Over his impressive — yet at times divisive — political career, Mulroney left an unmistakable mark on the country.
Early political ambitions
Born to a working class family in Baie-Comeau, Que., as a university student studying political science Mulroney became an adviser to Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker.
He worked behind the scenes in conservative politics for years and earned a law degree before finally running to become the next federal Progressive Conservative leader in 1976, only to lose to Joe Clark.
Defeated but not discouraged, Mulroney joined corporate Canada as a senior executive, but continued plotting a campaign to oust Clark.
His pursuits for power culminated in 1983, when he won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party.
“Together we’re going to build a brand new party and a brand new country,” he vowed at the time. He was then elected as MP for Central Nova, N.S., promising to push for more jobs in the riding.
Mulroney went on to run a commanding 1984 federal campaign, winning a majority with the largest number of seats in Canadian history, after delivering what may be his most memorable political line.
When then-Liberal prime minister John Turner’s honouring of Pierre Trudeau’s controversial patronage appointments came up during an election debate, Mulroney stated: “You had an option, sir.”
‘Very tough decisions’
As Canada’s 18th prime minister, Mulroney, then sitting as the MP for Manicouagan, Que. embarked on an at-times stormy prime ministership that in nine years both strengthened and divided the country.
“Mr. Mulroney took some very tough decisions which only in retrospect people are appreciating,” former diplomat and Mulroney’s former chief of staff Derek Burney, once told CTV News.
He took Canada on a forced march through two major efforts to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold, “with honour and enthusiasm.” Both tries, Meech Lake and the Charlottetown Accord, failed, meaning his proposed amendments to the Canadian constitution and the reforms they would have instilled, did not become a reality.
On the international stage, however, Mulroney gave Canada a new sense of respect and presence. He rallied countries against apartheid, and imposed sanctions on South Africa.
And, while building stronger ties with the United States, Mulroney and his wife Mila developed close friendships with Nancy and Ronald Reagan, leading to the iconic “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” moment at the 1985 Shamrock Summit in Quebec City.
Mulroney and his wife also forged a closeness with Barbara and George Bush Sr.
Former U.S. President George Bush has a word with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as they enter a luncheon as part of a conference marking the tenth anniversay of the North American Free Trade Agreement Saturday, June 5, 1999 in Montreal. (CP PHOTO/Paul Chiasson)This led to the Canadian leader advising his American counterpart to seek international consensus before launching Operation Desert Storm to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait, as Fen Osler Hampson details in his book Master of Persuasion: Brian Mulroney’s Global Legacy.
These relationships outlasted the leaders’ respective political careers, seeing Mulroney deliver eulogies for both former presidents.
It wasn’t just friendships Mulroney forged stateside. One of the marquee pieces of his legacy is his work to establish first a free trade agreement between Canada and the United States, which became a lightning rod in the 1988 campaign.
And then, after winning a second Progressive Conservative majority, Mulroney pushed on and cemented an expanded trade deal that included Mexico: the North American Free Trade Agreement.
It was also in his second mandate that Mulroney secured the Acid Rain Accord, and introduced the reviled Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The tax, which came into effect in 1991 and remains in place today, was deeply unpopular, and as a weary country drifted into a recession, Mulroney’s polling numbers plummeted to a historic low in 1992.
Time ‘to step aside’
It was then in 1993 that he declared in a Centre Block meeting room that “the time has come for me to step aside,” after doing his “very best” for his country.
Mulroney said then that he’d be resigning as soon as his party had elected a successor. The reins were then handed over to Kim Campbell a few months later, making her Canada’s first female prime minister.
After leaving office, his party was decimated in the 1993 federal election, seeing the Liberals led by Jean Chretien win a landslide majority government.
Under Chretien, Mulroney was accused by the government of accepting $5 million in kickbacks on the sale of Airbus jets to Air Canada from German-Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.
After much attention around the corruption allegations, in 1997, the RCMP cleared him of any involvement and the Chretien regime apologized.
In a remarkable legal saga, Mulroney successfully sued the government for defamation and received $2 million.
But, a few years later as Schreiber faced extradition to Germany for tax evasion, he revealed a bombshell, that Mulroney accepted a $300,000 secret cash payment from him shortly after he left office.
Then-prime minister Stephen Harper was forced to call a public inquiry, led by Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, a scarring event for Mulroney and his family, he told the inquiry in 2009.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, left, leaves with wife Mila and lawyer Guy Pratte following six days of testimony at the Oliphant Commission in Ottawa, Wednesday May 20, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickUltimately in 2010 the inquiry found that the financial and business dealings between the two men were inappropriate, tarnishing his legacy.
That same year, Mulroney was diagnosed with a rare blend of diabetes that he said turned his life upside down.
It was amid these challenging early aughts for Mulroney that he released his own memoir, after settling a public and scathing dispute over former confidant Peter Newman’s biography The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister based on hours of recorded interviews that cast the former prime minister in an unflattering light.
Mulroney and Justin Trudeau
In the more than a decade since, however, Mulroney defended his record, becoming one of Canada’s top statesmen.
When NAFTA was thrust back to the renegotiation table in 2017, Mulroney helped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stickhandle the at-times tense talks, by leveraging his relationship with then-U.S. president Donald Trump.
In a 2019 CTV News interview, Mulroney advocated for Canada to do more to raise its global profile on international causes.
“The world doesn’t want more Canada until it bellies up to the bar,” he said.
And, as the current Conservative party has worked its way through successive leadership searches and failed election campaigns over the last eight years, Mulroney became a recurring presence, offering his insight and at times, criticism.
In 2021, Mulroney endorsed then-leader Erin O’Toole the same day he vowed he wasn’t leading “your dad’s” Conservative party, but within weeks he made headlines for criticizing O’Toole’s leadership over his handling of vaccine mandates.
A Companion of the Order of Canada, Mulroney received numerous awards and considerable recognition for his leadership and contributions to Canada.
He was also a mentor to his four children, including Ben Mulroney who became a top entertainment host, and Caroline Mulroney who is a cabinet minister in the Ontario government.
In 2023, Mulroney spoke publicly about his battle with prostate cancer, telling CTV’s Question Period in May that his doctors had done a “spectacular” job and he was not ready for the Olympics yet, but was “improving.”
A month later, when speaking at the Atlantic Economic Forum at St. Francis Xavier University, Mulroney offered a thoughtful perspective on the legacies of political leaders, in paying tribute to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“It takes years, and not a few months or a few years… before one can make a judgment as to how a prime minister, or premier, has handled his responsibilities,” he said.
“History is only concerned with the big ticket items that have shaped the future of Canada.”
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
Former U.S. President George Bush has a word with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as they enter a luncheon as part of a conference marking the tenth anniversay of the North American Free Trade Agreement Saturday, June 5, 1999 in Montreal. (CP PHOTO/Paul Chiasson)This led to the Canadian leader advising his American counterpart to seek international consensus before launching Operation Desert Storm to oust Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait, as Fen Osler Hampson details in his book Master of Persuasion: Brian Mulroney’s Global Legacy.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, left, leaves with wife Mila and lawyer Guy Pratte following six days of testimony at the Oliphant Commission in Ottawa, Wednesday May 20, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickUltimately in 2010 the 
