Boyd Reimer:
Don’t believe the lie — Mulroney never led fight against apartheid.
See link: https://yvesengler.com/2024…
Peter Elson:
I want our $5 million dollars back that he was awarded for lying about his role with Karl Heinz Schreiber. He should be laying in a prison gave yard not “in state”
disqus_Wf91wKMTsJ:
The man was on the take from the get-go.
Brian Mulroney did more harm than good by Judy Rebick, March 1, 2024, Rabble
Brian Mulroney’s legacy is defined by more than his opposition to apartheid and combating acid rain. His policy positions often represented an attack on the rights of women.
When someone dies, everyone has praise for them.
I only praise those that deserve it, dead or alive. There is no question that Brian Mulroney had a major impact on Canada but in almost every case it was for the worse. I was President of the National Action Committee (NAC) on the Status of Women when Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister. I like to think we were his nemesis. We fought him on free trade, abortion, constitutional change, and Indigenous rights among other issues.
What none of the tributes mention is that Mulroney tried to re-criminalize abortion. After a decades long struggle, we managed to win abortion rights in 1988 when the Supreme Court struck down the abortion law. After the decision, Mulroney tried to re-criminalize abortion with a law that would make abortion illegal unless the woman’s health or life was at stake. This law was even stricter than the 1969 abortion law that was struck down. The bill passed the House of Commons, where the Conservatives had a majority but was defeated in the Senate by a margin of one. That one was Pat Carney, his right-hand woman in the free trade fight, but a strong pro-choice feminist. He fired her from cabinetOne of the things I detested about Mulroney was what a cheap shit show bullying misogynistic coward he was, but she held her ground. It may be the only major government initiative ever defeated by the Senate. The pro-choice movement had built such a powerful majority in favour of freedom of choice on abortion that even a Conservative majority government couldn’t get a bill passed.
But Mulroney’s most important contribution was the negotiation of the US Canada free trade deal. The ideas of neo-liberalism, free trade, cuts to social services, tax cuts and privatization had taken root in Britain with Margaret Thatcher and the U.S. with Ronald Regan. A broad coalition of groups called the Pro-Canada Network fought free trade, as we called neo-liberalism then, and managed to hold it off for several years. It was the NAC employment committee, in particular economist Marjorie Cohen, that pointed out that free trade with the US would undermine our social programmes.
But NAC’s major impact on Mulroney’s reign was during the Constitutional debates. Mulroney was obsessed with getting Quebec to sign the constitution, which they refused to do when Pierre Elliott Trudeau repatriated the constitution. Today all we hear about is the Meech Lake Accord, which was defeated at the time that I was elected President of NAC. My first speech was at a rally for Elijah Harper, the Indigenous member of the Manitoba legislature who stood with an eagle feather refusing to permit a vote on the Accord. Unanimous consent from the provinces was needed.
Mulroney did not give up. He proceeded to prepare another attempt to amend the Constitution. This process was about the most democratic process we have ever seen in Canada, at least at first. Realizing that he had very little public support for changes, he asked independent policy organizations to hold people’s constitutional conferences in five cities, each on a different subject. One third of the invitations were open to ordinary citizens chosen by lottery, one third to groups like NAC and unions and one third to politicians. NAC decided to go to all of them and actively intervene. Our biggest concerns were a devolution of power to the provinces to respond to Quebec’s demand for more power. We agreed that Quebec was a distinct society and that they should have special powers while the rest of us had a strong federal government. Much to their surprise, we won the Halifax conference to our position and defeated their proposal. In every conference NAC, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) were able to defeat or fundamentally change the government proposals. In the final conference in Vancouver, they attempted to overturn the decisions of the other conferences but failed.
Then he met with the Premiers and male Indigenous leaders behind closed doors in Charlottetown and rejected almost all of the recommendations of the conferences, going back to his original proposals. They decided to have a referendum on a bill that was called the Charlottetown Accord. NAC decided to say no. All three political parties, all provincial premiers, the AFN and even CLC were on the “Yes” side. NAC decided to say no because Indigenous women opposed it, a Canada Clause that lawyers told us would threaten women’s rights and the devolution of power to the provinces that threatened social programs, especially a national childcare programme, which we had not yet won. Headlines everywhere said “NAC says No.” The only major figures on the “No” side were me and Preston Manning, then leader of the Reform Party. Needless to say, we opposed the amendments on different grounds.
Polls showed that after NAC said no, the support for the “No” grew significantly and sure enough the Charlottetown Accord was defeated. I learned a lot about power at that time. The Accord was defeated but they carried out almost everything they wanted to do through legislation anyway. Now even though it was the most democratic process in Canada’s history or maybe because it was, no-one ever talks about it.
Yes, Brian Mulroney fought apartheid. Yes. he helped to stop acid rain. But he also brought savage capitalism to Canada in the form of free trade with the US. I didn’t know him personally. I worked with his minions, Joe Clark, Michael Wilson and Kim Campbell. The only time I ever met him was the year before I was President of NAC. Representing the Canadian Hearing Society, I was co-chair of a coalition of disabled people on employment equity with Beryl Potter, a triple amputee. I arranged for a group of us to bump into him in the corridors of Parliament. His staff had probably told him that a small group of disabled tourists were in the hall and it would make a good photo op. He was walking down the corridor in his usual arrogant stride with a big smile on his face. Then he saw Beryl, whom he knew and then he saw me, who everyone knew from the pro-choice struggle. The panicked look on his face at that moment was one of the highlights of my political career. Beryl grabbed him with her one arm and wouldn’t let go until he promised to make the employment equity bill stronger.
He didn’t but I convinced her to let go.Bra-fucking-vo! Thank you!
A few of the comments:
Susan Ridley:
Hear, hear, Judy! Great reminder of things long forgotten, I’m sorry to say, esp the attempt to quash abortion rights.
My mother, in her early 70’s, was a STRONG opponent to Meech Lake. A letter or 2 of thanks from various opposed politicians who replied to her opinions were proudly displayed by my brothers & I at her memorial service!
Judy Haiven:
Brilliant –and thanks….
I’m not impressed by Canadian journalists who have fallen over each other to say only bons mots and boring ones at that about Mulroney.Me neither. It’s a sham, all the fake love and coodles for the racist woman and poor hating criminal creep.
MI Citizen:
I was there too Judy, as an organizer, activist and editor with End Legislated Poverty, a coalition of 30 social justice groups,officed in Vancouver but a member of NAPO. You came to our office a lot to strategise and when Jean Swanson had the keynote against free trade. I collaborated with you at the LEAF conference in Ottawa, with Rigaberta Menchu, activist of Guatemala who won the Nobel Peace prize that year. We all had multi-faceted roles in building a strong social movement based on bodies in protest vs Internet warriors.
Most importantly, we fought the good fight against free trade, Mulroney and the right, women’s degradation through poverty and lack of respect for our rights in a rape prone society. Still fighting, always loved your spirit and directness. Thanks for scraping the sugar off the coating of platitudes about Mulroney and by implication Reagan and Thatcher. Not easy Irish smiling eyed times at all. We need more boots on the ground and in the streets.The right is winning the war of disruption and protest while lib lefties sharpen our thumbs. The right is scarier than ever. Canada hasn’t a clue about what it’s in for. PP2.0 makes Mulroney look like a mensch.
liberty & justice:
IIRC, his last two polls before the Tories forced him to resign had him at 13% and 9% support amongst Canadians, respectively.
Good riddance, Brian
Jeff_White:
As Yves Engler points out, Mulroney had to be dragged kicking and screaming into taking action against South African apartheid:
“After decades of protest by civil society, Mulroney’s government finally implemented economic sanctions on South Africa in 1986. The Conservatives only moved after numerous other countries had already done so. “The record clearly shows”, notes The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years, “that the Canadian government followed rather than led the sanctions campaign.”
GMA20:
trying to save the lives of the unborn for their right to life and liberty isn’t a bad thing after all the women aborting them have every right kind of Canadian rights he was just speaking for the weakest of our nation
droop to GMA20:
No, these ‘rights’ of the unborn as you try to say, don’t exist. Trying to impose these non-existence rights is nothing more than robbing women ot their rights to choice .. rights that actually do exist.
CartoonCoyote to GMA20:
Get out of people’s uteruses and mind your own business.
Anne__Ominous to GMA20:
So, you’d like to see what’s happening in the U.S. now come to Canada? Doctors are afraid to perform life-saving procedures on pregnant women and those who have miscarried wanted pregnancies are under suspicion.to
Brian Mulroney’s legacy is built on corporate profits made at the expense of workers by Linda McQuaig, March 22, 2024, Rabble
Mulroney transformed the political and economic landscape, partly through his free trade deal with the U.S. that weakened labour.
The first real glimpse Canadians got of Brian Mulroney could have been a political career-ender.
It was February 1983, and he was the front-runner in the Progressive Conservative party’s leadership race. He was also the president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, and his assignment from the company’s U.S. bosses was to shut down the company’s mining operations in Schefferville, Quebec, turning the once-thriving remote northern community into a ghost town.
With the national media camped out in Schefferville to see Mulroney perform, the aspiring prime minister announced generous severance packages for the hundreds of terminated employees, turning the potential disaster into a political triumph.
But, as a gleeful Mulroney headed out of Schefferville with a captivated press corps in tow, Iron Ore was also laying off almost a thousand workers in Labrador City, Newfoundland — without paying them any severance. Far from the cameras, many of these workers faced personal bankruptcy, unable to keep up mortgage payments on their suddenly worthless houses or to pay the $10,000 the company was demanding to move their house trailers out on the company-owned railroad.
It was a testament to Mulroney’s political skills that he was able to spin a positive narrative about himself — even as he left behind thousands of devastated employees in the snowbanks of Labrador City.
It was this political dexterity — manoeuvring skilfully on behalf of powerful business interests — that enabled Mulroney to go on to be a highly consequential prime minister who ushered Canada into an era in which corporations have dominated and profit maximization has become the ruling ethos.
In retrospect, it may seem inevitable that Canada would follow the lead of U.S. President Ronald Reagan who was aggressively promoting corporate interests south of the border.
But Canada had a different political tradition, with government playing an important role advancing the public interest through crown corporations and universal social programs.
Canadian business leaders wanted that changed, even though they understood that most Canadians didn’t. In a paper released just before the 1984 election, the CEOs who made up the Business Council on National Issues acknowledged that Canada’s higher social spending reflected “the greater priority that Canadians put on social welfare.”
Canadians would just have to learn to make their social well-being less of a priority, the CEOs had decided.
Mulroney, fresh from his lucrative years in the corporate world, apparently agreed.
Only a few months after taking office, his government produced a sweeping document called “A New Direction for Canada” that was strikingly similar to the economic blueprint laid out a few months earlier by the CEOs.Fucking evil, and just another copy cat con man.
And Mulroney largely delivered for the business world, introducing far-reaching changes that transformed the Canadian political and economic landscape, partly through his free trade deal with the U.S. that weakened labour and enhanced the rights of business and investors.
Earlier Canadian governments had developed more than 60 crown corporations. Mulroney privatized or began privatizing some key ones, including a national railway, oil company and airline, and completed the privatization of Connaught Labs, a publicly-owned biomedical company that had become one of the world’s leading vaccine producers.
Mulroney and his business backers wanted us to believe that such national projects were no longer viable, that we’d have to limit our vision of what we could do collectively and learn to rely on the private sector to do everything from building our infrastructure to providing our health care.
But there have always been more options than business has led us to believe — as illustrated by the way European countries have succeeded in maintaining high social spending and equality levels, while Canada has drifted closer to the inequitable U.S. model.
Canada’s corporate world has thrived in recent decades, which explains much of the elite adulation for Brian Mulroney since his death last month.
But the world he ushered in has left many Canadians feeling like the workers he left behind in the snowbanks.
This article was originally posted in the Toronto Star.
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