Brian Mulroney (1939-2024) | “I was so lucky to be his daughter”

(Ottawa and Montreal) “He was an incredible man. I was so lucky to be his daughter.”

After announcing the sad news of the death of her father, Brian Mulroney, on the X network, Caroline Mulroney paid a heartfelt tribute in a short statement to The Press to the one to whom she has continued to turn for valuable advice throughout her life, and particularly since she made the leap into provincial politics, in Ontario, in 2018.

Caroline Mulroney has been an influential minister in Doug Ford’s government since June 2018. She is currently President of the Treasury Board. She was previously Minister of Transport and also Minister of Justice.

There were numerous reactions following the death of Mr. Mulroney, who was Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he learned with “great sadness” of the death of a man who “always sought to make this country a better place to live in.”

To his statement on social media, the Liberal leader added, on the sidelines of a partisan event in Thunder Bay, Ontario, that Brian Mulroney was “a true statesman.”

And as such, “it has marked our past, it still marks our present, and it will mark our future for a long time too,” argued Justin Trudeau.

” A visionary ”

The Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, hailed “a visionary” with his Canada-US free trade agreement.

“He stood up to oppose the apartheid regime in South Africa. He knew how to fight against acid rain, one of the great environmental challenges at the time. He was also a true ambassador who made Quebec and Canada shine,” recalled Mr. Legault.

The leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, added his voice to the chorus of praise, recalling in passing that Brian Mulroney had won the largest majority in Canadian history.

“We will all remember him, and we will all think of his beautiful big Irish smile and his deep, rich voice,” he declared at a press briefing on Thursday evening.

On a more personal note, he added that he will be “always grateful to her for her frank advice and generous mentoring.”

Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose relations with Brian Mulroney were not always good, particularly because of the Airbus affair, was complimentary.

“History will record that Mr. Mulroney’s mandate as Prime Minister was transformative,” he wrote in English on the X platform, listing some of the accomplishments of the 18^e Canadian Prime Minister.

“ [Il] defended freedom and democracy on the world stage, in his principled opposition to apartheid in South Africa, his enduring support for Israel, and his advocacy for the independence of Ukraine and other European nations long under the yoke of Soviet communism,” he quoted.

In the eyes of Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet, the former prime minister “is perhaps the last to have attempted to sincerely reconcile Quebec and Canada.” “His role in respecting human rights and the release of Nelson Mandela is historic. He even had the trust of René Lévesque. Respect for a great North Coaster,” he wrote.

“He was a leader in environmental protection, notably in the fight against acid rain and by banning chemicals dangerous to the ozone layer,” also recalled the New Democratic leader, Jagmeet Singh.

Generosity and courage

Even though he saw Brian Mulroney in Florida only a few days ago, Jean Charest was still “in shock” on Thursday.

“He told me he would like to see me, so I went to Florida. We saw each other Saturday evening. He was very weak. He had lost a lot of weight, he had difficulty walking, but he was alert,” said the man who was Minister of the Environment in the Mulroney government.

“He was for me a mentor, a friend, a confidant, a support in everything I did in my political life, and a quasi-father,” he confided in a telephone interview.

Brian Mulroney’s political legacy is immense, judges Jean Charest.

“He had this ambition to change Canada for the better, and he had a lot of courage, because he had undertaken projects that were going to cost him popularity: free trade, the GST, constitutional negotiations, all of that was about controversial,” he stressed.

For his part, Paul Tellier, deputy minister and clerk of the Privy Council of Canada under Brian Mulroney, will be remembered as a “generous” man. “He’s the best boss I’ve ever had,” he said in an interview.

The memory, too, of a statesman endowed with extraordinary interpersonal skills. American presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, British Prime Minister John Major — to name just a few — had a special bond with Brian Mulroney, he recalls.

“He was able to build personal relationships, first and foremost, before talking about business. And it served Canada’s interests very well, both domestically and internationally,” he said.

“In my eyes, there is no prime minister in the history of Canada who has had as much influence on the international scene,” says former host and journalist Guy Gendron, who is behind the book Brian Mulroney: the man of great riskswhich stemmed from a documentary series.

According to him, Mr. Mulroney’s speech to the UN on apartheid left an impression throughout the world. “At the time, he had warmed the ears of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who wanted nothing to do with his fight at first. The jaws of all African leaders dropped upon hearing it. No one had ever spoken like that to Margaret Thatcher,” notes Mr. Gendron.

He remembers that as soon as he was released from prison, Nelson Mandela even called Mr. Mulroney in person to tell him that his first speech in a democratic parliament, “he wanted to do it in Canada”.

Author, columnist and journalist Gilbert Lavoie, who was also Brian Mulroney’s press secretary between 1989 and 1992, remembers a man “who had a great ability to build strong relationships with people.” “This man occupied a lot of space in the lives of everyone who worked for us. His death leaves a great void. It’s as if someone from the family is leaving,” breathes Mr. Lavoie.

According to him, Mr. Mulroney’s love for Quebec was beyond doubt. “Even though he was a federalist, he was a guy who felt more at ease in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada. »

At Laval University, where Brian Mulroney chaired three fundraising campaigns and where a pavilion dedicated to international studies will soon bear his name, the shock is just as strong. “It shook us all. For us, Mr. Mulroney is a giant,” confides his rector, Sophie D’Amours. “Mr. Mulroney was always a proud graduate and he had a lot of recognition. He said it was his golden years. With his class of 1963, they still got together,” adds M^me D’Amours, who hopes that future young students “will be challenged by the strong ambition that Brian Mulroney had.”

Mr. Mulroney will also have left his mark on the history of Quebecor, according to its president and CEO, Pierre Karl Péladeau. “From the end of the 1960s, he was a valuable advisor to my father, Pierre Péladeau, then he became an exceptional mentor for me. It was an honor to be able to count on his extraordinary experience,” the businessman said in a press release.

Brian Mulroney became known to the general public during the Cliche commission set up in 1974 after the ransacking of James Bay by union agents from the FTQ-Construction. “He could be incisive. He worked with a scalpel,” recalls Louis-Gilles Francoeur who covered the commission as a journalist at Duty and became friends with him.

If we remember more the constitutional debates which punctuated the political career of Brian Mulroney, but Mr. Francoeur recalls that he was the first to table a plan to protect biodiversity and to put in place an environmental assessment mechanism.

Reparation of “historical injustice”

Everywhere on the Quebec political scene, the death of Mr. Mulroney caused reactions. “Despite our differences of vision on the place of Quebec in Canada, I would like to salute the courage of a man who tried everything to repair the historical injustice of the unilateral patriation of the Constitution, against Quebec and behind the back of the Quebec,” argued PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.

He recalled that at the time, “several separatists, including René Lévesque, believed in the good risk, particularly because of the good faith and determination of Mr. Mulroney to reintegrate Quebec into the constitutional fold, in honor and enthusiasm.

“On the international stage, his leadership will have allowed Canada to shine and assert its values. The “little guy from Baie-Comeau” leaves us a great political legacy: that of a Prime Minister who made Canada an important and respected country. We will never forget you,” said the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Marc Tanguay.

“On behalf of my political party, I offer all my condolences to the loved ones of Brian Mulroney, a Quebecer who gave a large part of his life to public service. His fight for human rights in South Africa was a great mark of courage,” said the co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.

The mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, praised a “great Montrealer” who “will have left his mark on Canada with his economic and constitutional reforms”. Among the feats of arms she mentioned were Brian Mulroney’s positions on the environment, emphasizing that he had the first Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Still on the Montreal side, municipal councilor Serge Sasseville said he was in shock. “He often gave me valuable advice during my career. On August 18, 2021, at home, he was the second to sign my nomination paper for the municipal election. […] He was a great man who brought honor to Canada,” recalled the man who was an executive at Quebecor.

“He was a man with a true vision, and as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, a trusted friend,” said the High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Canada, Susannah Goshko.

The United States Ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, offered “his deep sympathies” to those close to Brian Mulroney. His warmth and his sense of state “conquered” leaders of all political stripes,” he declared in a press release.

“His deep and respectful relationships with several American administrations of the time constitute a standard to which all leaders aspire,” concluded Washington’s envoy to Ottawa.

With Mylène Crête, The Press