REST WELL, MR FORMER PRIME MINSTER

1939-2024

FORMER CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER’S LAST OPERA

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

When old politicians get dragged to the boneyard, the public pageantry along the procession route casts spells on even the most ardent of detractors.

In democracies, family, friends and political enemies momentarily forget the intimate slights and public casting outs that invariably occur during a long political democratic rule, at the end of the day at least, when the church bells ring and the honour guard salutes.

The 18^th Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney, passed away in the state of Florida on February 29, 2024. The old Irishman found a warm place to put down at night for his last years after mustering among the unforgiving cold wind blowing off the river during too many harsh Canadian winters.

The snow accumulated on the RCMP hats as a nation gathered to bid farewell and thank the family for many years of public service and dedication to a cause that at one time was very popular – perhaps even necessary.

The political conservative thinker was the consummate insider. Mulroney walked along the halls of power always ever certain of his steps forward, especially with the steam whistle of industry providing a regular beat to his day.

In retirement from politics, the former Prime Minister reengaged with the corporate world with that added cache of having been on the inside of the inside.

The preceding Liberal Government had just nearly finished taking apart the foreign ownership of the economy when the corporate lawyer and lifelong politician won a landslide victory.

The liberal minded loyalists in the minority would make the Irish whiskey go down a bit less smooth over the years, even in retirement. But the guy from the mill town along the St Lawrence River stayed in power for 9 years (1984-1993) while the world around him endured irrevocable change.

Canadians were still teething from the nation building manufactured under the Liberal banner when Mulroney began to make friends by opening the borders to trade again, while implementing the conservative fiscal agenda of his contemporaries in London and Washington DC.

Mulroney’s political presence put some camber on the national identity.

Mulroney was Irish on one shirt sleeve and French Canadian lumberjack on the other, occasionally sharing cherished clover green political moments with United States President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989).

Every so often Mulroney would also engage politically with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990). Normally, the world talked about Thatcher and Reagan or Reagan and Thatcher, but every once in a while, Mulroney broadened Canada’s international profile by joining the two political dance partners on the same stage.

The three world leaders were conservative to the right, with Thatcher and Reagan coining a particular brand of conservative economics.

The conservative fiscal policies that tightening government spending led to a global recession, but the economic policies cleared the path toward a much more profitable globalization of world economies, although the world would have to wait a few years to reap the benefits.

Thatcherism and Reaganomics didn’t quite have the same ring as Mulronism or Mulronics. But the three leaders were often leaning in the same right of center direction. Reagan’s right of left policies reduced government regulations and limited funding for social programs, while Thatcher was clinically to the right of Reagan, shuttering unprofitable publicly owned coal mines and trimming the government spending of demand-side Keynesian economics.

Mulroney, operating a much smaller economy, danced in and around the two megawatt capitalists, while becoming neither a wholly converted Thatcherite or being totally swayed by Reaganomics.

This independence of thought was evidenced by Mulroney’s leadership in favoring economic sanctions against Apartheid South Africa and the very concerted effort to facilitate the freeing of Nelson Mandela from state prison. These policies were ultimately successful.

Mulronics involved negotiating free trade agreements with other countries prior to the much broader push toward globalization and the reduction of tariffs worldwide that occurred after his rule. A compartmentalized world economy began operating within much larger compartments.

Canada eventually entered into reduced trade tariff agreements with the United States, Mexico, Asia Pacific and Europe as a kind of institutionalized Mulronism, a term that didn’t quite make it into the dictionary.

The funeral cortege led the nation from where the statesman was lying in repose at Saint-Patrick’s Basilica through Old Montreal to the Notre-Dame Basilica with a somber tone under the constantly falling snow as the dark funeral attire became incrementally dusted in white during a late winter day.

Noticeably absent from the procession were Montrealers lining the city streets.

The snow, a military band and the RCMP honour guard escorted the Prime Minster to where the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, waited with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and many other prominent Canadians, such as Wayne Gretsky and the one daughter, Caroline, and three sons, Ben, Mark and Nicholas, and one of several grandchildren, Elizabeth Theodora Lapham, who sang, Mais qu’est-ce que j’ai?

The boys and girls who once played together had obviously grown old and gray. But the nation was grateful for the family’s public service.

And the world today is irrevocably different.