Transforming the Nation: Canada and Brian Mulroney (review)

Brian Mulroney’s much-contested multi-layered legacy is the subject of this collection of eighteen essays, edited by a historian and with a foreword by Judith Maxwell, who was the chair of the prestigious Economic Council of Canada at the time Mulroney’s government dissolved it. It brings together perspectives by academics, journalists, former public servants, and politicians. Some, such as Green Party leader Elizabeth May, former Globe and Mail reporter Christopher Waddell, and international trade expert Michael Hart, have floated seam-lessly through these professions. The smorgasbord of offerings range from surveys of economic to social to environmental policies, and from constitution making (or more accurately, failing) to cultural spending. Defence, deficits, and the debt monster that haunted the country when Mulroney took his leave from office are also treated. Complementing a chapter on Canada in the world are chapters on Canada within, with specialized attention to the West and Quebec. Aboriginals, women, inter-governmental relations, and Mulroney as a campaigner get chapters as well.

Devoted primarily to assessing Mulroney’s policy imprint, the book also offers a flavour of the chief protagonist’s personality. He comes across as an emotion-charged brew of personal charm and colourful hyperbolic flourishes. Forcefully and convincingly, Peter C. Newman’s The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister portrays Mulroney as a vulgar blowhard. As a leader, he demonstrated a gambler’s instinct for living on the edge, but he also exhibited the hard-driving skills of an artful mediator. Former cabinet minister John Crosbie offers an insider’s peek into Mulroney’s governing style. He begins with an appreciation of Donald Savoie’s analysis of the modern prime minister as an imperial ‘potentate,’ yet concludes with talk of ‘working alongside’ him, and he praises his Cabinet colleagues – a quite ordinary lot in comparison to those who served other prime ministers – as ‘first-class.’

Mulroney speechwriter L. Ian MacDonald unsurprisingly lauds him and reports on a panel of thirty experts canvassed by Policy Options in 2003. Asked to assess the six prime ministers of the preceding half-century as transformational leaders, they placed Mulroney a clear second, after Pierre Trudeau and ahead of Lester Pearson. MacDonald draws a parallel between Mulroney and John Diefenbaker as campaigners, and Bob Rae draws one between them as the Commonwealth’s leaders in challenging South Africa’s apartheid regime. Robert Wardhaugh paints Mulroney as a ‘Red Tory.’ During his tenure, income inequality and poverty declined somewhat, but the designation is questionable in light of his profound break with the postures vis-à-vis the United States displayed by Tories John A. Macdonald, R.B. Bennett, and John Diefenbaker. J. Frank Strain demonstrates that, although Mulroney was closely identified with the neo-conservative policy orientations of his contemporaries Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, he differed with them in his reliance on tax increases by, for example, partially de-indexing income tax rates and imposing surtaxes.

On the subject of national unity, Ian Peach’s assessment is that Mulroney was a tragic hero who left failure and defeat in his wake. Karlheinz Schreiber, whose unsavoury dealings with Mulroney have brought him back into the public spotlight in the past year, gets but two passing references? Mulroney brought the Progressive Conservatives to their greatest glory, but he killed the party too. Many Canadians expressed visceral contempt for and suspicion of Mulroney. At one point, his unpopularity was such that his standing in the polls was no higher than the prevailing interest rates. So, was Mulroney a hero or a villain as prime minister? We need not choose.