Rest well, Brian Mulroney, with a grateful nation's thanks. Posterity is already much kinder to him than his contemporaries were.
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