Brian Mulroney
March 20, 1939 - February 29, 2024
aged 84
Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 – 1993
Conservative Prime Minister who succeeded the retiring Liberal legend, Pierre Trudeau, in a landslide general election victory in 1984. After years of opposition, many Conservative party members and supporters anticipated patronage appointments to government positions, leading to a tsunami of federal political corruption. When he left office, he had the lowest approval ratings in Canadian history.
Mulroney was a lawyer and businessman who brought his businessman sensibilities to government. But his voice and his manners always made him feel like a snake oil salesman.
His tenure in Canada overlapped with those of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., Helmut Kohl in Germany, and Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the U.S., the collapse of Apartheid in South Africa, the end of the Communist Soviet Union and the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
The names Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney are often spoken together. They were the perpetrators of neoliberalism that promoted deregulation, the withdrawal from social programs and economic globalization beginning in the 1980s.
Since his death, Mulroney has been lionized. The revisionist history currently being bantered about is revolting.
He oversaw the failed Meech Lake accord to bring the Province of Quebec into the Canadian Constitution, and he introduced the federal sales tax known as the GST, the Goods and Services Tax. And, he was kind of like an American Republican house pet, moving Canada closer to the U.S by negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - which he originally had opposed. It was the sort of trade agreement that a businessman would dream up. The free trade deal resulted in many U.S. corporations shutting their Canadian branch plants, relocating to Mexico, leaving hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers unemployed.
Mulroney is particularly notable for his role in destroying Canada’s robust and successful national housing program.
The initial slashing of funding for social programs including housing began in 1984 with the rise to power of his conservative government.
1993 was a particularly dark year. In their last months in power Mulroney’s government presided over about $1.8 billion in cuts to housing programs including funds for any new co-op housing. A federal election that year brought in a Liberal government which continued with cuts to social spending, and Paul Martin’s 1996 budget cemented the downloading of housing.
Today, the legacy of Mulroney’s social policies lives on:
- 10 plus year wait lists for social housing
- decrepit apartment buildings with broken elevators, mould, infestations, and endless repair lists
- seniors and people with disabilities left waiting for accessible, safe housing and long-term care
- no co-op housing program
- mass homelessness, overflowing shelters, encampments, not created by an earthquake or flood but for the most part by men.